The End of the Road

It's the end of the road.  For now at least.  My time on Caye Caulker was amazing, I went kiteboarding, fishing, to private islands and passed some parts of days playing dominos.  I fell in love with the island and am looking forward to going back someday soon.  Since it was too difficult to make it to Mexico to fly out (OK, not that difficult, but something I wasn't looking forward to), I decided to fly out of Belize City.  I am back in the states and on the East Coast for the next week.  It's going to be difficult to process what's next.

Caye Caulker, Belize: Out on the Sea!

The Raggamuffin one-day snorkeling trip to the Holchan Marine Reserve site of Shark Ray Alley is one of the best day trips I have ever done and one of the best days I have had for a long time; and I've had some pretty great days in the last few months.  We took out a small sailboat and sailed our way to a variety of snorkel sites.  The ambiance on the boat was amazing.  There was food, drinks, reggae music, sun and lots of relaxing as we made our way through the Caribbean sea to our destinations.At our first site, Jermain, the captain, said we would be looking for Manatees.  I didn't even know they were in season and I immediately thought to myself, yeah right.  But we saw two Manatees playing around in the water as soon as we jumped in. They kind of remind me of giant, graceful, underwater blobs.  

The second site was in the Holchan Reserve, Shark Ray Alley.  We saw tons of Nurse Sharks, sting rays, spotted eagle rays and tons of other fish.  This is a picture of my Australian friend, Kirsty, holding a Nurse Shark.  That's my hand on the right touching it and yes, those are his fangs hanging out of his mouth.  The shark had a rough plastic-like texture that felt like a cross between a plastic cup and a miniature tile floor.  The third site was also in Holchan Reserve and there we saw more sharks, sting rays, turtles and a giant green morey eel pictured above.

On the trip back, we ate ceviche (which was delicious, as I helped prepare it - yes, they actually gave me a knife on a rocking boat) and drank some of the 5 gallons of Rum punch that was made.  We sailed through 'the split' (the split is the channel separating the two islands of Caye Caulker, formerly one island until a hurricane in the 1960s split the island in two), listened to reggae and danced.  We made friends the the captain and this turned into the first of a string of days on the water.  

The next day Jermain took us fishing on his boat.  At first I was afraid that it would be boring, fishing has never really been my sport of choice, but upon dropping our lines in, we got bites immediately.  We caught almost 20 fish through traditional fishing methods and a few by spear fishing.  We caught grouper, hog fish, red snappers, grunts, all delicious after Jermain and Patrick barbecued them up, whole, on the beach.  By whole, I mean the entire fish is cooked and served, eyes and all.  These guys know how to cook expertly on a grill of homemade coals lit by coconuts.  The guys used a nearby bar's oven to cook up rice to compliment the fish and the garlic bread from the grill.  The garlic bread was our idea, and Jermain and Patrick wondered, more than once, why we wanted it and initially cooked only half of our supply.  After Megan (a California/New York friend) requested the second loaf of bread also be cooked, she affectionately was called 'bread girl' the rest of the night.  

The next day we took the same small boat and a larger group of people to a private island off the coast of Caye Caulker.  We were going for a 'crab' cookout, but when we arrived on the island there were only a few 'crabs', not nearly enough to feed a dozen people.  I went with three of the guys in search of more and was amazed when they went directly to a spot in the middle of the sea, anchored and expertly hooked and speared about 20 more 'crabs' for dinner.  This whole process took under 10 minutes.  It was mesmerizing.  I wanted to help, but it all happened so fast.  By the time I asked for a spear (like I was going to be able to actually hit something while free diving and holding my breath underwater), dinner was caught and we were heading back.  The guys, lead by Jermain, again, cooked up a restaurant worthy meal of grilled crustaceans, rice, veggies and more bread for the Westerners.  What I find fascinating about cooking in Belize is that they have, out of necessity, perfected a method of cooking where you can leave food cooking, warming, etc for hours while you wait for other food to be prepared and people to arrive and it never gets overcooked or dried out.  Given the slow pace of life here, this is important!  The reason why 'crab' is in quotes will be revealed after June 15th.

Diving Turneff Elbow, Caye Caulker, Belize

We saw a Hammerhead shark!  It was amazing.  We went on a one-day, three tank dive on Turneff atoll, south side, known as the elbow. The corals were great and we saw a giant turtle, tons of snappers and jack fish.  I may be somewhat spoiled by having dove in Asia; while the corals here are fantastic, the fish life is, generally, not nearly as abundant. At the beginning of the day, we had a few minor equipment mishaps such as leaky BCDs, half full tanks of air and mouthpieces which were missing the grips you hold on to so you can breath.  Since nothing is a problem in Belize (the island mantra along with one love, mon and I gotta smoke me a spliff), we  just cleaned it up and headed out.  The boat ride to the dive site was a little over an hour and a half mostly inside the reef, therefore not too rough of waters.  Our first dive was great.  At the end of the dive, we saw a 10' Hammerhead Shark swimming about 20 feet below us.  It was amazing!  The second dive wasn't as good.  We had a new, inexperienced dive master leading us.  When one of our group members had problems equalizing the pressure on her ears during the decent the dive master went to hep her and never returned.  Three of us were swimming around for about 10 minutes before we surfaced to find our dive master had in fact forgotten where he left us.  He looked around, but couldn't get back to where we were.  Well, he says he went back to where we were, but since we didn't move, I deduced his inability to find us.  This particular dive didn't get much better and ended with us coming up from our dive early because our dive master was hungry.  He was such a small, skinny guy, I found it shocking he ate at all, better yet ended a dive because of hunger.  One the third dive, we were back on track and without our hungry friend who can't seem to find his way around the sea.