Essays » Escape to Caye Caulker
Escape to Caye Caulker
The best argument against Intelligent Design as a theory to explain the diversity of life on Earth would have to be bed bugs. It is bad enough sharing the planet with them, but it had just become apparent that I was sharing my bed with them also. There were tiny dots of blood in little straight rows as if my thigh had been strafed by a miniature machine gun. Little bastards. There is something so deliberate about piercing your host every few millimeters along a straight line. I much prefer the random attack of flying insects. So much less personal. We all had them and comparing our welts became another one of those family bonding things we do on holiday. Like playing cards for hours on end, only this was blood sport.
We weren't particularly surprised by the attack. It was entirely consistent with our other experiences of Belize City. Once British Honduras, Belize sits at the foot of Mexico's Yacutan peninsula, and is home to the largest coral barrier reef outside Australia and exuberant tropical rainforest. But as is so often the case with places of great natural beauty, the large cities provide a rude contrast, and Belize City is no exception. Our travel agent had advised against spending any time here at all, but it couldn't be that bad. It was. Hostel accommodation was limited here; There were only two. The rest had closed down. One had a trail of blood up the steps and the odd angle of the floor in the showers had created a sinister (and I suspect permanent) puddle in the corner. Drunks watched us as we came back down the bloody steps – no more choice.
We felt secure enough once we settled into our room across the filthy street. There were no fewer than 5 locked gates and doors between us and the street, four of them between us and the deserted bar on the ground floor. But the sounds of the street infiltrated through the barred windows. The street noises provided a curious blend of intrigue and humour that would have been altogether absent without the five locked doors.
There was a chinese takeaway across the street that attracted people like moths in the hot night. There were threats, fights, breaking glass and bizzarely, an ice cream salesman periodically, with his little cart and cheesy jingle that still resonates in my head from time to time. So the bed bugs went to work while the drunk in the middle of the road entertained us with his attempts to dislodge a particularly stubborn bolus of phlegm from within. This took over an hour and he shouted obscenities at the world between deep draughts of air and guttaral tremors.
Earlier in the day, we'd left the hostel “Off for a walk” we said confidently to the owner at the bar. A nice enough man, but his expression said “You're going for a WHAT??!!” After a couple of hours of being harrassed by drunks, beggars and indolent taxi drivers, we were back. These weren't the helpless beggars with pleading eyes and listless children of Kathmandu or La Paz. They had drugs in their eyes, and a boldness that I found unnerving. The owner actually looked relieved when we returned. I made a mental note to apologise to our travel agent.
It was Sunday and nothing had been open except the fenced off compound for cruise ship passengers. They came ashore in long boats 5km or so across the lagoon, beyond which their liners waited. The compound was full of air condioned shops selling souvenirs, designer clothing and golf wear. We couldn't get in the gates without surrendering our passports to a gateman I wouldn't trust with my library card. Dozens of shiny tour buses whisked luxury passengers away for a few hours to see the brochure photos in vivo. Taxi drivers waited outside the compound with an understandable air of resentment. Each of them toted a folder with faded photographs of the sights they wanted to take you, and while I sympathised with their plight, I was not about to part with $80US for a half day trip to the zoo.
We'd seen enough of the city to know that there was no way we were going outside after dark. So we retired to our hostel and played hearts and five hundred with the boys for six straight hours to the sound of Belize City street life. Dinner was an awful smorgasbord of snack bars and soft drinks.
In the morning, after complimenting one another on our generosity to the nocturnal parasites, we set off on foot for the dock. The shops had raised their roller doors, and commerce was breathing some colour and life into the place. But any ticket out of Belize City is a bargain we agreed, and within the hour we were sitting on a ten metre, 600 horsepower open boat, grinning like idiots as we thumped our way to Caye Caulker, an hour offshore.
If leaving Belize City is an escape, arriving at Caye Caulker is a triumph. There were dozens of family-run hostels, barefoot cafes and even a French bakery – run by some smiling Vietnamese women. We spent a week diving in the warm, clear waters of Hol Chan Marine Park and other parts of the reef. The diving was sensational. Schools of silver jacks swept through the lagoon while striped grunts hung around in dense gangs under coral heads. Rays and nurse sharks rested on the white sand and a myriad of tiny fish like living licorice allsorts played the only game on the reef. It's called survival. Every afternoon the frigate birds would congregate where the fishermen came ashore. I never tired of watching their aerial antics as they fought for scraps thrown skyward. We found a raw concrete hostel down at the quiet end of the island, just opposite the lagoon. Each morning we watched the herons and pelicans feeding as the sun climbed slowly out of the cloud bank that sat heavily on the horizon, before pushing a tsunami of heat over the island that would last until sunset. With the sun up, we'd go for coffee and pancakes or huevos rancheros. We'd snorkel in the lagoon or spend time on the end of a jetty just reading and watching the pelicans cruise past, and the bait fish being stalked over the eel grass by young barracudas. A huge grey lizard – known locally as a wish willy spent each day inert on a heap of concrete rubble just outside our window. We didn't notice it until the second day. Caye Caulker was indeed full of life. Better yet, none of it was sharing our beds with us.