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Hello again,
After nearly a week inland we headed back to the coast for a few more days of R&R. We went to a different island, Caye Caulker, just south of Ambergris Caye which was our first destination in Belize. We travelled across country by local bus (avoiding the chicken sandwich sellers!) and got a boat out to the island, completing the whole journey in about 6 hours from door to door. Taxi drivers has offered to take us and quoted £70 but we preferred the local bus for £2.50 each!
Caye Caulker is smaller and less developed than Ambergris Caye; it has just 3 main streets (Front Street, Middle Street and Back Street) which are made from compacted sand and have never been paved or surfaced. We stayed at a lovely guesthouse, Tree Tops, in one of the cleanest rooms we've had on the whole trip so far. The owner, an Austrian lady who had lived in Belize for more than 20 years, had very high standards which were enforced by her 'security team' of 4 Jack Russells! Sitting in her relaxing garden we saw three humming birds drinking from the bird feeder.
Unfortunately, our relaxing time was interrupted by a financial crisis. We needed to transfer some money from our building society to our bank account which required us to use a card reader that we'd brought with us. However, the display on the card reader was illegible so we couldn't enter the code that it generates. So we went to a phone booth and, using our prepaid card, tried to phone the building society to see what could be done. We couldn't get through so tried using a credit card which seemed to connect but then nothing happened. As we walked away from the phone my mobile rang - it was the credit card company's fraud department asking me to phone them. We found a telecom office and first phoned the building society, eventually managing to speak to a real person who told us that they couldn't help and we'd have to use a new card reader when we got home. The next call was to the credit card company where we found out that an unauthorised transaction had taken place so they were freezing my card; it seems that my details were taken as a result of using the phone booth we'd made the initial call from. We arranged for a new card to be sent to our hotel in The Bahamas and can use Linda's in the meantime so this is not a problem. In all it took the best part of a whole morning to deal with these unexpected complications; we were just thankful that they hadn't arisen in Cuba where we wouldn't have stood a chance of getting them sorted out. Later that day we sat out at the end of our jetty with a small bottle of coconut rum and some orange juice and slowly the frustrations faded away!
While we were in Caye Caulker we dropped and broke our camera so the quality of pictures won't be as good as we are using our small video camera to take still pictures. The rum also helped us when this happened!
We had some nice food on the island, fish being the obvious choice with barracuda, snapper, kingfish and grouper all being readily available. The food overall in Belize has been good, nicely spiced but not as fiery as in Mexico. The Belizeans love their staple food of rice and beans (cooked and served mixed together) or beans and rice (cooked separately with the beans in a soup). They are also fond of cow foot soup, a stew containing pasta, vegetables and actual cow's foot; we saw it on a couple of menus but didn't try it.
We headed for Belize City for our final day and took a bus out to an unusual destination that we'd heard about - the Belize Central prison and its on-site gift shop! The shop sells things, particularly wooden carvings, made by the prisoners using new skills they are learning as part of their rehabilitation. We bought a heart-shaped wooden box that had just been finished that morning. It struck us as a little odd that also on sale were letter openers with very sharp edges and points and we hoped that only inmates without a violent history were allowed to make these!
The prison was a 45 minutes drive from Belize City, in a town called Hattieville. The town was built as a refugee camp following the 1961 Hurricane Hattie that destroyed the city. Many people chose to stay on in Hattieville after the hurricane as they no longer felt safe living by the sea. We talked to a man whose grandfather had been in Belize City at the time of the hurricane; he'd told his grandson that the sea had suddenly retreated beyond the reef (more than a mile away) leaving fish out of water which people were walking out to collect. As quickly as it had gone out, the sea then came back in again in a tsunami-like tidal wave that flattened the mainly wooden housing, leaving thousands homeless and killing nearly 300 people. The government also relocated 12 years later and built a brand new city, Belmopan, which is now the country's capital. However, it's quite small and Belize City continues to function as the country's main business centre, even though it's accepted that it's at risk from future hurricanes.
Belize City wasn't a place we wanted to hang around in so we were pleased we were only there for a day. We stayed in a house in a safe neighbourhood and chose to have dinner there rather than go out.
That's about it for now. We're now off to The Bahamas so will send our next update from there.
Love from Linda and Tony xx
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Comments
Mary & Barry Hi both, still enjoying your blog, we must try that side of the world sometime in the future. Now down to our last 4 weeks in Los Gigantes and the back to the UK. Enjoy the Bahamas you lucky things! Love Mary & Barry xx Feb 23, 2014
- comments
Mary & Barry Hi both, still enjoying your blog, we must try that side of the world sometime in the future. Now down to our last 4 weeks in Los Gigantes and the back to the UK. Enjoy the Bahamas you lucky things! Love Mary & Barry xx