Don't Fear the Reefer

So after leaving Caye Caulker, I took a bus down to Dangriga. Dangriga is a one street town about four hours south of Belize City. It's an interesting place in that the majority of the people who live there are of Garifuna decent. Garifuna are descendants of slaves brought to the Caribbean from Africa. The culture is nearly indistinguishable the from the Rastafarians of Jamaica, clear down to the dreadlocks and the Bob Marley fetish.

Unlike most places one ends up visiting on these sorts of trips, Dangriga is a place where people actually live. The majority of the foriegners there seemed to be nurses and doctors doing medical volunteering. It's a city that's friendly to tourists, and foreigners of any ilk, yet is full of people going about their daily lives. A refreshing change from the fabricated experiences one often has in places which cater to out-of-towners.

I checked into a nice, clean guesthouse call the Bluefield Lodge, and then began wandering aimlessly around the city looking for something to eat. Strangely, the majority of the restaurants in Dangriga were Chinese restaurants. I finally decided on a small bar that served stewed chicken and rice, and cold Belekin beer. The entertainment for the afternoon at the bar seemed to be an elderly local with scraggly gray hair, who was performing a dance clearly inspired by the copious amounts of rum he was consuming. The bar was full of locals who laughed and egged him on, clapping their hands and chuckling amongst themselves about his behavior.


Joining the City Council
That evening I ended up going to a local bar called Live Motion and sitting on the porch trading rounds of beers with a couple of locals, Jack and Abraham. Both had known each other for a long time, having worked at the Belize International Airport together for fifteen years. Jack was now a city councilman and Abraham worked in agriculture. Abraham's wife lived in Chicago, and he had a cousin in Seattle, both of whom he'd visited several times.

They offered me some advice about some of their favorite spots in their country, and we discussed some of the snafus Jack experienced being involved in local politics.

All in all it was a good night.

Follow the Red Clay Road
The next morning I woke up early to a torrent of rain. I eat some tortillas and rice from a stand of the side of the road, and then caught a 10am bus to Placencia. The road was rough, red, and rocky. The bus (a converted school bus from the US) started out white at the beginning of the journey and ended up the same clay red as the the road by the end of it.
The journey to Placencia should have taken about an hour and a half, but ended up taking almost twice as long due to flooded roads, and other natural hazards. By the time we arrived at our destination though, the sun was shining, the clouds were burning away, and the humidity was getting intense.

It took me quite a while to find a guesthouse I could afford here, but eventually found one with a shared bathroom, and shared kitchen(!). I spent some time laying about on the beach, and reading Graham Greene's the Human Factor. I must say that the beach here is simply amazing. It reminds me quite a bit of my beloved Ko Chang back in Thailand. The sand stretches on as far as the eye can see, and there's almost no one here! Maybe it's because of the bad weather lately, but I was simply amazed that I could have section of the sand as large as a football field all to myself if I so desired.

After a time in the sun I went back to the guesthouse for a shower, and met a nice British couple who had been traveling Central America for three months. After a quick chat I headed down to the beach, and eventually wandered over to drink some rum punch and read some more Graham Greene.

I ended up striking up a conversation with a very sweet elderly Canadian woman. She had been living in Placencia for twenty years. As her story went, she arrived with her husband, who hated it there and wanted to leave immediately. She stayed, he left. She'd gone back to Canada only once in twenty years and described it as a "horrible experience." She was hilarious to talk to, a real free spirit if I've ever met one. However she did seem to carry some prejudices towards the Latin citizens of Belize which I found to be distasteful and rather disappointing.

Eventually I headed back to my guesthouse where quite a large group had gathered on the deck. The two British I spoke of earlier had been joined by an Israeli, his Korean girlfriend, two Finnish girls, a Canadian, a Romanian. We sat around until midnight, basically trading travel stories, and discussing the pros and cons of socialized medicine.