Tobacco Caye

Just FYI-this little diddy was written a few days ago (Thursday to be precise) but since the internet was crap in Dangriga, I did not get the chance to post it. So enjoy, just a few days late...I'm currently in Placencia and will write again tomorrow!

I just arrived in Dangriga after spending two and a half days on Tobacco Caye, a teeny tiny island that is the size of about four football fields. We (Denise my travel buddy from West Linn) and I departed Caye Caulker early on Monday morning and spent the better part of the day traveling. We took the water taxi to Belize City, then hopped on a bus to get down to Dangriga. Buses are the most common form of transportation here, and they are in fact just old US school buses. The cities all have little bus depots, but you can also just go out to the side of the highway and flag a bus down and climb aboard. We wound through the Hummingbird Highway, which is a simple two-lane road weaving through the jungle down the country, with little towns dotted here and there. Once we arrived in Dangriga we got on yet another water taxi to head out to Tobacco Caye. A bumpy 40 minute boat ride later, we had arrived in another tropical paradise! The island really is tiny, and if you stand in the middle of it, you can see the ocean from every angle. Denise and I had reserved a cabana on one end of the island, only to be told that yes, they had the reservation, but no, there was not a cabana for us. Thankfully there was another hotel at the other side of the island that had space for us and we got a room squared away.
It took us all of five minutes to lock ourselves out of our cabana. So Denise had to hoist me onto her shoulders and I had to stick my arm through the slatted windows and blindly grope around until I found the key. A group of guys walked by, and instead of offering to help, they just pointed and laughed at us. Thanks friends. After getting settled we decided to do some snorkeling, since Tobacco Caye is one of the few islands in Belize where you can snorkel over coral reef right off the docks. Of course this wasn’t good enough for us, and we decided to try and snorkel around the island (which is not allowed) and then to climb over this shallow area of rocks and plants (actually coral) to get to the bigger waves on the other side. Cut to a nice man in a kayak screaming his head off at us that we were either going to be killed by the waves or fined by the rangers for walking on coral. Oops. We felt like idiots, and promptly called snorkeling off for the day, and settled for some vodka with orange juice instead. On Tobacco Caye you eat every meal family style with whoever else is staying around you, and the people who work there (think summer camp). It’s actually really nice because it offers a chance to interact and get to know the other guests, as well as the people who live on the island. They also get to play their own music, and we heard an abnormal amount of Shania Twain, Celine Dion, and Abba. This baffled and entertained me to no end. We made friends with the bartender quickly (duh) and he offered to take us snorkeling the next day. We also met the dive instructor, Brian, who is a conspiracy theorist and believes, among other things, that people should always be on psychedelic mushrooms, that the US is going to hell in a hand basket, and that the Mayans used radio frequency to construct their temples. After dinner we went to the other bar where some of the locals were doing a drum circle, which is a tradition in Garifuna culture (if you’re like me and had to google all of these things, don’t feel badly. I had no idea either). There was also a group of backpackers who were on a sailing trip that we quickly made friends with, despite them making fun of my accent for most of the night.
The next day we got up early, had breakfast, and lounged on the docks for a bit. Then we went snorkeling out from the island to the reef, and spent a good while chasing fish, looking at sea stars and finding this giant moray eel. The thing was probably the size of my thigh and thank god it was under a rock or I would have been out of the water faster than Charlie Sheen from rehab (I’m doing my best to stay up-to-date and relevant here). After snorkeling we joined in the local volleyball game. It was 5 vs 5 with a mix of locals and tourists. I’d like to say I was the star player, but I suck at volleyball and everyone figured that out pretty quickly. The local boys were of course all really good and intense, and I found it pretty great that it doesn’t matter where in the world you are or what sport you are playing, the boys will always take it too seriously. Well done team. After snorkeling and volleyball I was exhausted so it was a quick dinner then off the snooze land. We were supposed to be leaving the next morning, but we decided to extend our stay by another day so we could enjoy paradise a bit longer.
The last day we got up and went over to another dock on the other side of the island to read and lounge. We had been there no more than 10 minutes when we were descended upon by 40 people from Minnesota who were on a “work” vacation. It was some small investment company (or banking? Or something…) that was not only paying for these people to go on this expensive trip through Guatemala and Belize, but they were also getting paid while they were there. Unreal. They were also quite drunk and doing flips and cannonballs and belly flops off of the dock, so that was amusing. I tried to ask them about Mount Rose but everyone looked at me like I was crazy, I guess they don’t like Drop Dead Gorgeous in Minnesota. All this action tired us out, so we went back to the cabana to nap. We woke up and played volleyball again (my team won!) and then were off to dinner. Since it was our last night, we decided to celebrate by letting the bartender making us whatever he wanted. We ended up with a drink called a Submarine, which is just one giant mix of every kind of liquor behind the counter (mostly rum). We were told it was a shot, but it actually was almost an entire whiskey glass full of booze. Amazingly we finished these and were still standing, much to the surprise of everyone around us. Then a drum circle started up again and Denise and I were taught some of the traditional dances and got to hop around the deck with some of the locals. If you’ve seen me dance, then you should already be at the conclusion that everyone was highly entertained by my attempts to do this. Then we had the bright idea to wake up the sleeping campers and try to get them to come join us, but for some reason they were not happy when we went running and yelling through their camp. Odd. A little more dancing, then it was bed time. We woke up feeling great today (yes seriously), packed, and are now on our way to the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s about an hour bus ride from Dangriga, and it is the only Jaguar Sanctuary in the world! I’m really excited for some time in the jungle and to do hiking and critter spotting, I’m just hoping I don’t get torn apart by bugs!