Anniversary Weekend in Tobacco Caye

Friday, June 3rd, 2005
We spent the morning of the 3rd gathering all the necessary papers to apply for our volunteer visa and preparing for the meeting we had with the Ministry of Health. We had a great meeting w/ the Ministry of Health and gathered a lot of information for the project we are working on but unfortunately we missed the office for visas. They closed at 3pm! We asked what time they opened and they said officially 8:30am but no one would be in until 9:30am - talk about taking it Belizy. Slow lifestyle here!
We waited at the bus station in Belmopan after our meeting for 3 hours because there was a huge accident on one of the three roads in Belize. Lets just describe this bus station. There is only a few words - SKETCH, HOT.

That was Carla's lead in for this post. I'm picking it up from here. The accident was pretty bad, and was all over the national news. A guy on a motorcycle was speeding along when a pickup truck carrying people in the back had a tire blowout while going the other direction. The man on the bike literally exploded, body parts everywhere. A mother and her daughter in the truck died as well and her son is in critical condition. Normally I wouldn't mention the gorey details of something like this, but I found the news coverage of the accident to be incredible. Full color pictures and far more graphic accounts than mine were all over the papers. It seems that journalism is a no holds barred occupation here. A few days later I noticed that this quality didn't change much with the news. The three cover stories were about murders in Belize City (a Doctor who's BMW was shot up by 5 men with automatic weapons while he was driving home from work, a man who was "hacked in the face" several times with a machete while he was sleeping, and someone who was shot). All had rather graphic pictures as well. I think the news makes this country seem a bit more scary than it really is.

Anyway, when we finally got on the bus, the driver decided to make up time on the road South from Belmopan to Dangriga. This road is described in the guidebooks as a picturesque journey through rolling mountains and jungle. It was more like a roller coast ride through the backwoods in the dark. We finally arrived at Dangriga. Dangriga was not the most exciting city we've been too, in fact it looked more like an industrial center than a city. It's claim to fame (or rather infame if that is a word) is that has a horrible problem with HIV/AIDS. Something like 1 in 10 people are infected here. On the positive side, it is the pilot city for a UNICEF sponsered initiative to be the first "Aids Friendly City" The goal of the project is to eliminate HIV/AIDS discrimination, which is almost as bad as the disease here through a campaign of education and outreach. I'll mention more about this in our work update that I'm writing.

We decided to stay at the Chalinore Hotel. It was a nice enough place, but excessively expensive ($40 American). In the lobby, we saw a poster for Pizza, and decided to splurge, but they had just closed. We went to dinner next door and nothing much more exciting happened that night.

Saturday, June 4th, 2005,
We woke up and walked over to a small cafe right on the water where we were supposed to get a water taxi to Tobacco Caye. As we walked up, a large Kriol man with a mesh T-shirt, calling himself Cappy, asked if we wanted a ride to the Caye (remember, it's pronounced "Key"). We said sure and he said we could wait in the cafe until we had a few more people. We went inside and ordered "Fryjacks" These are in fact DOUGHBOYS!!! Wonderfully tasty, if a bit lighter and fluffier than usual this was a great breakfast. When Cappy was ready, we hopped in his little "Boston Whaler"type boat, and headed out. We shared the ride with a pair of Archeologists living in Cayo (the district we currently live in). They were taking a weekend off from their dig and decided to hit the Cayes. Andrew and Joe (a girl) were their names. Andrew was from L.A. and we poked fun at him for a while, as good Northern Californians should. Joe was from Vermont, but studying at Penn. The highlight of the trip for Carla though, was that she got to see a Bottle Nosed Dolphin (just like flipper) on the ride out. We both saw a splash in the water near the boat, and Carla immediately thought it was a dolphin. I didn't think so, but it turns out that her Dolphin Sense is quite strong, and she was right. She then proceeded to chat with this friendly marine mammal through a series of clicks and whistles until it was time to wave goodbye.

When we got to the island, we asked Cappy to come back for us at 2pm on Sunday. He said sure, and was off. We were planning to stay in "Overwater Bungaloes" on this island, just as we had in Bora Bora on our Honeymoon. When we got here though, we realized, that the author of the travel guide who said there were "Overwater Bungaloes" was really stretching his artistic license. There were a few wooden shacks, that were near the water. Perhaps, during a really high tide, or hurricane, these might have been "Over the Water" but they certainly weren't while we were there. So we decided to stay at the place that Cappy had suggested. A place called Gaviota's, run by a man named Norman. He was a very talkative guy, and told us all about how his place was one of the "Top 5 Most Eco-Friendly Resorts in the World" This was another case of artistic license, but not nearly as bad. The wooden rooms on stilts with a shared bathroom, certainly didn't qualify as a "resort" in my mind, but it was Eco Friendly (run entirely by solar power). Of couse, there wasn't much that had to run on the sun, as the only electrical items we saw were two hanging lights in the dining hall and the laptop computer Norman had just bought (which he asked me to help fix on Saturday night, and which almost got me in big trouble). After the previous weekend's experience however, we were more than happy to not have a bathroom directly attached to our living quarters, so this was fine.

The "resort" was an all inclusive deal, with three meals a day. The reason for this was less marketing package, and more reality. There were no other restaurants on the 5 acres of island we were staying on. Only about 3 other similar hotels (which is rather amazing considering by itself) There were two bars, but we didn't bother to try out either. The only source of freshwater on the island were raincatchers, and we showered with salt water from the ocean. It was a nice getaway though, and we spent most of our time lounging on hammocks, playing scrabble (I beat Carla the first game, but then she beat me the last two) and reading. Our three meals consisted of fish (sans-head but full of bones) then chicken (also full of bones) and finally breakfast burritos (full egg, but no bones). There was a nice place to go swimming/snorkling, but we decided to be frugal, and just swim about rather than rent a snorkel (we forgot ours at home). We had a nice couple of swims though, and even saw a family of flounder fish (just like we used to catch in RI on Uncle By's boat). While swimming we met a girl, who was also named Carla) and who worked at our hotel. She was one of 5 people working there, and it seemed odd that so many people worked at our hotel, when in fact, we really only saw one person doing any work at all.

While walking around, I found a coconut that had fallen from one of the trees and asked one of the guys who worked at our hotel, to show me how to open it up. It turns out that the round little brown coconuts that we see attached to palm trees in tropical pictures is a fake. When the coconut is in the tree, it is really a big (like a gallon milk jug) green acorn looking thing. You have to split this open to get the little brown nut inside. Then you have to split the brown nut open, to get to the milk and tasty flesh. I learned all about how to tell good coconuts from the bad ones and also the best way to open them up.

On Saturday night, we opened a bottle of wine that our roommates, Colin and Jackie, had bought us as a present and sat out under the stars. The sky was beautiful, since there was absolutely no light pollution from the island. We were relaxing quite nicely when a giant coconut fell from a nearby tree and landed only a few feet away. We had been warned not to sit under these trees and we were lucky one of us wasn't brained by it. We moved our chairs a bit closer to the surf and relaxed there until a couple of island dogs came to visit us. One of the dogs, who we had befriended during the day was quite persistent about coming into our cabin to go to bed with us. I had to walk him to the other side of the hotel and feed him a bit of toothpaste so I could sneak back to our room and close the door before he got his nose in.


Sunday, June 5th, 2005 - OUR ONE YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
We woke up in the morning, after a good night's sleep and continued to laze around and enjoy the island until Cappy arrived to pick us up. Cappy arrived early, and Andrew was late getting back from a Scuba trip he had taken, so we didn't end up leaving until about 2:30. By the time we left, Cappy had finished off what we guessed was about a half bottle of One Barrel Rum, a Belize specialty. He was obviously hammered as he powered us back to Dangriga. The seas were a bit choppy, and we lost one of the outboard engines on the way (I thought we were going to lose Cappy too, the way he was bobbing around in the back). When we got to the channel which led to the Cafe, where we were picked up, we realized it was now high tide, and a significant sandbar stood in our way. To compound matters, this was where all of Dangriga went on hot days to cool off, so there were probably about 200 people hanging around the entrance and swimming in the water nearby. This didn't stop Cappy though. He barrelled ahead at full speed, cutting back and forth between families floating in the water. Nobody seemed the least bit concerned however, so I presumed this was a regular occurance. Only when we got close to the sandbar did he slow down enough for his copilot to jump out, and pull us through the crowd. It was quite the site as 5 kids riding horses on the beach scampered by, and little kids climbed up on the boat to jump off the side.

After getting dropped off, we walked to the station, where we were miraculously right on time for a 3:30 pm Bus. The trip back to Belmopan was much more like the guidebook suggested as we slowly weaved through mountains and jungle villages at a more Leisurely pace.

When we got to Belmopan, we learned that the next local bus was leaving at 5:00 (about 10 minutes later). We bought tickets, but then ended up running into our buddy Paul / Austin who was coming back from work. Paul works as a Zip-Line operator at a place called Jaguar Park. His job is essentially to tie willing tourists to a wire which is stretched between platforms 40 feet off the ground in the jungle canopy and push them from platform to platform. He doesn't have to push much though, as the Zip-Lines move about as fast as they sound. Anyway, we decided to wait until the 6:30 Express Bus and went to grab beers at the local Chinese Restaurant. We had a nice long talk about Paul's life and then napped comfortably in the AC bus ride home.

It was a very nice, relaxing Anniversary all-in-all.