An Executive Means of Travel

As we got further from the Mexican border, the tension in my shoulders started to ease, even though it would turn out to be some days before I would let my guard down and start trusting locals again. Via a blissfully simple entry into Belize we rattled along a baked tarmac road to the dusty bus station of Corozal. Realising simultaneously that everyone spoke English and that we had an extra hour to hand due to the time difference, everything suddenly became very possible and we realised that we could be on the tiny island of Caye Caulker to meet our friends within a day.

Quickly compromising economy, we decided to fly the fifty miles or so to the island instead of waiting for the water taxi the next day, and were shuttled in a battered car that had pretensions as a taxi to the local airstrip, where a light aircraft stood waiting by the hut that constituted a waiting lounge. "Looks like yeh plane is reddeh" the taxi driver said, as we dumped our bags by the side of the plane and paid the price or our urgency. Within minutes we were crammed behind the pilot, the only passengers on board and feeling like royalty to have our own aircraft laid on for us. These feelings quicly evaporated, however, as the aircraft bumped along the runway and shook itself into the sky causing one of the other passenger seats to worryingly crashed sideways onto the floor.


The aircraft quickly rose, and the ground dropped away behind us to reveal electric blue water thinly covering the black outline of coral reef, dark patches of cloud sliding across the surface of the water. As we watched tiny boats below us draw white trails out behind them and small islands come and go hundreds of metres below, Mexico already seemed like a long way away. We landed in nearby San Pedro after a fairly ridiculous twenty minutes to change planes, joining a mixed group of Belizians, ex-pats and tourists and, after handing in our seemingly pointless giant red laminated cards bearing only the information "BOARDING CARD", rapidly took off and passed the last leg of the journey which ended on a bumpy landing on the Caye Caulker airstrip. The only two to get off the plane, we shuffled down the sand track to the "arrivals lounge", basically standing outside a shack, until our luggage was untangled from the aircraft and trolleyed to us. It was, all in all, the closest impression of a commercial airline infrastructure that I have ever seen.

Exiting the airport by way of a white sand path, we soon encountered a huge Belizian lady proudly driving a golf cart, the local laternative to standard vehicles and taxis. Thus we found ourselves, some four hours out of Mexico, facing backwards down a sandy Carribean road bordered by brightly painted wooden stilted buildings and clinging to our possesions while our driver cheerfully swung the golf cart around the twists and turns of the island, taking us closer to what I could already feel would be a very refreshing change in direction from the last two weeks.


Caye Caulker, Belize
17th July 2009