Two can play in Belize
By Peter Moss
Belize is tiny. Everything is on a small scale - except, perhaps, the expansiveness of the wonderfully warm people. The vibe is Caribbean, the people laid back, the national sport sleeping. "We don’t need no national flag", the waiter at Belize City‘s Sooty Mermaid restaurant declared. "We just fly that old pillow-case". Just how laid back we found out in the lobby of the city’s Fort George Hotel down on the waterfront, our base for the first night. We were checking out when a guy walked in - big lad, Bob Marley T-shirt, denim cargo shorts, and a really cool pair of Ray-Bans. "Good morning Mr. Prime Minister!", the doorman said. He was there for breakfast. No entourage, no minders, just his son and daughter.
It was no surprise, then, to find that Belize City’s airport seems somehow to have been cunningly fashioned from somebody's back garden. Susan and I were there to head out, on board a suitably tiny plane, for the heartland of this stunningly diverse country that, within such confines, ranges from mountains, through dense jungle and swampy creeks, to the translucent waters of the barrier reef.
From the Gallon Jug airstrip we drove deep into the jungle to our lodge at Chan Chich. Our cabana was an oasis of calm, like a ground-level tree house, sheltered from the burning sun by a canopy of huge, billowing palm leaves, the silence punctuated only by the howling of the monkeys, the clacking of the toucans, and the growling of whatever your imagination allowed you to believe was out there.
We spent three days wending our way through the jungle, sometimes on foot, sometimes horseback, scrambling up the grass-covered walls of buried Mayan temples. And each day we returned to the lodge’s wildlife blackboard, eagerly scribbling the names of freshly sighted fauna out there in the undergrowth.
Animal sightings were plentiful and spectacular. Ant-eaters, coati-mundi, bat falcons, keel-billed toucans, cockroaches the size of football boots, more than I could ever remember. But I’ll draw a line under my big cat sighting. Not a BIG big cat, but a SMALL big cat. Ocelot. Not quite a jaguar, but big enough for me, especially as there was barely a paw’s length between us. It was over very quickly. I saw it, it saw me, we both pissed off to anonymity. But it was the first ocelot spotted in some four months, apparently, and I duly claimed my trophy.
It took a night walk in the jungle at Chan Chich to cure my fear of spiders. OK, I’ll admit, if I saw a tarantula scuttling towards me in the kitchen, I’d scream the house down. But being out in the open, teasing the saucer-sized, furry-legged critter out of his hidey-hole with a twig, dimming my torch so as to be illuminated only by his tiny red eyes, took me to new dimensions of bravery.
Onwards to Chaa Creek Cottages, an exquisite wonderland, a hillside haven of undiluted serenity. From luxurious cabanas for the pampered travel writer, to simple log cabins for the young-at-heart, Chaa Creek caters for everyone, even those in search of a rub-down at their state-of-the-art spa. This place is so New Age, when I asked for a detoxifying glycolic herbal linen wrap in seaweed and spirito di fango, I wasn’t sure if I was ordering a massage or lunch.
Refreshed and replenished, my muscles glistening with baby oil and raw power, I canoed down river to San Ignacio, accompanied only by Susan, some huge green parrots, and a flight of brilliant blue kingfishers that seemed to guide our way. Ten miles down stream, through gently nudging rapids, and not another canoe in sight.
Once at San Ignacio, Susan played sensible and hitched a ride back in Chaa Creek’s comfy new Land Rover. Me? Not so sensible. I hauled my mountain bike out of the Land Rover and cycled back. Ten miles as the crow flies, fifteen as the road takes you. Uphill all the way. And with tarmac an invention yet to reach this cobbled corner of the Americas, I arrived back at the lodge wild-eyed and half-crazed, like the Lone Biker of The Apocalypse with a very sore bottom.
From Chaa Creek we took a day out in Guatemala to explore the extraordinary lost temples and pyramids of Tikal, a fabulous confection of excavated splendour. Needless to say I climbed every one of the six pyramids, with their ludicrously steep Inca-like steps, some of them 200 feet high, praying to the God of photography that Susan’s zoom lens would capture these heroic moments for posterity. With a hundred or so metres between us it was, in all senses, a long shot.
Credit where it’s due, Susan’s pretty nifty with a camera. But Francis Ford Coppolla she isn’t. I know this for a fact. I’ve seen all his movies, my daughter just scrutinised his work for her film studies, and I’ve now stayed in his home, one of them anyway, the breathtaking Blancaneaux Lodge way up in the clear air of the Mountain Pine Ridge.
This is the part of Belize to go caving. Down on Barton Creek, drifting deeper and deeper into the cave, our headlamps only encouraging the local fruit bats to use our heads as target practice, we canoed to the point of no return. Our guide, Gilberto, asked me if I fancied leaving the canoe to scramble up the cave’s slimy walls, dodging stalagmites and stalactites as we went. I said yes. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Barefoot, intrepid, and probably very silly, I got there in the end, greeted warmly by Mike Booger, a hairy great Fozzie Bear of a man who once programmed computers in Ontario, and now owns a cave in Belize. Five years and 300 acres of land later, Mike’s a happy landlord. And with neighbours and tenants ranging from Mayans to Mestizos, via Creoles and - now this was a sight to behold - pockets of Amish-like Mennonite communities, Mike’s drinking buddies are nothing if not diverse.
I number my few days at Blancaneaux Lodge among the most peaceful I’ve known. Swaying back and forth in the hammock on the stoop outside our cabana, the sound of water rippling, sometimes thundering, from the waterfall just a dozen or so steps away, I gave silent thanks to Francis Ford Coppola for providing me with the singular gift of tranquillity. And this from the man who placed the Vatican in the hands of the Mafia.
From ‘Coppolodge’ to the coast, along the endearingly named Hummingbird Highway. Past settlements called Tea Kettle, Over The Top and Middlesex (yes, really), we arrived at Jaguar Reef Lodge, an enticing confection of white-washed, thatched cabanas strewn along the beach just south of the tiny Garifuna fishing village of Hopkins.
We trod a carpet of palm-fringed, soft, golden sand, nothing but the Caribbean between us and the Cayes, the tiny islets that dot the horizon and line the barrier reef way out at sea. This is snorkelling country.
Our speedboat slowed just short of a skinny sliver of paradise called Tobacco Caye. Over we went, snorkelled and masked, to be eyeballed by angel fish, parrot fish, barracuda, sting-rays, sharks of all different sizes and even more shades of black. Strange and beautiful. An underworld that even Coppola couldn’t create. A few days of unbridled hedonism on the Placencia Peninsula brought our time in Belize to a peaceful, sensuous close, the scurrying of spiny-backed Jesus Christ iguanas only adding to the sense of suspended reality.
Belize remains steadfastly rooted in an ageless time warp, part Wild West, part hippie hang-out. Sit out at Placencia’s iconic Cosy Corner beach bar, you’ll see what I mean. Little seems to have changed since it was a tiny pink patch called British Honduras in the atlas of my childhood, and if it manages to develop tourism without disturbing its very special spiritual karma, and without building resorts with the word ‘Club’ somewhere in the name, I’ll be delighted and amazed.
Belize is a well-kept secret. Get there soon, before McDonald's beat you to it, and writers like me give the game away.
By Peter Moss; freelance journalist and travel writer for The Independent and Jewish Chronicle.