Leaving amazing Mexico was a lot easier to do when the next stop turned out so beautiful. Caye Caulker in Belize’s Mesoamerican Barrier Reef is white sand, aqua and brilliant blue water teeming with nurse sharks, eagle rays and sting rays, parrotfish, stunning coral gardens, green turtles and all manner of underwater wonders…gorgeous men speaking Creole who are great kissers, a dedication to Bob Marley, reggae bars and the staple drink is rum…as in rum punch, chocolate colada, mango colada, strawberry colada – all kinds of colada, Cuba libre, rum-anything-you-want…oh yeah, this is my heaven on earth.
Our first sign that the motto of Belize is “go slow” was clearing immigration and customs on a tiny wooden jetty in San Pedro. Everyone off the speed boat, bags and all, wait in line for the officials to actually turn up for work, get the passport stamped by a gorgeous strip of man with a giant smile and chatty advice not to worry about the sharks as they are all vegetarian, then carry your luggage past the customs counter while the official talks to the boat captain, barely glances at your customs declaration form to sign it off without looking in the bag, wait on the other side of the jetty building watching rays glide in between the dinghies less than 3 meters from shore, before filing back onto the boat again to continue onto Caye Caulker. For a boat load of about 40 people this took the best part of 90 minutes. This is not the place to be in a hurry.
Rose’s for dinner came highly recommended and it didn’t disappoint. The grill is out the front and the menu is piled on platters, a little dazed and confused at being out of the water but still moving every now and then as a mate was picked up by the chef and moved across to the grill side. The lobsters ranged in size and price from 35 Belize dollars to 400 BZD, current exchange is around 2 BZD to 1 USD. I tried my first lobster, along with a superb snapper filet with rice and salad. Turns out I’m not a big fan of lobster and my loss was everyone else’s gain as it didn’t go to waste.
Our full day in Caye Caulker was spent on a sail boat called Ragga Prince, the green boat in the fleet with Raggamuffin tours. Along the way we were treated to a show of Captain Shane hand feeding large frigate birds with equally large and sharp beaks. Ramping up the ante his daredevil trick was to hold the fish in his mouth for them to snap up. Judging from the slice a fish copped without being taken from Shane’s hand, that was daring indeed…those beaks are unforgiving. Captains Vito and Shane showed us the Coral Gardens with the abundance of fan corals, Christmas trees that zip back into their hole when touched, fire coral that will make you sting for a good 45 minutes if touched, brain corals, numerous fish, branches and mounds of soft and hard corals in all directions, all within a few metres of the surface making for great visibility. On board and under sail again, a seafood curry lunch felt almost fitting – it seems in this place all your meals go from pasture to plate right before your eyes!
Our next stop was at Shark and Ray Alley where the sound of boats attracts the blind nurse sharks and rays who come to get lunch. The boats fill conch shells with food and drop into the water for the sharks and rays to suck clean, fighting off the huge jack fish and all of them completely oblivious to us excitable snorkelers. Shane picked up a few nurse sharks who can be held so we could pat them just like you would a puppy. Their skin is like fine sand paper and looks like a mosaic of tiny tiles in brown with a pattern of white and red amongst the brown. Their cloudy white eyes are compensated by two mouth whiskers/fleshy antennas that pick up nearby food. They are also partial to having their belly scratched when you roll them belly-side up. Shane was also able to coax a large ray up into his arms by clapping underwater, it swam right up onto his outstretched arms and rested on his arms and chest like a great dane puppy forgetting it isn’t really built to be a lap dog. It was an awesome sight to see the interactions and be so close to large predatory animals without an ounce of fear.
Our third stop was Hol Chan Reef, so named as Hol Chan means narrow channel in Mayan. A sliver a few metres wide splits a coral wall of about 10-15 feet high. Spotted eagle rays with long tails glide effortlessly by, green turtles feed on the turtle grass beds in the relative shelter of the reef wall. We spotted a rare rainbow parrotfish of a size similar to a full grown cocker spaniel, menacing green moray eels slipped in and out of their caves and schools of colourful fish milled around the swaying soft corals.
The sail home was bittersweet with prawn ceviche whipped up by Shane and gallons of rum punch dished out by Ernie to counter the fact the day was coming to an end. Shane entertained with jokes and we were accompanied by seagulls catching a ride on the back and a fleet overhead gliding around the mast.
Back on solid ground we headed up to the Split, so called due to a split opening up in the island during a hurricane and now populated by hotels, bars and a nice swimming spot from which to watch the sun set into the sea. Stunning.
After meeting at the bar I was walked home by another Shane, gorgeous and smiling and full of old jokes and a sense of humour. A quick kiss on the steps of his home and I went on to my hotel to meet the group for dinner at Bambooze, a bamboo clad bar on the beach with swing seats at the bar, lots of coladas on the menu and good food.
Caye Caulker is a stunning place and in the running for honeymoon destinations should I ever have the need…a place as beautiful as Port Douglas, with a reef, white sand and sunshine to match and worth coming all this way to see? You better Belize it!
