Belize - Belize City and Caye Caulker

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Suzanne here...

We arrived in Belize City early afternoon and could have made it straight over to Caye Caulker. We thought about it, BC has got a bit of a bad reputation. Still, we thought we´d stay a night and see for ourselves and pick up some shopping we needed. We found a hotel and then wandered around the town. Hmm. Not the prettiest place, and I lost count of the number of times people tried to sell us drugs or ask us for money. We´ve been asked for money all around the world. As tourists we´re obviously seen as rich, and poor as we might feel at times, relatively speaking we usually are. I totally understand people asking for money, but we made a conscious decision not to give on the street, but rather to choose a charity in each of the poorer countries we visit and make a donation. Who knows if this is the best way of doing things, but that´s our choice. Everywhere else people have asked for money, we´ve said no, and we´ve moved on. Not in Belize. ´Hey, I really need to talk to you... how are you?, welcome to Belize, I´ve got something important to tell you...´ On and on until it comes to the crunch, ´can you spare a couple of dollars?. All over Belize it´s been the same, but in Belize City it was even more intense. It gets so somebody says hello and you just want to ignore them. Then you feel rude. So you say hello back. They start to chat to you... then inevitably ask you for money. Very wearing. There also seemed to be even more drugs for sale than usual. One drug pusher really would not let it go and followed us down the (rather deserted) street as I got more and more nervous. To be fair, I'd like to stress that we maet lots of nice people in Belize too! Every country has it's problems.

We couldn´t even get the shopping we wanted. Does nobody in Belize use moisturiser?! No chance of a Mexico guide book either. However, in the end we did manage to have a nice walk away from the drug pushers and saw a huge iguana and loads of blue land crabs. However, in the end the stay was really justified by the fact that we finally got a decent Indian meal, the first since Fiji. We ate at a place called Sumathi (once we found it, it had moved from Newton Barracks to Eve Street). Very tasty, and satisfied the craving we´ve been having.

We were glad to move on to Caye Caulker the next day. We´d been in two minds about visiting it, but I´m so glad we did. It was the turning point in Belize for us. We stayed at Mara´s place, reasonably priced and a good quiet location, with the best dock of all the hotels and a great view of the sea. We booked in for three nights straight away, but ended up staying for four. Caye Caulker is a really relaxing place. The best thing we did was the day snorkelling trip. We planned to go on the Ragamuffin tour, which uses a sail boat. However the woman told us that music was played the whole time. We mentioned that we don´t like reggae. At this point the (English) woman got really snotty and kept banging on about it being the culture, almost as if us not liking it was somehow racist. Hmm. Apart from the fact that there are also large Latin American, Mayan and Mennonite communities in Belize, who I´m sure are not all huge reggae fans, is it really so wrong not to like a certain type of music? At no point did we criticise it either, it´s just not our thing. In the end we booked a cheaper motorboat tour with no music.

The trip turned out to be good fun. To be honest, we´ve been spoilt by the amazing snorkelling in Fiji. The coral and variety of fish didn´t quite match up. Also, it was really hard work swimming against the current and having nowhere you could swim to to stand up for a rest. However, seeing turtles on the first stop was brilliant, the first time we´ve seen them in the sea. The day nearly went pear-shaped after the first stop when one of the guys with us on the trip got really sick, his whole body cramping up. His girlfriend was getting slightly hysterical (understandable really) and begged to go back, which we did. All of us agreed that he needed to be taken back to dry land. After a bit of debate with the boss, the rest of us were taken out again. At stop two we saw barracudas, rays and nurse sharks, all more firsts for us.

Stop three turned out to be the star of the show. About five minutes after getting into the water David stopped to adjust his mask and was turned around by the current. He looked up... to see a face a couple of feet away staring back at him. Startling to say the least! It was a manatee, the one creature he knew I was desperate to see. Somehow he managed to signal to the people of the boat, and they shouted over to me. I swam as hard as I could against the current, determined not to miss it. You are not actually allowed to swim in the areas that manatees are known to live, but if one happens to swim into the snorkelling area it´s fair enough... Anyway, I finally made it and just floated next to it until it swam away. Absolutely amazing. I had a bit of a swim around the coral but nothing could match up to the manatee so I swam back to where we´d seen it, and it was back. I just spent the whole time watching it, until David joined me. Our presence didn´t seem to faze it. After a while it meandered away again and I decided that nothing else would measure up so I swam back to the boat.

Caye Caulker was our favourite place in Belize so we were sorry to leave. We even picked up a nearly new Lonely Planet guide to Mexico, in exchange for our two Central American guides, bargain. Most of all, I´ll never forget seeing that manatee. Not only a highlight of the trip but one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

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