Day 25 - Return to Caye Caulker

It had been over a week since I first arrived in Flores and it had been a good few days since Olivia arrived.  During that time we mainly relaxed and made the most of the facilities at the hostel. One day we hired some canoes and paddled across the picturesque lake to a small zoo.  The zoo as well as having various animals in cages also had three water slides.  Two of these slides led to the main lake and where perfectly harmless, the other however led to a smaller lake that was now inhabited by crocodiles as part of the zoo’s new crocodile enclosure.  It was interesting that they left this slide intact without any warning signs.  So if you do visit Flores and paddle to these water slides, for goodness sake do not go down the slide on the right!

Old friends

Anyway it was time to move on from Flores.  Olivia had come out to Central America to do some scuba diving and we did consider moving forward to Honduras, however neither of us had been that far so we decided to play it safe and return to Caye Caulker which was the less risky of the two options.  So I was returning to what I dubbed as “the Island of White Powder”.  During my previous visit I had developed mixed feeling towards this place.  I loved the beauty and the Caribbean feel but I found the drug culture and some of the mannerisms of the locals a bit tiresome.  Perhaps this place deserved a second chance?  The main question on my mind was would I run into my old friends Tiger Sam, Justice Sean, The “Doctor”, Sean, Swedish Sven and Canadian Jimmy?   

To get to Caye Caulker we opted for the night bus as this was the most time efficient way of travelling.  We thought it would be relativity easy and we could just sleep off most of the journey and wake up all fresh in Belize.  The reality however was very much different.  The night bus was brutal; it was too small and uncomfortable to sleep.  If you did manage to fall asleep you would just wake up a few minutes later with a sore neck. 

Bridging the void

The journey was constantly interrupted as well.  We had to get off and queue up for ages to officially leave Guatemala, followed by a five minute bus journey and another stop and queuing up to officially enter Belize.  I don’t really understand why we can’t leave one country and enter another at the same point; surely that is the definition of a “border”.  And where were we during that five minute bus journey between the two border crossings?  Had we temporary disappeared off the face of the official world and entered a void?

After the uncomfortable night we finally arrived into Belize City and boarded the water taxi.  Nothing wakes you up better than sitting on the open top of a speeding boat with the fresh sea air blasted into your face.

At Caye Caulker a selection of locals had lined the dock waiting to pounce on us with hotel recommendations.  One was sat on a three wheeled bike with a large basket at the front for transporting luggage.  He was singing The Eurythmics.

You remind me of someone

We ended up staying at a hostel called Dirty Mcnasty’s, a slightly off putting name for a hostel that was relatively clean.  Outside our room was sat a sad looking middle aged man.  He had dark curly hair, 5 o’clock shadow and slightly bloodshot eyes.  I got talking to him and he introduced himself as Norman.  He then went on and explained that he went out last night with his bag that contained all his bank cards and his passport, got really drunk with some local guy and woke up in some random hammock on the other side of the island without his bag.

That is a bad deal and I felt sorry for him.  In our room were a few very nice Israeli people who were just leaving.  On their way out they said their goodbyes to Norman and told him to cut down on his drinking.  There was something about Norman I didn’t trust and it wasn’t long before I started hearing stories about him from the other guests.  Stories of him getting extremely drunk and doing daft stuff like falling out the top bunk of his bed.  “By the way, are you an author” he asked me during our first conversation.  I had a feeling I was going to be seeing a lot more of Norman...