Belize: Days 4 and 5

More frivolous fun

On Day 4, we boarded a catamaran to sail to Caye Caulker, another island.  San Pedro is the city on Ambergris Caye.  Twenty years ago, San Pedro used to be a quiet little place without paved roads, where the pace was slow.  Today, the big hotels are moving in, and golf carts on the downtown streets often crawl in congested golf cart traffic.  Caye Caulker is what San Pedro was like twenty years ago.  Progress?

Travel on the catamaran was smooth sailing, despite windy conditions. Bean bag chairs lashed to the front deck provided ultimate comfort.  It didn’t hurt that the crew came around with snacks and rum punch.

Caye Caulker is my kind of place.  I don’t need an adventure every day.  I’m pretty sure that I would be content for a long time here before getting bored. While people back in Wisconsin dealt with the polar vortex, Caye Caulker offered summertime, and the living was easy.

As my mother always told me, there’s no rest for the wicked.  On our fifth day  on the island, our hosts booked a full day of snorkeling, fishing and a cookout.

While I was screwing around catching little fish that the locals call “grunts,” our captain snorkeled out to the reef and harvested something more substantial for supper.

As we drank rum punch, the captain prepared and cooked the food over a fire of coconut tree husks.   It was easily better than any restaurant meal that we had on the trip.

We spent one more day on the island before taking a ferry ($15) back to the Belize mainland.  I think you probably can guess that there was beer and island drinks involved, We then parted ways with our friends and headed off on our own adventure to San Ignacio, base camp to visit the Mayan ruins.

Belize: San Pedro (Days Two and Three)

On Day Two, we went fishing.  I’m not a fishing enthusiast.  I’ve probably fished a couple of dozen times in my life, and most of those times have been through the ice.  San Pedro is best known for fishing and snorkeling.  I’m not much of a swimmer either, unless something is chasing me.  So besides drinking beer and rum punches, my companions strongly suggested that I select an excursion.  I chose fishing.  Julia, the daughter of a serious fisherman, was the only wife who wanted to go fishing.  Kim and Michele went shopping instead.  I don’t like shopping either.

Brent and John have fished many times before in Belize and knew a guide with a boat.  This was unlike any of my previous fishing experiences.  The guide and his helper netted a bunch of sardines during the first twenty minutes and then chopped up the sardines into little pieces to use as bait.  Then they baited our hooks every time we needed bait, and they pointed out where to cast to catch the fish.  If I caught a fish, they took it off the hook, sorted out whether it was a keeper or not, and later cleaned all the fish for supper.  I think we ended up with about 35 keeper fish between the four of us.  Most of the fish were different varieties of snapper.  Julia caught an ugly fish known locally as a Slippery Dick.  It was quickly released and sent overboard.  This was my first fish.  It was not deemed a keeper.

On Day Two, we hopped on the golf carts and went bar hopping to the north side of the island.  The island is quite skinny, so it isn’t hard to find a beachfront bar.

Kim is being a good designated driver with her Coke.

In the last post, I forgot to include the an excerpt from my A.T. Trail Journal.  I would plead jet lag but there was no time zone change.  Here is the next entry.