Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

Arriving in Caye Caulker, Belize, I felt like I was back in Africa.

No, not because of all the black people, silly. (Although that didn’t hurt.)

It was so hot that I couldn’t even wear a bra. That’s right, vanity and perkiness gave in to holyshititssohotout.

I started to remember why the first time I went to Burkina Faso I spent a lot of the time in bed: when one isn’t used to it, the body often shuts down in the heat. So my brother and I spent the hottest hours of the day hiding from the sun, and spent too much money on Caye Caulker’s overpriced cool beverages and ice cream. I couldn’t help it, I swear! I was losing too much water (and, er, sugar) through sweat.

But besides the high prices (and the heat, which I got used to by day three), Caye Caulker is cool and easy.

Above all: amazing tourist infrastructure. Maybe this takes the adventure out of travel, but it was nice having transport so convenient and well-organized. Getting to Belize City, the Caye Caulker Water Taxi Association was operated like an airport. An organized airport. When we took the water taxi back to Belize City from Caye Caulker, it took me all over 23.5 seconds to secure us transportation back to Flores in Guatemala.

At the borders, the Belizean officials are polite, efficient and professional. (Which is more than I can say for their Guatemalan counterparts at that particular border crossing. Coming soon on yelkaye.net: how to avoid paying a bribe.)

Anyways, Caye Caulker is a low-key, unpolished kind of paradise. There’s no perfect beach right up in front of the hotels, but if you walk only four minutes to the north end of town, there’s a beautiful little channel where you can take a swim. And the ocean is a beautiful turquoise colour. Standing in the middle of the village (four blocks wide), you can see the ocean to both the east and west.

Lots of fresh seafood everywhere. I was hoping stuff like lobster and ceviche would be dirt cheap. It wasn’t, but it was delicious and plentiful.

Plus, the ethnic diversity of the place is fascinating. (Funny… living in a place like Toronto you see racial diversity every day and don’t think of it as anything out of the ordinary. But in another part of the world, such a mix of people is interesting. Weird, huh?) I thought that Caye Caulker and Belize as a whole has a mostly black Caribean population (Kriol and Garifuna), but I was wrong. There were lots of latinos on the island, so I heard Spanish almost as much as English. In addition to the Kriols and latinos, there were also a surprising number of Chinese people.

Also, I love the sound of Kriol. It vaguely resembles English, but just barely.
Check it out.

Back in Guatemala now. Five more days of traveling with my brother: two nights in Flores, two nights in Antigua and then a night in Guatemala City. Then it’s back to Xela where I will settle back into the “day to day.” The “vacation from my vacation,” as I’ve liked to call it, is coming to a close.

More about Belize to come.