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Paradise Found: Belize
Travel Package
Desert
Island Fantasy Comes True Off the Coast Of Belize
This
article is from Travels Along the Edge by David Noland, which can be
purchased
online.
 We'd
been paddling for almost four hours, our oceangoing kayaks slicing
through wind-riffled seas under a fierce tropical sun. Dead ahead, a
speck on the otherwise unbroken horizon, lay Laughing Bird Cay, a
solitary quarter-mile sliver of sand 12 miles off the coast of Belize in
the Caribbean sea.
Adventure Vacation in Belize
We
were seeking that most enduring of travelers' fantasies, the deserted tropical
island in the middle of nowhere -- a place to be a castaway, to sleep in a
hammock under the stars and the palm trees, to eat fish you catch yourself, to
drink coconut milk from the husk, perhaps to find romance. My own personal
desert-island fantasy had been nurtured by 1950s-vintage Virgil Partch cartoons
in the Saturday Evening Post. (Example: Guy and buxom, scantily clad girl
are marooned on a desert island. The moon is just rising in a starry sky, a
gentle breeze riffles the palm trees. Guy says to girl, "What do you mean,
'Not here, not now'?")
There
may be no better place to pursue the desert-island fantasy than Belize, where
the world's second-longest barrier reef parallels the coast about 20 miles
off-shore, creating hundreds of small uninhabited coral islands and atolls.
Moreover, the reef protects the waters around the islands from big waves, so
they are easily accessible to small man-powered craft.
Small Group Travel
Our
voyage had begun in Placencia, a sleepy fishing village whose main
"street" is a sidewalk that meanders through the sand. Our group of
eight, which ranged in age from twenties to fifties, and in fitness from lean triathlete to pudgy sloth, arrived from Belize City via chartered twin-engine
bush plane and outboard launch. We pitched our tents on the beach and inspected
the waiting kayaks, which were laid out on the sand like a string of giant
mackerel. Our trip leader, Clark Jones, a crinkly-eyed riverman from Moab, Utah,
delivered the pretrip briefing. The primary hazards, he warned, would be
sunburned lips, sea urchins, and falling coconuts. and well, yes, there was a
slight change of encountering a shark while swimming or snorkeling. "If you
see one, just don't act like shark food," he advised reassuringly.
The next
morning, Clark and our assistant guide, David, a wiry, irrepressibly
wisecracking Beilzean, checked us out in the kayaks. AT 6 feet 2, I found it
awkward to scrunch down into the tight cockpit, and my knees and feet were
jammed into the narrow snout. An elastic spray skirt, which stretched around the
perimeter of the cockpit to keep out breaking waves, held me in even more
tightly. The word sardine came to mind.
After a
lesson in basics of paddling, we moved to the so-called wet exit exercise, an
outfitters euphemism for "practicing how to get the hell out of a flipped
kayak before you drown." Unlike tippy whitewater river kayaks, sea kayaks
require a rather extreme tilt to capsize. To my relief, once flipped, I was
easily able to release the spray skirt and wriggle out of the cockpit while
ingesting a minimum of saltwater. It is surprising how quickly and decisively
the human body reacts when suddenly placed underwater and upside down.
 The
packing up was a painstaking ordeal that took almost three hours. Tents,
sleeping bags, cooking equipment, first-aid kit, hammocks, snorkeling gear, and
food for six days had to be stuffed into waterproof dry bags and crammed through
small watertight hatches into the crafts' innards, along with huge jugs of fresh
water.
At last,
around midafternoon, the final dry bag was shoehorned into place, and we were
ready to get under way. Lips balmed with SPF 40 and cosseted in place by our
spray skirts, we set off into the gentle swell. The day's destination was Bugle
Cay, a mangrove island just visible in the distance, about 5 miles away. Not a
particularly inviting place, it would serve only as an overnight stop and a
place to top off our water supply.
Because
of my long legs, I had switched to one of the roomier two-seaters. My front-seat
crew member, Ursula, due to certain unfavorable marital dynamics, had elected
not to paddle with her husband. A novice kayaker, she seemed nervous and
claustrophobic as we set off. But after fifteen minutes of paddling without
mishap across the warm, sparkling seas, she reported giddily, "This is
great! I feel totally comfortable." Our armada of eight -- six singles, two
doubles -- cruised along in loose formation, stretched out over several hundred
yards. We reached Bugle Cay after a pleasant two hours.
Unfortunately,
not much about our sojourn there was pleasant. As Clark had warned, the bugs
were voracious, forcing us into long pants and sleeves almost immediately. Then,
just after we'd made camp on the island's one small corner of dry sand, a
drenching thunderstorm roared in, flattening two tents and flooding another. The
resulting improvised sleeping arrangements did much to promote a feeling of
group unity.
The next
morning we set off under ideal conditions -- smooth water and a slight tailwind
-- on the 9-mile run to Laughing Bird Cay. We quickly fell into the languid
Zen-like rhythm of long-distance paddling across the open sea. After two hours,
the speck on the horizon looked pretty much the same as it had when we set off,
the tops of the palm trees barely visible over the curvature of the earth. But
with an eerie suddenness, the slender trunks and the beach popped into view. Our
fantasy hd at last taken form, and the sight of it renewed flagging energy. One
by one, we nosed onto Laughing Bird's beach of white coral sand. No other sign
of human presence intruded.
Within
minutes, Hal the Math Professor, a paunchy, sedentary fellow who viewed
ocean kayaking
as a lamentably arduous means of transport between hammocks, had assumed his
favored horizontal position. The rest of us quickly set up our tents, taking
care to avoid potentially lethal coconut drop zones. Bursting with energy and
enthusiasm, we felt smugly superior to our lethargic comrade. Little did we know
what was to come.
Our
major task for the rest of the day was to catch dinner. David quickly organized
a spearfishing party, which swam out several hundred yards wielding
three-pronged spears and towing empty kayaks as giant floating creels, into
which bleeding, flopping fish were tossed as quickly as possible in the hope
that passing sharks would take no notice.
Barrier Island Kayak
A
peaceful sort, I chose not to join the bloodthirsty hunting party. (I did not
hesitate for an instant, however, to later scarf down my share of the spoils.)
Instead, I snorkeled, unarmed, a few yards offshore amid the phantasmagorical
underwater landscape of Belize's barrier reef. cartoonishly decorated fish
drifted among forests of elkhorn coral. Clouds of minnows flashed and billowed.
Floating just above a spherical brain coral that must have been 12 feet across,
I felt as if I were orbiting Ganymede.
Back on
shore, as the sun dropped below the horizon, we lounged in our hammocks, sipped
run and coconut milk, and watched an egret perch on a reef, motionless against
the copper sky. My energy level seemed to be inexorably declining. The palm
trees rustled in the breeze. Wavelets lapped at the sand. There wasn't a bug
anywhere. Yes, we agreed, this was a rather good approximation of
paradise.
For
dinner, David steamed up the day's catch -- hog snapper, French angelfish,
mackerel, and parrotfish, along with side orders of crab, conch, and lobster --
in Ricardo sauce, a spicy Belizean specialty. After-dinner entertainment
consisted of a palm-frond bonfire, David's off-color jokes involving various
tropical fruits, and the seven o'clock radio news broadcast from Belize City.
The lead story was the graduation of twenty students from a Red Cross training
course. I fell asleep in my hammock just as the full moon came up.
WE had
planned a one-day layover on Laughing Bird, but high winds kept us pinned down a
second day, by which time we began to fall irrevocably into the grip of tropical
ennui. The pace of island life soon approximated that of a unair-conditioned old
folks' home in August. Trivial matters loomed large from the languorous vantage
point of the hammock. Hey, Hal, you think that coconut up there is fixin' to
fall any time soon? (Hard to tell, we'll continue to monitor the situation.)
Should I make the five-minute walk to the end of the island now or later?
(Later; I don't feel like expending the effort just now to brush the sand off my
feet and find my sandals.) Time to snorkel? (Nah. The underwater light is better
in the late afternoon.)
The
hyperactive David, failing to recognize that the entire group had by now become
firm acolytes of Hal, at one point actually tried to rouse us with a game of
coconut bocce ball. But the sentiment of the hammock-bound was unanimous: sorry,
David. Not here, not now.
For
information on this trip, jungle/sea combo trips, and a three-day
cultural Mayan tour in Belize, contact Slickrock
Adventures: (800)390-5715.
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