Advertisement
Published: February 15th 2022
Edit Blog Post
Sunday morning, 7 am, and we can hear African drumming drifting along the beach, Garifuna drumming to be precise. We are in Hopkins, a village set up by slaves who had escaped from the sugar plantations. Hopkins is now a centre for Garifuna drumming, a tradition that the slaves brought with them from Africa.
Our little guest house is on the beach and in the heat of the day we are able to stay cool beneath the coconut palms. Small boats set out from the beach every day to fish on the reef, 20 miles out to sea. The fishermen stay away for two or three nights, camping on the reef's sandbar islands. The beach bars all sell fresh fish dishes – red snapper is the only fish we actually recognise!
Also fishing here are brown pelicans and magnificent frigatebirds; they are especially keen on eating the fish pieces thrown back by the fishermen and their wives as they gut their catch.
Just inland from Hopkins are two National Parks - Cockscombe and Mayflower . Both are part of a 200 square mile jaguar reserve – jaguars like to live alone and
need a lot of space. Using the maps provided, we walk some of the trails through the jungle. The air is full of bird song but seeing any birds or wildlife is very difficult, the foliage is so dense. Any bird that does appear is lost to view within a second – spotting a jaguar is clearly unlikely! We can identify some of the trees – mahogany, cashew, breadfruit – but not many. Some of these ancient trees are huge, over 120 feet / 40 metres high. There are also lots of vines and creepers but we resist the temptation to try swinging from tree to tree.
In Mayflower we trek to the Antelope Waterfall and are very pleased with ourselves when we reach it after a 20 minute uphill walk – it said 45 minutes on the map. Then we realise that the path continues up the side of the waterfall. It is a near-vertical, rope-assisted climb to the top where we get a view to the Caribbean and a beautiful pool of water to cool-off in.
Driving the slow track out of Cockscombe we spot a large blue morpho butterfly and stop
in the vain hope of seeing more of it. It flits away but we are immediately aware of movement above us – howler monkeys! We have been hearing them all day but this is our first sighting in Cockscombe. They look down on us with little interest and continue their high-level move across the treetops to wherever it is they plan to spend the night.
A day's drive inland along the Hummingbird Highway takes us to San Ignacio, a town set amongst the hills of the rainforest. And it is raining – short heavy showers that drench everything in minutes and drop the temperature from 27c to 22c. Then the rain clears, the road steams and the temperature climbs once more.
A few miles up river from San Ignacio, and just two miles from the Guatemala border, are the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich (pronounced shoo-nah-to-neech, obviously). The city is set by a river, which we have to cross on another hand-cranked car ferry, though this one looks less likely to sink than the last. The ruined pyramidal stepped buildings are set around plazas and it is easy to imagine this as a busy place
of 10,000 people around 750 AD. The tallest temple is over 40 metres high and the view from the top is of jungle-clad hills and misty valleys.
We also found the Belize Botanical Gardens, hidden some six miles down a bumpy track but worth every bump. The gardens are wonderful and we spent a couple of hours wandering about and even spotted a huge keel-billed toucan. If only we could have brought some plants home from their nursery …
Near the gardens we popped in to a posh resort for coffee and to see their blue morpho butterfly project. The butterfly project is very low key with a dedicated man raising hundreds of blue morpho, brown owl and yellow malachite butterflies. We are the only visitors and there are butterflies everywhere in the enclosure. This is another example of how dedicated Belize is to preserving its environment and wildlife. Such a small country, it is the size of Wales, is surely doing a lot more than many of its bigger neighbours.
The resort, Cree Creek, is all rather lovely with thatched cottages – with all mod cons – hidden away in
its tropical gardens, and, of course, a swimming pool, a really good restaurant, a bar and a coffee shop. This is the second resort that we have popped into for coffee – there is nowhere else for coffee on the highways. Both have been expensive to stay in but have welcomed us dropping in and served good, reasonably priced, coffee.
We should say here that the small place we are staying in, Villa Cayo, is rather lovely too. It is set up its own track and sits facing west on a hilltop. With just four villas, it is very quiet and we have our own toucans – collared aracari toucans – feeding in our trees.
Tomorrow we will drive east to the city, drop off the rental car, jump into a water taxi and head out to the Cayes.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 13; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0687s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb