Day 8--Cay Caulker

We're winging our way home now, so I’d better fill you in on the last 2 days.

I haven’t really said much about Cay Caulker. We took a water taxi to Cay Caulker from Belize city on our return from Tikal.

It was a really beautiful 45-minute ride through bright blue water, not at all close to shore. When you could see shore, it was mangroves and sandy beaches. NOT developed.

On arrival, the crew offloaded our luggage and an oversized golf cart taxi took it up the street to our hotel. We walked. 2 blocks!
Cay Caulker Hotel
No cars on this island. There are golf carts which you could own but the tourists can rent, and most have bicycles.

Cay transportation
The roadways, if you can call them that, are limestone with an incredible number of potholes (due to the rain, no doubt).Drivers and bikers weave down the road SLOWLY, avoiding first this pothole and then that one in a sort of serpentine fashion. These potholes are full of limestony water, as rain comes and goes.

There are many restaurants (seafood and chicken) many day spas and grocery stores (which sell rum, by the way). The local beer is Belikin, and very good.

Rob and I did many walks but the bird population seems to be Great-tailed grackles, Frigate birds and Brown Pelicans.
Immature Magnificent Frigatebird
This was a Royal Tern, but notice the one we caught by accident behind it with a yellow bill tip. it is a Sandwich Tern. [Notice also the tern preening next to the Royal Tern. It is wearing a leg band. SSW]
Ringed Kingfisher
We did admire a few strange trees and the beautiful flowering shrubs and trees. I think if we could have flowering trees in Toronto at this time of year, I wouldn’t hate winter so much.

Almost round leaves on the tree below. Below, one I found on the ground.

One of the round leaves that i found on the ground from the tree above
Silvia, my new daughter, has a friend Eva in Cay Caulker who runs a Spa. We went along to the shop to meet Eva and, unbeknownst to us, Silvia had arranged a Couple’s Massage for Rob and me. We have not done that before. It was a wonderfully relaxing hour of being marinated in lavender oil, and we left there smelling fabulous and feeling great. NOTHING LIKE THE MASSAGES WE GOT IN SOUTH INDIA (if you read that story, and if you didn’t, let’s just say there was a lot of pain and humiliation involved).
Me entering the Day Spa

Day Spa workers
A cemetery we passed

We had overcast skies and rain on and off, which was playing havoc with tourists’ plans to snorkel or take sunset cruises. We decided to take the Sunset Cruise even though the sun was not out, but it was beginning to look like the sky was clearing way over there . . . . Only one other couple signed up for this sail (the iffy forecast . . .) The two were from New Hampshire—very congenial—and there were two crew as well who served us bottomless rum punch drinks and tortilla chips. It was warm and delicious out on the water. No real sunset, as the sun never came out, but it  didn’t matter.We were so glad we had done this.

At the end, as we were in the shack paying, the sky opened up and we slopped home in a deluge—without rain gear—but nonetheless grateful for perfect weather on the water.               Hansi 

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