Pensioners of the Caribbean

Yo ho ho and as many bottles of rum as you can manage

What we’ve got ourselves is a three day two night sail from Caye Caulker in the northish to Placencia in the southish of Belize.   Picked it off the internet, looked good so we booked it.  Then we saw another review which described it as a ‘party boat’ which puts it about 40 years too late for us.  Ho hum.  The Ragga Queen is a fifty footer with a mast in the middle, one at the pointy end and one at the flat end.   An international crowd, our party was two Germans who appeared not to want to talk to anyone for the whole trip, a really nice Argentinian couple from Lionel Messi’s home town of Rosario (best footballer in the world), two gorgeous 20 year old blonde Norwegian girls on an extended trip and four Brits including us.  Everyone else was from North America, four interesting Canadian women, two couples from Kansas whose homeward flight was to be cancelled due to snow in Kansas and a youngish couple from Seattle one of whom was working while travelling by writing code 20 hours a week for a software company.   A Belize crew of three made up what was quite a full boatload.

We were due to leave at 8.45 and dead on time at 9.30 we got underway, and so did the reggae, although I suppose the name of de company should’ve give it away, mon.  It was very windy as forecast and we’d grabbed some seasick pills just in case, remembering my sailing friend  Roger’s words that “the worst thing about being seasick is when you realise you’re not going to die”.   As it happened we were fine for the whole three days so either we didn’t need the pills or they were really good.  The plan for the trip was to stop and snorkel on the reef several times a day, run some fishing lines to see if any fish were willing to sacrifice themselves for our dinner and camp overnight on small islands.  So that’s what we did.

Neither of us are good swimmers and the last time we snorkelled was probably 15 years ago off Queensland.  The sea was choppy for the first snorkel  this trip and  we both found it difficult and tiring but the condition of the reef was very poor.   Lots of sand on the coral, few fish and very little colour, it was like watching a black and white TV after a colour one off Queensland and the other tropical reefs we’ve seen.   I believe the Parrot Fish which nibble at live coral are part of the problem but it was disappointing and quite shocking really.   That said lots of people enjoyed it.   We did have the motor running a fair bit as well as sails but as it was a small outboard it couldn’t be heard much.   The colours are stunning and made much more vivid by the tropical sun.   The sky is an unblemished blue while the sea ranges from the palest blue where shallows sit over sand through a huge swatch of blues to the darkest of blue in deep water.   White horses play around small outcrops of coral near or breaking the surface.  The islands are always green topped with trees and ringed with pale golden sand.   On this first day of sailing there was a fair bit of chatting amongst us but we were still very much a bunch of strangers

Islands/Cayes were further apart than I thought ranging from quite sizable to specks, with our first night stop being on a specklet.  The smallest ‘island’ we saw was like a shed on stilts, presumably standing on land just under the water but it was miles from anything else.   Our night-halt island was unnamed and  sandy with a couple of trees and it was only about  50 or so yards across.  Really not much bigger than those desert islands you see in cartoons with two castaways leaning against the single palm tree.  A strongish breeze was blowing as we tried to set up our tent facing the east for sunrise but we had neglected to take into account that as the wind was also blowing that way we’d have sand dunes in the tent by morning.    In what had been an interminable 15 minutes briefing that took an hour the night before we left we were told that the group would probably split into the drinkers and the non-drinkers.   Sure enough on the first night as we all got stuck into our first half pints of rum punch we realised that we had accidently left all the non-drinkers behind.   I can recommend the coconut rum.

The Germans still weren’t talking to anyone.

Three of the four Canadian women were Health Care professionals and one told me that when travelling with a friend who was an accountant they’d adopted alternative jobs to add a bit of spice to their stories.   Pam had claimed to be a Killer Whale trainer while her friend was allegedly a pole dancer, but with a twist.  The friend apparently had ‘good upper body strength’ (my words, not hers) so it was a plausible story.  The twist was that she specialised in old folk’s homes, being employed by the relatives and taking a 1% cut of the inheritance should she induce a fatal heart attack.  Some people are just too suspicious because I don’t think they ever got anybody to actually believe the last part of the story.

The two Norwegian girls on the extended holiday had so far only been in Brazil for two weeks but were already the colour of warm caramel.   They spoke excellent English and were really pleasant girls but we can’t believe they were as completely innocent as they seemed to be.   One of them, Annae had the same pale green colour eyes as the famous ‘Afghan Girl’ photograph, which you would recognise if you saw it, even if it doesn’t sound familiar.  Yes, Anna with an e on the end.

On the second day, an unsuspecting barracuda was to become our dinner that evening.   Pike shaped and with a similarly effective looking set of gnashers, this one was about 3 feet long.   The captain said he was marinating it by pouring rum down its throat but in fact he was killing it quickly and in only a few seconds it was dead.    I suppose it would be bad for business if it took a lump out of one of the paying customers.  We had it that night with cheesy potatoes, and rum.  Generally the food was OK as it was prepared in fairly cramped conditions and I suppose you could describe it fairly as having a narrow culinary bandwidth.

Our second night was on Tobacco Caye, a 5 acre island completely covered in buildings which were mostly fairly ramshackle.  From the sea only a few could be seen because the trees were taller but once ashore it was a dystopian vision of an idyllic Caribbean island.   After a few more half pints of rum punch and dinner and rum punch, dancing broke out on the dock.   No, of course not me.   (Although he did pose for the male topless photo).  Talking to the Kansas contingent that evening one of them came out with a phrase I liked which was that “Americans think 400 years is a long time and Brits think 400 miles is a long way”.

Did I mention the two Norwegian girls in their little bright yellow bikinis ?  A lot of heads turned whenever they went from one end of the boat to the other and along the side they were framed from mid-calf to neck by the walkway and cabin roof.  Of course, it was the juxtaposition of those primary colours and caramel against the Caribbean sky and azure sea that kept catching my photographer’s eye.   Captain Ramsey mopped the cabin floor regularly after the snorkelling to keep it dry but I think most of the mopping was of the crew’s dribble because they were drooling every time the girls went through.

Something we notice in developing countries particularly is the belief that if you have some music EVERYBODY wants to listen to it.  Shops have speakers outside blasting the area, usually with more than two slightly distorted guitars , buses have music and television which are often nothing to do with each other (fortunately not in Belize) and this three day sailing trip turned out to have reggae and similar most of the day.   On the boat it was so pervasive I didn’t hear it most of the time so I wonder if anybody hears it after a while.  If so, what’s the point of it.  When we climbed the volcano in Guatemala, high above a Maya village and across a valley we could hear amplified music at 7.00 in the morning from what I estimate was 2 to 3 miles away.  It really is just audible litter which you cannot get away from. 

As we headed into Placencia we found out that about ten of us didn’t have a hotel booked so we would all be scouring the town.   At the dock we all said our goodbyes like old friends parting for the last time.  I suppose it did seem like a long time from the start of that briefing, but then it stopped and we went sailing.  It was a very good crowd and even I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to throw overboard.

The Germans never did talk to anyone.