Caye Caulker is the kind of place where pretty much as soon as you rock up you feel chilled as fuck. Even as we hauled our backpacks through the village in the heat we knew we were going to like it here. We were staying at little bit out of the centre, we booked a studio apartment, partially because Tarrant’s birthday was coming up and we thought it’d be nice to have our own space, but mostly because we’re a little bit fancy these days. Hot showers and air conditioning? Oh go on then. Our own kitchen would help us save a bit of dolla on food and we could be as antisocial as we damn well pleased in our nice, cold room.
Tarrant’s birthday was on the Tuesday so we figured we’d just find somewhere suitable to sprawl and apply motor impairment beverages to our faceholes. The Lazy Lizard at The Split is where people bang on about but grandma needs her shade and there was no sprawlable furniture in the shade. I can’t deal with full sunshine anymore and Tarrant burns at the mere thought of UV rays, plus swimming at The Split carries a risk of a casual braining by a boat.
We headed to Sip N Dip instead and bagged a couple of chairs you could chill in without taking liquid form. Much better. They were flogging buckets of six beers for BZ$25, plus you can take your drink into the water. All round win. We set up here for the day to work on our liver damage, alternating between the chairs at the bar and bobbing around in the shallow water in front of the bar. This is the second year in a row we’ve spent Tarrant’s birthday on a Tropical island. How many times in a row do you have to do it before it becomes tradition and therefore obligatory?
As Tarrant doesn’t dive we figured we’d book ourselves onto a snorkelling trip on the Wednesday so we could put some fish in our eyeholes. Salt Life Eco Tours do a “7 Stop Bucket List” tour so we went with them. The rain was battering down when we woke up which is fine, we were paying good dolla to get piss wet through today anyway, but the roads of Caye Caulker are unsealed and sort of turn into this milky-grey slush when it rains. People don’t want to drive their golf carts through the puddles either so you’re dodging expanses of dirty water, plus the vehicles and bicycles weaving all over the place, all whilst trying not to slip over in the mud in front of strangers. It adds time onto your journey. We got there and they pointed out clear sky over yonder and said because the wind was strong it’d blow the storm over and we could go out then. “Otherwise,” he told us, “if there’s no wind we just sit here and drink rum!” I mean, solid plan B there, guys.
Eventually though the storm cleared, they loaded us all into boats and off we fucked to look for a manatee. I tried to manage my expectations. We spent ages looking for a dugong in Egypt to no avail and surely trying to locate a shy species in this vast ocean was, well, tiny sharp objects in large piles of dried grass sprang to mind. Turns out there are three places they can look for the manatees and they make it a priority, if they don’t find one first go they just keep looking. We stopped and the crew told us what we were looking for. Manatees can hold their breath for up to twenty minutes then they need to come up for air and their head looks like “an old coconut on the surface”. Cheeky! I’ll tell them you said that. The head is followed by a huge, grey body then a flick of the tail.
They spotted one immediately. Fucking hell, how cool? We got into our gear, slid into the water and followed one of the guys in search of the beast. I didn’t even realise what we were looking at at first, I thought it was a huge rock until I looked closer. Holy fuck, she’s massive! So utterly huge and beautiful, she was just chilling on the bottom whilst we all gawped at her. She eventually moved towards the surface, breathed some air then descended a little bit, turned around, then just hovered there, staring right back at us. We just floated and marvelled at her. After about thirty seconds she flicked her whole body around and went back to the seabed, away from the weird bipeds with the breathing tubes. Well fuck it, we can go home now, that alone was worth the money.
We stopped by the wreck of a small cargo barge and snorkelled that for a bit before heading to the Hol Chan Marine Park, which is Mayan for “narrow channel”. We pulled up to their floating office, I guess the guys paid us in, and we were given paper wristbands. It wasn’t far away from there where we moored to be taken for a guided snorkel. Guys, I have never seen so many fish! There were so many, straight away, everything from fish we see all the time to absolute units of “what the fuck is that and can it remove a limb?!” The guys led us around the reef, pointing out fish as we went. They were both really good freedivers too, descending to the bottom to point things out to us.
Big shoals of fish just hung out, unbothered by the flailing apes on the surface. Some parts were really shallow, the elk horn coral reaching almost to the surface, stopping centimetres away. Obviously I’ve completely forgotten the names of most the fish we saw but there was the biggest fucking barracuda I’ve ever seen in my life just chilling under the boat. It was as big as my leg. Barracuda have big, pointy teeth and are partial to shiny things, and I know they like shiny things on account of the fact people take one look at all the shiny things hanging off my face and advise me of this fact. Repeatedly. They’re probably the only fish that scare me a little bit.
Back on the boat we were taken to an area where the seabed was littered with conch shells. The fishermen here pay to fish a certain area, that’s their area, no one else is allowed to encroach. This particular area belonged to a guy who had been fishing here since before the area was protected and he was the only one who was allowed to continue. It wasn’t conch season right now so the turtles that hung out in search of scraps weren’t there but we did see a fuck off, massive Caribbean roughtail stingray which was pretty cool. We had some lunch here too before we headed to abother highlight; Shark Ray Alley.
Okay so, this is one of the most popular snorkel sites in Belize. Apparently it came about when fishermen used to clean their catch and nurse sharks and stingrays gathered to take full advantage. These days some companies still feed them which isn’t something I like, I’d rather see them because they want to be there, not because they’re being fed but they’ll swarm to any boat that comes in then you have a short window before they realise you’ve got no food and off they fuck. It was pretty insane and I was worried I’d hurt them when I got into the water but the guys assured us they’d get out of the way. They don’t want a fin to the head.
Even once they disperse it’s not hard to track them down, they’re still loitering, waiting to mob the next boat that comes in. It was pretty incredible. At one point a huge, and I mean huge eagle ray glided past. Fucking magical. We spent ages here in the end, face down in the water, just enjoying the wildlife though not going to lie, when these monster stingrays swim right underneath you in these relatively shallow waters you do start thinking about poor Steve Irwin.
We headed to one last site to look for turtles. We weren’t lucky enough to see any whilst we were in the water but we did stalk one from the boat for a while. We saw another big eagle ray though. Everyone had spread out so it was just me and Tarrant when it glided past us, circled us three times, then swam off. They’re so unbelievably graceful! Honestly, they’re my current favourite thing to put in my eyeholes.
Our last couple of stops were one on the north side of Caye Caulker to stare at crocodiles in a lagoon. One of the guys went down to the water and splashed, possibly to imitate prey, they got the fuck away when a croc rapidly approached along the surface. Well that’s fucking cool! Obviously we weren’t snorkelling with these guys because we all really liked having limbs. Then we were taken to the tarpon feeding dock where you can pay BZ$5 for a bag of sardines so giant, uncoordinated fish can headbutt one out of your hand whilst a pelican glares at you. So that was an experience. As I said before, I’m not a fan of feeding the wildlife but when in Rome…
What a day though. It was the kind of day where you think about something that happened and feel compelled to tell anyone in earshot that it was “SUCH a good day!” We were fed obnoxious quantities of rum punch too and I managed to burn my freshly shaved head so my day ended with all of my brain cells collapsing in on themselves and I wondered if I could have paracetamol injected directly into my skull to stop the pounding headache. Still though. SUCH a good day!
Caye Caulker is brilliant though. I went diving at a local reef today (I’ll write about that in another post) and, weather permitting, I’m going to the Great Blue Hole tomorrow then we’re going to San Pedro for a few nights. I think we’ll probably come back here, it depends if we prefer San Pedro or not, but Caye Caulker has that proper island vibe. “Go slow” is the motto. I was walking between dive shops as I needed to pay for my diving tomorrow so I’m on a mission, and as I walked past the barbecues they all called out, “Woah! Slow down! Not so fast!” As I was walking back a guy in a golf cart called out, “Hey! Go slow!” I’m not sure my hectic brain can entirely get on board with this ethos but hey, I’m willing to try.
Jump to “Useful shit to know…”
Caye Caulker, Belize District, Belize
Stayed at: Willow 2, Island Cabañas, Caye Caulker
Useful shit to know…
How To Get From Placencia To Caye Caulker By Public Transport
- Floralie run a big, air conditioned coach with comfortable, reclining seats directly from Placencia to Belize City at 6am and 2.45pm for BZ$27.
- (If your research leads you to Ritchies, they lost their permit in February 2023)
- It leaves from the bus stop near M&M Hardware, directly up from the Hokey Pokey boat. Aim for 16.516999, -88.368299.
- If you don’t want to get up that early or arrive in Belize City that late (you’ll miss the last boat to Caye Caulker if you take the 2.45pm bus) you can take the Hokey Pokey boat to Mango Creek (BZ$11.25) then walk the 20 minutes or take a taxi to the Independence bus terminal and take a James Bus Line bus (which will be an old American school bus) for BZ$20.
- It took five hours and we were dropped at the Novelo Bus Terminal in Belize City.
- You can walk to the ferry terminals, it’s fifteen minutes.
- Caribbean Sprinter is closer and is a faster boat but costs US$30 one way to Caye Caulker. San Pedro Belize Express is only a little bit further but will only cost US$21 one way.
- When we left the bus terminal an agent for the latter stopped us and said he’d sell us tickets for US$17 each one way. We accepted and he sold us a voucher which we exchanged for proper tickets at the boat office with no issues.
- After you come out of the office, turn left and walk right down to the other end. You have to check your big bags in, a uniformed staff member will give you a reclaim ticket.
- The boarding gates are outside the ticket office.
- The crossing wasn’t awful and took about 50 minutes.
- Salt Life Eco Tours charged US$90 for their snorkelling trip.
- They don’t feed the sharks and rays at Shark Ray Alley.
Travel & Shit 