Belize has plenty of outstanding attributes. The beaches, the colourful, vibrant restaurants, boats and buildings and perhaps this one is my favourite; the almost complete lack of interest of the touts in actually pushing their wares. It has some negative ones too, Belize City being its largest.
We arrived in Belize by boat from Xcalak, Mexico; there is no scheduled service, so as we outlined, go out there and find a Capitan and boat, it shouldn’t cost more than 2000 Pesos. They might need some dollars for buying themselves lunch on the way home, so perhaps half and half is fair. You arrive in San Pedro, the town on Caye Ambergis on the back side of the island, get off the boat and find yourself crouching low to avoid the very low, but welcome roof sheltering you from the sun. Then a short walk to the immigration office. This is neatly tucked away on a second floor, and doesn’t really have much in the way of signposting. You need a stamp, so go and find it. If you get stuck look for Fido’s Restaurant, it is opposite that on the first floor.
We were then directed to Ruby’s, a beach side hotel which cost 40 Belize Dollars for a night, that is ground floor room and shared bathroom and shower. I think we got the only one for that price; the rest are pricier, but have a view I presume and get some breeze. If you have got more of a budget, spend it! There is another hostel type place with a pool apparently, but we got into the Belizean swing of things quickly and couldn’t be bothered to find it and look.
Stepping off the boat into the town of San Pedro was terrific. From watching the clear azure sea whizz by under brilliant sunshine, we were greeted to an island where the houses are colourful but a little ramshackle, the beach is pleasant but not really ideal for swimming or snorkeling just there, and the people extraordinarily friendly, fellow tourists and locals alike. We were on the hungry side so headed to Fido’s for some lunch that we had spied walking down to the immigration police who had waved us through with flourish. Belizean food is very much similar to Jamaican and West Indian; BBQ Jerk chicken, rice with beans and coleslaw was available for lunch and dinner for $10 Belizean which made life quite tasty and cheap. The restaurants served variants with fish or other stuff, and of course as has been prevalent throughout, the presence of Lobster. Breakfast was Johnny Cakes with chicken or beef filling or some fruit…
We spent a lot of time doing very little, the searing heat and high humidity was not encouraging. We did manage to book ourselves onto a boat trip though which was to take us out to the Blue Hole for some diving. We took off at five thirty am for a fairly long boat ride to an atoll around 40 miles off the coast. Here we got the chance to make our first fairly deep dive into the Blue hole. The blue hole is fairly typical geological feature of the coast line in this eastern area of the Caribbean, some found inland, others, like this one, out to sea. They are essentially flooded cave systems with collapsed roofs. This one was around 800 meters deep and when you start sinking into it, the gloom really sets in. There are stark warnings to all divers, the onset of narcosis is very typical with deeper dives, however, to see what rock formations there are in the blue hole, you have to sink to 40 meters where we had around 8 minutes of diving time. One of our group was happily sinking down in a world of her own, the dive masters of the group grabbing her tank and pulling her upwards until we reached 10 meters once more! The swim through of the huge stalactites was fantastic, we had dropped to 40 meters and were swimming back up towards the lighter blue which when we got to a resting depth of 10 meters we were treated to a fantastic display. My mask had fogged up quite badly and I was running low on air so I only saw some of the show sadly. There were at least 10 four-five metre black tip reef sharks swimming around and coming to our group for a little inspection, then suddenly veering off closer to the surface where they were feeding on a school of fish. It lasted minutes and they then left as quickly as they had arrived, a terrific performance really showing off what amazing creatures they are. We ended up staying 10 days on the San Pedro, waking up each morning to a magnificent view of sparkling emerald and azure seas is pretty hard to beat. Could have done with a hammock, though that might have delayed things further...
The day continued with a lunch on a desert island and two further dives. The main element of diving in the area that surprised me was the amazing reef life; the multitude of corals was incredible with the range of colours, sizes and shapes making for incredible dives. We didn’t come across any further macro life that day though, which was a shame. On the boat back they fed us with the usual fruit and some very potent rum punch. We go chatting to some vets who had been doing the world a favour by reducing dog populace in Mexico making the long return ride very enjoyable and interesting. We didn’t bother introducing ourselves until they got off at Caye Caulker which is the neighboring Caye to Ambergis. Meeting them the next day on our island was a pleasant surprise especially as they informed us about our next trip to be, a day of snorkeling. We took the opportunity to leave the island and headed south the next day to meet them and got on the sailing boats with our groups. The trip turned into one of the best water days we had experienced on the entire trip. Small nurse sharks, beautiful and very rare manatees as well as eagle rays and loads of fish enthralled us for hours on three separate dives. The rum punch on the way back and total lack of wind turned our boat into a bit of a party boat which then continued at a very fun local bar at the north end of Caye Caulker. As you would expect there were a good number of deck chairs in the water, plenty of shade and we stayed till closing time. Strangely, the name evades me, rum and cokes were very very cheap.
With an appropriate hangover, in serious heat and humidity we bailed from the island scene, heading south to Belize City with a plan to get to Placencia, another island legendary for laid back living and great beaches. We arrived in BC and frankly, it was pretty rough. We had a good walk around it, were eyed up by some very shady looking characters who then pretended to be going our way for over an hour. We got back to an area we knew near our hotel and then engaged in some ducking and diving, eventually losing them, and in the meantime booking a flight to Placencia with Tropic Air for the next day. From the travel agent we learnt that BC has some serious drugs issues, with crack being responsible for much of the crime, which was increasing. We had been told by a fairly annoyed American in Caye Ambergis that Skype doesn’t work for voice calls in Belize, which is a real pain in the arse and very anti competitive. Complaints please to Hon Chairman of the Tory Party in the UK, Lord Ashcroft who owns seventy percent of the firm apparently! Would he allow this in the UK? Probably not, so why allow it in Belize? Greedy man. Calls from landlines to the UK were twenty five USD for five minutes!!! The Belizeans are not too happy about it we heard a lot of complaints!
The plane trip was brilliant. The 14 seater first picked us up at the airfield in BC then like a collective bus flew to the international airport and from there to small airstrips along the coast, which resembled dusty tracks in a field more than airports much provoking a reaction of ‘he is not seriously going to land there is he?’ I spotted a manatee in the water and we got some amazing views from the plane as it swerved around thunderstorms and onto tiny landing strips. It was sad to get off the plane, but certainly worth the additional 20 USD for the flight, N.B. If you choose this route make sure you don’t fly from BC international as it will cost more in fees.
Placencia gave us a wet start, we got off the plane were bundled into a taxi by the airport staff and the heavens opened. I think flushed might have been more appropriate. We wondered around and baulked at the prices per room, 20 USD minimum for all standards it seemed. We stayed at the Sea Spray hotel/hostel which was clean, tidy and pleasant, but had the rudest reception staff during the day. An absolute inability to say hello, make friendly and correct statements about internet access, book lending and more really got our backs up. Next door was the D Tatch restaurant staffed by a very friendly Mayan Belizean in the morning and a grizzled old American during the afternoon. It seemed to be like that on the entire island, fifty fifty friendly/downright rude. One of the best spots on the island was a small smoothie/shake bar near the shell garage which made terrific fresh mango shakes and other smoothies. They have chess boards, various other board games and a terrific view of a channel between the end of the island and the next Caye. From what we could see there was a lot of fish life in there as the fishermen would haul our fresh tuna, barracuda and other large fish which could then be eaten that night in any of the various shacks up and down the strip.
Four days into the Placencia and it was time to leave Belize, again, planning our trip to leave by boat to Guatemala, we first took a water taxi with 400 BHP on the way back to Independence from where we took a bus that comes at anytime it seemed - after that to take us to Punta Gorda. From there the trip by larger water taxi took us to Guatemala which is the next leg of our trip.
Belize is more expensive, but if you are happy taking it easy and not going nuts it is still very affordable. Our initial plan had been to head south to Honduras, given recent troubles and also mood changes the in land, rerouting was to be a great option. MT
No comments:
Post a Comment