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Belize ! Area: 22,806 sq km (slightly smaller than Massachusetts) Population: 275,000 Independent from Britain since 1981.
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Belize !Area: 22,806 sq km(slightly smaller than Massachusetts)Population: 275,000Independent from Britain since 1981 We flew from Seattle to Miami to Belize on March 7, 2005 for a 3 ½ week adventure. The long flight ended in an nauseating corkscrew of a landing into the Belize City airport. We were glad that our giant backpacks made it through in one piece. The customs people kept asking us where we were going and where we were staying; as we launched into our long list (Tobacco Caye, Punta Gorda, Placencia..), their eyes glazed over and they waved us on through!
Belize City to Belize Zoo Based on the advice of other travelers, we decided to take a cab right to the zoo, instead of heading into the city and catching a bus. It was totally worth it—we had a great cab driver who told us lots of neat stuff about his country.
The Belize Zoo was a great place to start our trip. The only drawback was that it was mid-afternoon, and thus really hot, so a lot of the animals were sacked out in the shade away from view. The tapirs (above) were out, and even came over to lick Kirsten’s hand. It’s good thing that’s all this one did; we learned later that tapirs have the bad habit of peeing on visitors, not licking them!
This kind of sign appeared throughout the zoo. The story of the zoo is a great one—read about it at www.belizezoo.org.
To Tobacco Caye Snorkeling was the #1 reason for our trip, so we quickly headed to the coast after one night at the Tropical Education Center (across from the zoo). We hailed a bus from the side of the road and then the adventure really began. The Hummingbird Highway was beautiful, and our glimpses of the landscape and the people from the bus windows kept us excited even as our butts started to hurt from the seats and all the speed bumps. We came out of the mountains and onto the coastal plain and into the small city of Dangriga.
Once in Dangriga, we had to go to the river and find Capt. Fermin. He and his mate were waiting for us, so we were able to head out pretty quickly to Tobacco Caye. (Too quickly, apparently, because the manager of our lodge was supposed to be going with us. Oops!) We passed these pelicans on the sand bar at the mouth of the river. Beyond is the Caribbean! Yay!
We stayed at Tobacco Caye Lodge, featuring this lovely beach bar. The island is only about 5 acres, so you wind up seeing the same people a lot, most of them here! In the evenings, small eagle rays and southern stingrays cruised the shallow water next to the dock looking for handouts.
Tropical sunset…this was the night of an enormous lightning storm—you can see it building here to the west of us. It was quite an experience—it had been dead calm for 2 days, then all of the sudden the wind picked up around dinner time, and by 7 or 8 we were in the midst of it. There was one strike offshore on the reef, not very far from our cabin- yikes!
That’s the barrier reef behind us…at this point, we’ve got almost three more weeks of vacation still to go!
On our last day at Tobacco Caye, we hired Junior (19, son of the owner of another lodge on the island) to take us and another couple out to see the sights and do some snorkeling. These are mangrove roots in the Tobacco Range, just across from the Caye.
Approaching “Bird Island” – Man-O-War Caye. This is a protected bird sanctuary.
Bryan got up very early one morning to catch the sunrise, as well as this heron fishing just inside the reef.
To Punta Gorda Time now for one of our longest travel days—back to Dangriga by boat, then a couple hours wait for the bus (long story involving bankruptcy of bus co.), then 4+ hours on the bus. Luckily though, all of it except one small section is now paved. It used to take all day to get to PG on the bus. We saw lots of orange groves, banana plantations, and small Mayan villages.
Our main reason to visit PG was to meet Wil Maheia, Executive Director of the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE), a partner organization with EarthCorps where Kirsten works. It was hard to get in touch with Wil, but he drove around to all the restaurants in PG until he found us! The next day he put us on a boat with a bunch of 5th graders on a field trip so that we could see some of TIDE’s work in the Port Honduras Marine Reserve. Here Wil is laying down the law to a bunch of Belize’s city kids who are about to do an overnight trip into the jungle. (For some reason Bryan looks like he’s doing security detail in the back…)
Gulf of Honduras looking toward the Seven Hills, Toledo District.
The field trip took us to Abalone Caye and the ranger station. This caye is super-small, probably an acre or less. The kids got to run around and jump off the dock—it was really different from an American-style school field trip (and probably a lot more fun for the kids!). Here we are getting an overview of the marine reserve and the different protected areas within this pretty large area.
Trails in the Pacific Northwest look a lot different from this—for one thing, they aren’t lined with conch shells!
We saw a lot of these hand painted signs at various nature reserves. They spoke to us more than the slick ones at similar places in the States. TIDE especially takes the approach that conservation has to be a shared ideal for it to be successful. Learn more about this excellent organization at www.tide.org
This is the lookout at the top of the ranger station. One of the main things that TIDE does is to patrol the reserve, looking for people fishing illegally. The rangers stay on the caye for two weeks at a time, and many of them are former fishermen or the sons of fishermen.
After 2 days in PG, we were ready to move on. PG is very small, and quite nice, but not quite ready for prime time tourism. The attacking ants at our lodging were the final straw! This is the PG airport… and the plane we’re about to get on! We decided to fly to Placencia (20 minutes) instead of the bus (2+ hrs). It was so worth it, especially because we flew over the same area as on the map at the ranger station, and we got a really neat sense of the geography…and the shrimp farms.
Along the Sidewalk in Placencia. The Sidewalk is officially (at least according to the folks at Guinness) the narrowest street in the world. We spent a fair amount of time cruising up and down it.
Kirsten with two-dimensional fan-like palm. Hadn’t seen these before—we thought they were pretty cool.
The pastel beach cabanas of Tradewinds, right at the tip of the peninsula.
View from our front porch, the “cheap seats” just behind the cabanas. We totally lucked out—when we first came by, Janice, the owner, didn’t think she had anything, but we sat down, talked for a while, and it dawned on her that perhaps she did have a room after all. It was so great, we stayed for a week.
Environmentalism in Kriol. Really liked listening to the locals speaking: no ‘th’ sound as in ‘the’ (hence ‘dem instead of ‘them’, ‘tree instead of ‘three’), lots of idioms, and just a really nice flow to the language. Check out www.kriol.org.bz
Beach dogs get in on the act. The housekeeping lady had her own dog that followed her from cabana to cabana, or at least he was supposed to…we heard her calling ‘Donkeeeeey’ a lot.
Garifuna drummers playing at a resort outside Placencia. The music was amazing, but the scene was kind of weird for us. Super upscale resort filled with rich people, essentially kept in a compound (away from what, I wonder), and frankly our $30-a-night place had a better beach and view! Go figure.
Day Trips from Placencia + SILK and RANGUANA CAYES Woohoo! More snorkeling. Tradewinds was right near two really great tour companies, so all we had to do was roll out of bed, grab our gear, and stroll down the boardwalk, and we were all set.
Sprouting coconut—circle of life! Check out the lizard tracks too.
