Two of our group left to take a sail boat to Placencia. Two others went to St George's Caye. Although everyone had already paid for a room in Belize City, most of the others opted to pay for another night on Caye Caulker rather than return to Belize City on January 1. We decided to keep our reservation in Belize City, which was a huge mistake. We had asked the tour leader whether anything would be open in Belize City on Monday, January 2, and typically, without any concern for the facts, she assured us "Jes, chur!" We thought a day of exchanging money, doing laundry, internet, postcards, souvenir shopping and visiting museums would be great. Unfortunately, nothing was open, including restaurants. Another plate of beans and rice in the hot humid hotel dining room.
We met the members of our next tour group the following day. All are at least 20 years younger than us. G.A.P. had subcontracted the sea kayaking tour to Seakunga of Placencia (www.seakunga.com). This company is owned by Ajinder, a long haired man in his forties who was born in India but lived most of life in Canada. He now divides his time between Belize and Canada. His skin is a lighter brown than most of the Creole, Mayan and mestizo (mixed ancestry) natives of Belize, and he says this is the first place he has ever been considered a white man. He is a smart, kind, environmentally aware man who drives a propane powered van and is building an eco-tourism resort. We like him very much, but the tour so far has had a typical half baked Belizean shine to it.
He drove us to Placencia in his van with our luggage loosely strapped on top. The requisite crack across the entire windshield. There was a downpour on the way, and my luggage and some of my clothes were soaked. One of the group members, who always takes all the mishaps in stride without complaint, was annoyed to make the 4 hour trip on a moldy seat that made him sick.
We stopped in the Maya Mountains at the home of Mr Jones, who is famous for conducting naturalist tours. Now he is slowing down, and is building guest cabanas and offering home cooking to travelers. We had a fabulous meal under his thatch roofed palapa as the rain poured. His lady friend came and sat with us and talked with one of our guides, Barnaby, about the changes since the tourists started coming.
Like Efrain, our hotel manager in Crooked Tree, Barnaby came to Belize from El Salvador as a boy in the 80s to escape Ronald Reagan's war against democracy in their country. Barnaby lost both his parents in the war. I don't dare ask him what he thinks of working for tourists from the US, but outwardly, he seems not to hold us responsible. I think he must realize that the citizens of our country have no control over and little knowledge of the malicious actions of our government around the world.
Barnaby says when he was 6, he was selling marijuana in the Maya Mountain town of Saint Margaret. Marijuana was the country's main export at that time, but the Mexican government sprayed pesticides on the crops and put an end to that.
Now tourism is 25% of the economy. Sugar, citrus and shrimp are the other major industries. Barnaby says Belize is not a third world country, it's developing country. The only place we encountered any beggars was in Belize City. He says there is no reason for any one to be a beggar in this country, as it is very easy for Belizeans to get a piece of land from the government to farm. After a certain number of years of development, one gains title to the land. There are 300,000 people in this country, which is the size of Massachusetts.
Anyway, we spent our first night in Placencia in Dianni's guest house, a small lovely place with 6 rooms and hammocks and chairs on the big second story porch overlooking a field. We woke to the sound of rain pounding on the roof. I thought it couldn't rain any harder, and then it did. I knew I did not want to be camping in the rain on a caye in the flimsy tents Seakunga was likely to provide. Up until the time the motor boat left to take us to the caye where our kayaks were waiting, Steve and I wondered whether we should bail from the trip. The trip started 2 hours late due to the squalls and rain. About 30 minutes from shore, the boat engine abruptly died. The guides were unable to get it started, and called for help on a cell phone, which seems to be as ubiquitous here as at home.
Most of the group took this development with surprisingly good humor. They ate snacks, joked, listened to music from an iPod through speakers that one of the guides had brought, and a few jumped in to snorkel. One of the snorkelers found a rust red and butter yellow star fish about 9 inches in diameter. He handed it up to the boat for us to examine. We were soaked, and I was quietly glad that the boat couldn't be fixed. I knew someone would be coming to rescue us, and I planned to try to get Steve to bail from the trip. Another group member, Julie, was thinking the same thing.
After an hour or more, Ajinder arrived with his friend Benjie, who happened to be at the harbour getting ready to go snorkeling when Ajinder got the call for help. Benjie transferred the passengers to his little fishing boat and ferried us to a nearby caye where there were a few colorful boarded up cabins on stilts, and a bar with a thatched roof patio. It was an abandoned attempt at a tourist resort.
It looked pretty picturesque until the wind died down and the sand flies started biting with a vengeance. Our gear was ferried to the island and we were informed that we would spend the night here while the boat was towed in for repairs. I was already weary of roughing it, getting bug bites in uncomfortable beds on shore, and the idea of camping a night on this sand fly hell, and then proceeding to spend 4 days covered with salt and sand and sleeping in the rain, never able to get dry, getting sunburned and sore from paddling, suddenly seemed like the opposite of a vacation.
Steve and Julie didn't need any convincing, and we happily rode Benjie's boat back to shore. Ajinder put us up in a hotel for one night and offered to do whatever he could to salvage our vacation. Julie just wanted to get home, and left early this afternoon. Steve and I enjoyed not having any schedule today and now we are going to decide whether to rejoin the kayaking group when Ajinder takes the repaired boat to them tomorrow, or maybe we will just hire someone to take us to Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Preserve, where we are almost guaranteed not to see a jaguar, but will see lots of other interesting things. The weather looks better for the next 2 days, and the kayaking group will spend 2 nights on a shady palmed covered caye, so we might actually get some kayaking in.
