BELIZE - Caye Caulker

---

Although, by now we had spent a couple of weeks in Latin America (Mexico), Belize was to be our first Central American stop ´proper´ and, having heard that Belize City is a bit of a shithole, we decided to head straight for Caye Caulker, and to spend New Year´s Eve on a Carribbean Island.

Heading from the bus station to the ferry port with our newly-aquired friends Kelly and Matt, we saw that previous tales of Belize City´s non-desirability were not exxagerated in the least. It only really warrants one more sentence, so I´ll just say: dirty, scary and unstable. Definitely not a place to convince you of the much-vaunted beauty of Belize. We were all relieved to board a ferry to Caye Caulker, but were less impressed that our bags (and our entire lives for the duration of this trip) were supposedly coming to the Island on a different boat. When we arrived at Caye Caulker, about one hour later, it was apparent that finding a place to stay was not going to be easy. Two days until New Year´s Eve and the Island was buzzing. To compound matters further, our bags were nowhere to be seen, and it was as a result of this situation, that one hour later I found myself sitting with Kelly and five people´s bags (we had bumped into our old Bavarian friend Franz on the boat), with no idea of where our travelling buddies were, but hoping that they were organising a hotel for us.

Needless to say, everything was fine. Around one hour after Kelly and I had been wordlessly abandoned by our friends, they returned with news of private huts on the beach. Five minutes on a tuc tuc (there were no cars on the Island other than those of the police) and we arrived at our new temporary home. It was as perfect as a postcard. We were staying in spacious and clean huts surrounded by palm trees and fallen coconuts and we were less than one minute away from the sea. By chance, we also found out that we were staying next door to the American brothers we had met in our first paradise, Isla Mujeres (avid readers may remember the brothers from a previous blog), and what this meant was more ´food adventures.´ But whereas, in Isla Mujeres our food adventures had involved jumping into taxis and finding obscure Mexican eateries, in the more costly Belize, we were lucky enough to sample chef Aaron´s culinary delights.

A couple of months into our trip, and Fin and I had realised that pretty much every time we arrived in a new place we would feel negative about it until our second day. Caye Caulker was one of few exceptions to this rule. Being in Caye Caulker was a bit like being in a Lilt advert. I know that this sounds like a ridiculous caricature, but it´s just so true. The sandy streets are occupied by golf carts instead of cars and chilled-out Belizeans who like to talk to everyone, especially girls, but who are never aggressive, and who never push too hard to sell you anything. Caye Caulker is beautiful, but slightly grimy at the same time, and although it was fairly full of tourists, I never felt the usual annoyance for the obvious ones that is normal for me (by obvious, I mean loud Americans, and foreigners in ethnic wear). For the second time in less than three months, we were in Paradise.

On our first evening in Caye Caulker, we followed a home-cooked meal, with two-for-one cocktails (panty-rippers and rum punches) and skinny dipping. It was pretty much like being on Shipwrecked; eating food on the beach out of giant tin pans with only five spoons and a few knives between ten people, and jumping in the sea at any and every opportunity. There was even some attempted spear fishing from the boys (though I should emphasize the ´attempted´).

The only downfall to having such a great first night, was that we knew it was going to be nay impossible to top, and the next night was New Year´s Eve. All things considered, we did a pretty good job. In the afternoon, Fin, one American brother and myself, walked down to the docks to see if we could procure some fresh lobster from the local fishermen. This lead us to Samus, a local fisherman whom I had already avoided earlier when I had been on my own, and he had been catcalling me. Pervert or no, Samus was definitely the man that we needed to see. On his instructions, we returned to the docks half an hour later and were greeted with creeping, crawling lobsters of various sizes, which were put into a plastic bag and handed over to us for a relative pittance.

Triumphant, we returned to ´camp´with one plastic bag full of writhing lobsters, and another of conch. That evening, Aaron overcame considerable culinary obstacles (five lobsters; two pots; one oven; no fridge) to cook up quite a storm. Being such a man as he is, Aaron managed to assemble a fire pit outside the kitchen hut, and cooked the lobsters in foil with vegetables and chillies in the fire, and we were even treated to an appetizer of conch cerviche to get things started. The meal was fantastic, and after filling up on this veritable´fish fest´ we headed out to Í and I´ a local reggae bar, that like much of the Island, appeared to be devoted to King Bob (Marley). As predicted, it was impossible to top the previous night´s antics, but we still had a fantastic introduction to 2010.

After New Year´s Eve, the weather took a temporary turn for the worse, but this did nothing to lessen our good moods. Fortunately we had Bobby, the local go-to wheeler dealer, who could get you anything (and I really mean anything) that you might happen to desire. Thanks to Bobby we found ourselves in a good position to enjoy special cakes, and a big pink bouncy ball that he rode off to find after we proclaimed the need for some kind of ball to play with. Of course, none of this came for free, and I wasn´t in the least surprised when a couple turned up at our huts to get ´their´ball back , an hour or so after Bobby had sold it to us!

Two nights turned into five days in Belize for us, and who knows how many more for the American brothers, who stayed on after we had left. After having such a great time we were a little reluctant to leave, but excited about our next stop in country number three: Guatemala.

---