Caye Caulker (I)
Unfortunately I find myself struggling to catch up with my commitments. Belize isn't exactly full of fast reliable internet places, so I'm afraid I've been somewhat neglectful of the blog recently. Needless to say we're both well and happy enough with life here. We've met some great people and sen some wonderful things which I hope to catch you up on as soon as possible. Here's the first of what will hopefully be a few catch-up installments:
On of the first things we noticed upon arrival is that there seemed to be a huge selection of manatee tours. Regular readers of the blog will know that seeing manatees is something of a mission for us, so we were very excited to have another opportunity to see our favourite ocean dwelling mammal. After a couple of recommendations we finally arrived at the home of 'Chocolate' – the island's manatee expert. After hearing about his work with the local manatees and his role in setting up the nearby reserve we were determined to take his tour not ony due to his obvious love for and knowledge of the manatees themselves, but also because he made two manatee watching stops in the day instead of just one like the others. The difficulty was that there had to be at least 4 other like-minded individuals to make the trip worth doing and unfortunately despite having 3 others one day, we could never make the magic number of 6.
Frustrated in our attempts to see manatees, we signed up for a day's snorkelling. We stopped for three snokelling stops during which we spotted various types of multi-coloured fish as well as a couple of different types of sting rays and quite a few nurse sharks. The highlight of the trip was probably a beautiful spotted eagle ray. Unfortunately I forgot to reapply the sunblock and so by the evening my back and shoulders were something of a mess – bright, lobster red and painfully tender. Luckily our hostel had some aloe vera on hand which really helped, but I was unable to sleep on my back that night. So much for waterproof sunblock...
One night I was grabbed (literally) by our hostel neighbour “sharkbait' (or Al) who turned out to be a long time resident who'd just returned after 18 years back in his native Canada. He proceeded to tell me in detail about how the place had changed (mainly for the worse – but at least it wasn't as bad as San Pedro). He also illuminated his biker gang, street fighting, coke dealing (and that's not Coca-Cola folks) jail-time serving, local vigilante and part-time fisherman past. It's all part of traveling though – meeting the locals.
On of the first things we noticed upon arrival is that there seemed to be a huge selection of manatee tours. Regular readers of the blog will know that seeing manatees is something of a mission for us, so we were very excited to have another opportunity to see our favourite ocean dwelling mammal. After a couple of recommendations we finally arrived at the home of 'Chocolate' – the island's manatee expert. After hearing about his work with the local manatees and his role in setting up the nearby reserve we were determined to take his tour not ony due to his obvious love for and knowledge of the manatees themselves, but also because he made two manatee watching stops in the day instead of just one like the others. The difficulty was that there had to be at least 4 other like-minded individuals to make the trip worth doing and unfortunately despite having 3 others one day, we could never make the magic number of 6.
Frustrated in our attempts to see manatees, we signed up for a day's snorkelling. We stopped for three snokelling stops during which we spotted various types of multi-coloured fish as well as a couple of different types of sting rays and quite a few nurse sharks. The highlight of the trip was probably a beautiful spotted eagle ray. Unfortunately I forgot to reapply the sunblock and so by the evening my back and shoulders were something of a mess – bright, lobster red and painfully tender. Luckily our hostel had some aloe vera on hand which really helped, but I was unable to sleep on my back that night. So much for waterproof sunblock...
One night I was grabbed (literally) by our hostel neighbour “sharkbait' (or Al) who turned out to be a long time resident who'd just returned after 18 years back in his native Canada. He proceeded to tell me in detail about how the place had changed (mainly for the worse – but at least it wasn't as bad as San Pedro). He also illuminated his biker gang, street fighting, coke dealing (and that's not Coca-Cola folks) jail-time serving, local vigilante and part-time fisherman past. It's all part of traveling though – meeting the locals.
posted by Iff at
2:23 pm
2 Comments:
Manatee - favourite ocean dwelling mammal! Favourite ocean dwelling mammal!! You've lost it. Don't you know about blue whales, sperm whales / just about any type of whales. Also the dolphins and porpoises. Seals, walruses. I'd even say sailors were better ocean dwelling mammals than manatees.
By
Anonymous, At
4:21 pm
Keep your feelings about sailors to yourself please! I know you spent a pleasant evening singing gay anthems at karaoke in a dockside bar in the recent past but details need not be provided here.
Besides, a manatee would beat a polar bear or a shark hands down.
By
Anonymous, At
8:38 pm
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