Belize - Caye Caulker

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  Caye Caulker, Belize Cayes, Belize
Thursday, April 17, 2008

For the next leg of our journey, we were off to Belize.  We arranged for a shuttle bus to pick us up at our hotel in Tikal, Guatemala which took us to the Belize border where we got our stamps, walked half a km from one border station to the other, and back onto the same bus.  Many hours later we arrived in Belize City where we caught a boat that took us to Caye Caulker.  Cayes (pronounced ¨keys¨) is the term Belizians use for islands.  We arrived around 3pm or so and within an hour of being there, we ran into friends we met on Little Corn island - a couple from Canada.  It wasn´t completely accidental as we knew they´d probably be there about the time we were arriving, but still fun to see some familiar faces.

This island is all about taking it slow.  Saw a few signs that said ¨No shirt, No shoes, No problem¨.. that about says it all.  The majority of the local population is Garifuna (ie Jamaican decent), and it has a real laid back, Jamaican pace to it

Caye Caulker near sundown

.  There´s no cars on this island at all, just golf carts and bicycles and the golf carts also double as a taxi service in town.  There´s also no resorts here.  Its all cabanas or small private hotels, and again is chalk full of backpackers as all the people who crave luxury head to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye.  That was fine by us though because our hotel room was pretty nice still and we didn´t have hoards of vacationers drowning out the mellow vibe of this island.

We spent our first night hanging out with our friends from Calgary, catching up and comparing notes since we parted ways on Little Corn.  On Day 2, we signed up for an all day snorkling tour to the nearby reef that is apparently the second largest on the planet (Great Barrier Reef down under takes top spot).  As an extra bonus, the mode of transportation was on a pretty sweet sailboat that took us to three different reef locations.  The first location was just to get our feet wet, so to speak, and we weren´t really expected to see much.  I got really lucky and had a *huge* Eagle Ray swim right in front of me just before I got back on the boat.  Its wing span was easily as wide as my arms stretched out, and it tail was longer than my body length.  No one else saw it though, so that was my big fish story until we reached the second reef location which was a protected water reserve (Ho Chan Marine Reserve) with park rangers in the middle of the ocean, as strange as that sounds

Downtown Caye Caulker at rush hour

.  This time we were with a guide who led us around the reef and showed all kinds of crazy exotic fish usually in large schools.  We also saw a sea turtle, and a couple more Rays, although not as big as the one I saw earlier.

The last reef location was called Shark-Ray alley and true to its name, there were sharks there as soon as we arrived, circling our boat.  Our captain told us to go ahead and jump in, and to Vicky´s surprise I was one of the first to jump overboard.  Now I probably shouldn´t glorify this too much... these sharks are called nurse sharks, which isn´t exactly the most intimidating name a shark could have - and sure enough, right after I jumped in, they all took off.  The Rays on the other hand weren´t nearly as shy.  They were everywhere.  The captain of our boat jumped in the water and gently lifted a ray up face-to-face with himself (arms underneath it), and let all of us swim over to pet it.  That was kindof weird.  They´re pretty docile creatures... I saw one girl from our group swim after a ray and grab its tail, and it just kept swimming.  Maybe she just got lucky because that seemed like an extraordinarily dumb thing to do.  The sharks never came back while I was in the water, but Vicky had one swim right by her before she climbed out.  After that, we sailed back to Caye Caulker and enjoyed the setting sun while sipping on rum fruit drinks served by the crew.

We only spent two days here, which were great but the one thing Caye Caulker doesn´t have is nice beaches, and we knew our next destination in Mexico did.  So we were anxious get some more use from our beach towels and head north.  Would have liked to have seen more of Belize, especially since we really enjoyed Caye Caulker, but our time was starting to run a bit short and we were also looking forward to staying put for a while before we flew home.  The novelty of long bus rides on bumpy roads was starting to wear off, believe it or not :)

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Nurse shark near our boat

Our sailboat, the island, and a goofy smile

Taxi service on the island

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