Another early morning when we were up before dawn in Flores to get the bus to take us to Belize. It was 5.30am but the town was anything but quiet. There was a ferocious racket coming from the trees on the causeway side of the island, this wasn’t a tuneful dawn chorus but an ear-splitting, raucous party that make the trees shake and ensured that all windows in the area were firmly shut. We couldn’t see the birds in the dense foliage, but it was probably Grackles, slender, long tailed black birds who are loud and raucous most of the time. We arrived at the border at about 8am, exited from Guatemala and walked into Belize. We weren’t the only ones crossing – there were lots of children dressed in school uniforms crossing as well. School buses were waiting to take them to school on the other side in Belize. At first, there was little change in countryside, hot scrubby jungle but flatter than Guatemala. Several women were walking along holding umbrellas for shade which we hadn’t seen before but an umbrella was certainly useful for both rain and shade. When we stopped for a loo break at a little garage, we found that American dollars were accepted just as readily as Belizean dollars (2 Belizean dollars to one $US. When we bought a tub of Pringles (something about the early mornings made us want to eat junk food), they had no change and made up the balance in tiny packets of biscuits -which were stale- instead of our change of 50cents. The Belizean banknotes had Queen Elizabeth on them and English is the main language. Belize was known as British Honduras until 1973 and was the last British colony on the American mainland. Most Belizeans liked their close association with Britain. It offered them a sense of security especially as Guatemala was long making claims on their territory. The British army even have a base for training in the Belizean jungles.

Our bus took us to the ferry terminal in Belize City where we got a ferry to Caye Caulker. Belize City was small, full of low buildings and more like a dusty town than a city. It used to be the capital but after being ravaged by a hurricane in 1961, the capital was moved to Belmopan. As we waited for the ferry, we were surrounded by voices speaking English with a lyrical Caribbean lilt and there was a much more multi-cultural mix than in Guatemala with lots of different ethnic groups, Garifunas, Blacks, Creolos, Mayans, European, Asians and more.

We sat on deck on the small passenger ferry to Caye Caulker , a small island off the coast. The trip on calm turquoise waters took about a leisurely hour. Everything about Caye Caulker was leisurely. There were signs No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem but there was a caveat No Money, Big Problem. The staff at a popular cafe wore t-shirts with GO SLOW on the back. Arriving at about 1pm, the whole place had a sleepy air, and the heat was energy-sapping. We walked -slowly- along the white sand of the beachfront and through paths by mangroves where lizards and large iguanas rested, some were still as statues with only their eyes moving. Our accommodation was in the south end of the island, about a kilometre and a half from the village. There are no cars on the island, so most people get around on golf-buggies or on bikes, the ones with no gears and that you pedal backwards to stop. Our lodgings provided us with bikes and we also had use of a 2 man kayak. On the first evening, we cycled into the village which was quite small with unpaved streets, lots of low timber housing, palm trees and sandflies, lots of sandflies which became the bane of our stay on this paradise island. Cycling back in the dark through the rough mangrove paths with only weak beams from our headtorches to light our way, we heard loud rustlings coming from the bushes on both sides. We caught glimpses of enormous crabs, white ghostly creatures about the size of a man’s hand, crossing the path on their nightly excursions to the lagoon. Spooky and not shy. They stood upright on their hind claws with front claws ready to attack when our wheels touched them….although we did our best to avaoid them.

In the early mornings, we kayaked around the island a few times. At the southern end, paddling through the mangroves with the stench of swamp, the flicker of fish in the water and the shimmer of leaves reflected on the surface, truly it was like being transported to the book/movie Where the Crawdads Sing. We stopped for a while in the shade in the bobbing kayak and listened to the silence which of course wasn’t silent at all, plops and ripples, the sounds of nature and occasional almighty splashes as pelicans divebombed for fish near us.

Pelicans also showed up at the Iguana bar most days at about 5pm. They waddled from the water purposefully to a young man with a white bucket. They opened their great beaks, wide in expectation and followed him to the waters edge where he threw them some fish. But the pelicans, imposing and entertaining as they were, were not the main attraction for the gathering crowds with theit phones on camera and video mode. The main event were the stringrays that circled in the shallow waters in increasing numbers, flapping and curling their large flat bodies. They, too, knew that 5pm was feeding time – some of them were hand fed by the man with the bucket of fish. The pelicans, frigate birds and seagulls all hovered, waiting to grab some dinner. And then the sun went down in a blaze of glory on a perfect day ……..apart from those pesky sandflies which were turning my legs into a pin cushion and even getting through my clothes.

Although we thought that this spectacle would be the highlight of our stay in Caye Caulker, it wasn’t. That came when we took a snokelling trip to the barrier reef, a short way from shore. The weaving coral was spectacular, an underwater garden with speckled and striped fish swimming about us and beautiful jelly fish floating past. But in one section, the buzz of the boats engine acted like a dinner bell and soon we were surrounded by a fever of stingrays and a shiver of sharks (I had to look up the collective names for a group of stingrays/sharks but SO appropriate). The sharks were young nurse sharks, small and curious. We swam amongst both species. I will never forget the velvety feel of a stingray brushing against my leg while a nurse shark glided under my stomach. We also fed some large silver fish called tarpons from the boat. I held a sardine in my hand over the water and got a shock when a tarpon leapt from the water and the grabbed the sardine. Although we enjoyed it all, the feeding of wild animals, fish and birds in their natural environment gave me an uncomfortable feeling because it must interfere with their behaviour…..although the guides insist that it doesn’t and that they are not dependent on humans for their food.

Caye Caulker was once just one island but a hurricane in the sixties caused a rift and opened up a small channel that it was possible to walk across but which separated it into two. The only gas station was on the west of the island and as most people lived on the east, the fisherman thought it would be a good idea to further dredge the small channel so that the fishing boats could pass through and save themselves from having to go the long way around the island, So the channel was dredged and has become wider with every season due to erosion, hurricanes and the strong currents that developed. The island is very low lying and even at king tides, the southern end of the island is often under water. We cycled the bike trails wading through through knee-high muddy waters. The seas are extremeely salty here, great for staying afloat but the air was so salty that much of the cutlery in our lodgings were rusty.

On Monday, the day before we were due to leave the island, we were trying to decide where to go next, looking at buses/ferries to take us further south in Belize and maybe onto Hondurus. There was a knock on our door and it was Abel, our landlord, calling in to warn us that a tropical storm and possibly a hurricane was approaching and due to make landfall in Southern Belize. Buses, water ferries and other transport would not be running for two or three days. He said that going south was not an option. Caoimhin was keen to stay put, to wait it out in a boarded up house but I preferred to leave as planned and head inland instead. Abel dropped us to the ferry terminal in his golf buggy on a beautiful calm sunny blue-skyed morning. There were long queues with people trying to get off the island and a siren blaring as a warning to either get out or get ready to batten down the hatches.

We ended up in San Ignacio, a little town about two and half hours inland from Belize City. We took a local bus there which stopped everywhere picking up schoolkids and dropping the old boys who were sipping rum and coke in the back of the bus at their doors(this was morning, before midday). We had booked a cabin on the edge of San Ignacio in a lovely camping spot where there were parrots in the trees. We arrived in stifling heat and tranquil conditions and were delighted with our new lodgings until the owner said that we had to move to higher ground the following morning. There was the danger of flooding from the nearby river, ironic when we had moved inland to avoid possible sea flooding. So we packed again and found ourselves on the second floor of a hotel waiting..

We were waiting, waiting for the hurricane in a hotel room in Belize. There was the sound of hammering as windows were bordered up and the squeal of metal as iron grids were pulled down on shop fronts. Lots of house didn’t look like they would withstand a light breeze, never mind a hurricane. But all was calm. We had been running from Hurricane Lisa for two days, but it had almost caught up with us on Wedneday, November 2. The schools were closed, the shops and restaurants were all closed. All public transport was suspended. The streets were desserted. The whole of Belize was in a state of anticipation ….and trepidation. We tracked the hurricane on our phone as it came near Belize city on the coast, blew inland and unexpectedly veered more north. The rains started at 3pm, the internet were down at 5.30 pm (no more tracking on our phones) and the power went out at 6.30 just after we had got some hot water from reception for our Pot Noodles (dinner). The wind picked up about 8pm and the rain continued on and on. The silence woke me at about 2am – the rain had stopped and the wind had died.

It was over. Hurricane Lisa was less intense than predicted. There was damage to houses in Belize City, there were trees down, damage to bridges and some flooding but the general concensus was that Belize had escaped……..this time. Welcome to life in the tropics where hurricanes are a threat for six months every year. Public Transport was still not operational on Thursday so we had another day in our hotel with some other ‘refugees’ – an English couple who were trying to get to Caye Caulker, a Belizean from Belize City who came here because he didn’t want to go to the shelters, an eccentricAmerican who walked around barefoot all the time because he only sweated through his feet and a receptionist/manager who worked 48 hours straight because another member of staff couldnt get to work. But thankfully a few restaurants opened in the late afternoon just when we thought we might have to resort to Pot Noodle again.

Thanks for reading……see you next time from whereever the buses and ferries take us…..undecided yet😎😎⛱