Travel
Rum punch
by Hamish McKenzie
Fancy snorkelling from the Caribbean island of Caye Caulker, with its cute Creole kids, Rasta Man, tropical marine jungle and inescapable intimacy?
The big block letters on the Akihito Hotel’s pallid exterior promised “Adult Entertainment”. I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when our hotelier produced a pistol to shoo away a pesky drunk from the hotel bar in Orange Walk, Belize. “Which leg you want me to shoot?” the mild-mannered manager enquired as the drunk scuttled away. Behind us sat the inebriated Oscar, who took great pleasure in introducing his female companion as his “side lady”. She was also the Deputy Prime Minister’s secretary.
I’m drinking with two new friends I met on the bus from the Mexican border – a lumbering 50-year-old antiques dealer from Kent with a fondness for stout, and a blonde psychology graduate from Missouri. We make an odd trio. We chat with the friendly Taiwanese hoteliers, who delight in unloading their entire cache of knowledge about Belize on us. Did you know, for example, that vampire bats have such sharp teeth that you wouldn’t even notice if you were bitten by one?
The hoteliers came to Belize because life here is not so stressful, the wife tells us, and there’s less discrimination. The melting-pot nature of this former British colony seems to support her claim. Once the stomping grounds for a million Mayan Indians, this jungle-rich nation is now the domain of the displaced. -Creoles, Mestizos, Chinese immigrants, and even a pocket of reclusive Mennonites – who have a deal with the government that exempts them from taxes and military service – live together in relative harmony. All up, there are just 270,000 Belizeans living on this thin strip of -Central American soil.
With 16,000 people and a “Central Park” of approximately 20 square metres, Orange Walk – named after its abundance of the citrus fruit – has the distinction of being Belize’s second-biggest city. You don’t come to Belize for Orange Walk, though – you come for its cayes (pronounced “keys”), which offer some of the best diving and snorkelling in the world. “If you haven’t been to the cayes,” says our hostess, “you haven’t been to Belize.”
Belize’s cayes are a series of small islands in the Caribbean, all protected by the Belize Barrier Reef -– the world’s second-largest (after you-know-where). The biggest and most popular is Ambergris Caye, which offers high-end tourist accommodation at high-end tourist prices. That’s why the young American and I drag the lumbering Englishman with us to Caye Caulker, described in my guidebook as the “backpacker’s option”.
Unfortunately, transit to Caye Caulker necessitates a visit to festering Belize City – a hurricane-ravaged wooden shack settlement of 70,000 people. On the advice of just about every-one who had been here, we leave as soon as possible. I do take great delight, though, in being served a meal in a seedy restaurant by a boy wearing an “Operation Iraqi Freedom” T-shirt. Irony? Probably not – Belize is surprisingly pro-US, at least since the States started providing aid in the 1980s. It might also have something to do with the fact that the country is a major changeover point for cocaine heading from South America to the US.
It’s a 40-minute boat-ride over shallow turquoise waters to Caye Caulker. We weave our way in and out of mangrove islands, and past sticks protruding oddly from what seems like the middle of nowhere. Close to Caye Caulker we whiz past one uber-manicured caye that is home to a resort golf course. Expensive-looking yachts are moored in sheltered alcoves.
Caye Caulker, although only two kilometres further on, is thankfully far removed in style. It takes us 20 minutes to explore the tiny island’s three sandy streets: Front St, Back St and Old Back St. It takes longer to get served lunch. You see, Caye Caulker is infected with an irrepressible “go slow” attitude. You have to set aside at least an hour-and-a-half for mealtime in a café: 15 minutes waiting to be served, 30 minutes waiting for the food, 15 minutes to eat it, and another 30 waiting for the bill. It’s worth it, though, just to dine on the fresh fish, crayfish and garlic shrimps.
It doesn’t take long for us to be introduced to the island’s dominant figure: the Rasta Man. The Rasta Man is omnipresent, a constant of Caye Caulker, lurking in corners, leaning on bars, watching you from the sidewalk. He wears his voluminous dreads bunched neatly beneath a tea-cosy despite the 30-degree heat, his glazed eyes forever evincing a too-cool-for-you attitude. He offers passers-by “Peace man”, as if there were actually anything to worry about on this heavily sedated island.
The Rasta Man takes a particular interest in our female companion. “Just look at da sun shine on her beautiful face,” he coos from behind his souvenirs stall as we stroll down the main drag. Later that night, in a Bob Marley-bedecked bar, the Rasta Man invites the American for a smoke. As it turns out, he does all the smoking, but generously suggests they could have “a ting” together. Later, rejected and dejected, he leaves the bar in his preferred mode of transport: a pimped-up golf cart replete with extra tread and a kick-ass sound-system.
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