Best hangover cure? Swim with Sharks
As soon as I arrived in Belize City and got myself a hotel room, I regretted the move. I was planning to go next to Caye (pronounced Key)Caulker to do soms snorkling on the reef, but thought I’d spend some time in Belize’s big city first. I was not impressed. About after 15 minutes of walking around, I ran into Hiro again, so we checked the place out together. The Belizean Creole language, as I mentioned before is a very garbled, Jamaican-sounding version of English, and a lot of times you can’t even understand what people are saying to you. At one point, I heard some man say something as I walked by, like: Yah wah bla di’lay, dond eni, which I soon translated in my head to be “You want black dick lady, don’t deny it.” After I left Hiro (he was going to the Caye), I was sitting on a stoop reading the local paper and some lady wearing a very tattered dress, came up to me screaming something with this awful shrill voice. Iwas like, no, I don’t have any money. Then she continued screaming, and I heard swimsuit, so I was like, no, I don’t want a swimsuit, I don’t have a swimsuit. Then I heard something about ‘fight’, and I was like, no, uh, no, I don’t want to fight, and I decided to leave to avoid any sort of fight or swimsuit and to avoid catching whatever she was scratching at in her crotch.
I was quite disappointed at Belize City and decided to just stay at the hotel and catch the first ferry out to Caye Caulker. At the hotel, I actually ran into a couple I had met the night before in Orange Walk and so we had a few beers. The girl is from Sao Paulo and gave me some great places to go and a friends number once I’m there. Sweet.
The next day I got out to the Caye, and within 5 minutes of walking around, I made a friend, or he made me his friend, or something like that happened. He calls himself the Lyrical King, and he’s a rastafarian reggae singer from Belize. He took me all over the island and invited me to his show later on, where he’d be singing at the bar right next to my hotel. Over the course of the day I made some friends and ran into Hiro again, so we all headed to hear the Lyrical King sing. He’s got some pretty cute songs about Belize, but once you ask him to start doing covers, he knows the words, but he repeats the same chord progressions on his guitar, which never sound anything like the melody of the song he’s trying to cover. It’s pretty hilarious. We ended up going to the island’s club, which is like a little shanty-club hole-in-the-wall, but it had its charm.
The next day, I went snorkling. I was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect and being substantially hung-over. But, within the first 10 seconds of putting my head in the water, I was completely amazed. We went to three different locations and they were all beautiful. We saw a manatee and a sea turtle, which I guess are both pretty lucky finds. I found myself swimming within schools of fish, big and small, and they didn’t seem to mind my presence. We had lunch on San Pedro, which is the big town on Caye Ambergris, known from the Madonna song as “La Isla Bonita”: “I fell in love with San Pedro…(sing along)….”, and then went to our final spot – SharkRay alley. When we jumped in the water, we were swimming with dozens of sharks. They’re nurse sharks and aren’t harmless, but it’s still quite unnerving to jump in the water and see all these sharks around. Our guide kept grabbing them and holding them for us to touch – they’re kind of rough. The sting rays, on the other hand, are pretty slimey feeling – we got to touch those too. The whole day was like nothing I’ve ever done before. There’s a whole world down under that water, and it’s just beautiful…reds, blues, oranges, yellows, greens, so many colors, so many different types of creatures. I held a sea cucumber and a starfish, oh, and we also saw a seahorse. It was really, really spectacular – I would say the highlight of my trip so far.
Tags: Belize, Caye Caulker, Tag Index
Tania
October 8th, 2005 at 4:50 pm
the snorkeling sounds amazing!
stay away from those swimsuit fights man. those can be hairy and contagious.