The Characters of Caye Caulker: You Better Belize It

Caye Caulker, Belize is definitely an interesting place, and even more interesting when you spend enough time on the small island (which is barely 2 kms by .5 kms in area) to meet many of the local characters.  We decided to spend almost 2 weeks over the Christmas season in one place after about 8 weeks of continuously traveling across Mexico.   The motto on Caye Caulker is “Go Slow” and it is something that the locals practice well.

The Chef – Right out of South Park, the chef walks up and down the main street (one of 3 in town) with a variety of delicious foods, but no chocolate salty balls that we know of.  “OK, people, here I am, come and get it,” would be heard as he waddled in his white apron and chef’s hat around the beach. He would find one person and, belly laughing, try out one of his variety of sales pitches, including: “Get out of the water – shark!!!! – now, how about a tasty tamale – I only have 3 left”, and “All of you reading and ignoring me, I expect a book report unless you buy a meat pie.”

Christmas – I am not sure what Christmas’ actually name was, but on Christmas Day at the island’s beach “Da Split”, he was making his rounds and I said “Merry Christmas” and he replied, “How did you know my name?” So Christmas he became.

Christmas could be seen riding his bike around town with a helmet made of 2 foot palm leaves, beer in hand, greeting everyone along the way.  This got more amusing after we had been there a while because he would especially target the new travelers off the daily boats.  They were easy targets walking down the road with huge backpacks and a Lonely Planet in hand trying to find a hotel.  “Hey what’s happening beautiful lady!!” would be heard across the whole block. 

On the beach Christmas could be found doing the pelvic thrust to the crowd of travelers and locals drinking buckets of beer on the beach.  “Get up and dance people!!!!   You would see a girl trying to dig a hole in the sand as he approached looking for someone to dance with. When he saw a girl with a tattoo on her hip that said LIVE, he said “Well, let’s live and dance… you don’t want to dance? You say live, but I say you look like you dying” and the whole beach started laughing.  I guess that’s what you get for having a tattoo mantra that you can’t live up to with Christmas around. 

When he got bored of dancing, Christmas entertained the beach crowd (and himself, we think) by enticing the large birds (frigates) that circled the island to come and fetch fish from his waving hand. As the birds came swooping in regularly, Christmas would switch the fish from his hand into his mouth, providing a funny and disgusting show for everyone.

The dodgy Cuban restaurant solicitor – Most bars and restaurants had a talker outside their establishment whose job it was to get people in the door. Some were funny, some were convincing. One Cuban restaurant had a sketchy bald Aussie in florescent pink Crocs that must have be chain smoking every time we passed the restaurant.  He was neither funny, nor convincing, but would talk up the roast pig until you were well out of earshot. He was definitely a used car sales guy in a past life.

The Rasta boat captain and crew – One of the coolest parts of the beach was a boat with plants growing on it (picture here) and crewed and captained by a bunch of Rasta types that would get people - mostly hot chicks – to come on board for a boat cruise. They would then pull up anchor from the beach, motor for 100 meters with a 10 hp engine and drop the anchor and party for the afternoon on the other side of the beach.

The Pie Lady – She was out most of the day with a 4 x 4 plank of fresh homemade pies and desserts, including amazing 3” meringues on her pies (I am not completely sure when she had time).  She barely said anything to people, other then, “I am here all day.” Her favourite place to set up seemed to be outside one of the many Chinese grocers with a sign that read “No selling pastry outside shop”. Our new friend Greg narrowly avoided a bounty being placed on his head over a pie plate that he had to go to her house to return (strangely, while she was in the shower).

The Chinese Grocer – It works out that almost every store on the island is owned by a Chinese guy, perhaps all from the same extended family.  They all spoke better Spanish than English, and seemed perpetually unimpressed that you were buying something. They adhered to the confusing strategy of having different pricing in every store for the same things and very different (yet random) inventories. But if you needed anything, these guys could find it for you.

Village Dogs – There were an assortment of seemingly well-fed stray dogs around town. One of our favourites was a pit-bull cross who waded a foot into the water, turned back towards the beach, and barked at the crowd until someone through a coconut into the water for him. Once he retrieved it, he would shred it to pieces. Except he only liked to fetch it if it appeared as though you were going to race him for it, leading to Catherine fetching more coconuts than the dog did. Another favourite was a tiger-striped female who appeared to only come to the beach for affection. She would come up, lean in and give kisses to anyone that wanted to pet her, happy to laze in the sun on your beach blanket.

Land Crabs – They came at night, either blue or beige and sounding like they were 50 pound monsters.  The first night we went walking down a lane and heard something that could have been a crocodile.  We both freaked out a bit and shined our flashlights into the bushes only to see a little 5 inch blue crab with his claws up in the air looking at us, well, like a crab in headlights.  Then in a flash he rushed off sideways and through a fence.  We both laughed and over the next couple of days we became used to seeing these little guys everywhere at night.  It was often funny because they always seemed to working together like cartoon characters on an adventure.  On one of our last nights at dinner, we actually saw one run through the restaurant dodging chairs and feet, likely tired of the rain that had been falling over the past day.  

Once we reached Belize City by water taxi and got on another dodgy bus (a story for another day) we heard one girl say to another traveler, “Well, Caye Caulker was OK but it was kinda slow and boring.” It was interesting to think that she had travelled halfway across the world to see the unique island and completely missed the point.  Going slow was the whole reason to be there.