Paget's Belize Journal #41

January 14: Caye Caulker Again

After my haircut I went walking around the village to see
what I could see. This is a nice little beach town (in the middle
of the ocean), pretty much focused on tourism and water sports.
One end of the island is mangrove swamp and apparently good for
bird-watching via canoe, but I didn't do it this time. There
were plenty of hummingbirds and egrets and other waders in town
to admire. Also a good collection of beach gift shops with T-shirts,
towels, souvenirs etc. I found a nice store with local crafts
and bought a pair of whelk shell earrings, which are excellent.
Particularly with the new hairdo.

The other activity if you're not sailing, snorkeling, kayaking,
windsurfing or fishing (actually, I didn't see anyone fishing,
except pelicans and frigate birds) is people-watching. I did
quite a lot of that. Caye Caulker was actually more interesting
to me than Ambergris Caye (the most popular tourist destination).
Caye Caulker seems to be where the sailing crowd hangs out, so
there are lots of beautiful sail boats with different colored
sails (I actually saw "red sails in the sunset") and
a great variety of people - different ages, different nationalities.
I had a number of nice casual conversations with tourists and
semi-permanent visitors who were pretty close to my own age - a
welcome change from the overwhelmingly young population I usually
interact with.

In the evening it rained some more, so I had dinner (a sickly
sweet rum punch, indifferent grilled fish and the worst rice
and beans I've eaten in this country), stopped by a disco which
was too crowded and too noisy for me, then went home and watched
Dirty Dancing on cable.

Things were better in the morning, I
found the perfect beach bar and restaurant which had good food
and coffee and just a generally good feel to it. Open air, thatched
roof, mahogany bar, several cages with parrots and other tropical
birds. It is called Popeye's (which is kinda why I hadn't stopped
there before). A nice find. Some more sunbathing and, since it
was Sunday, I worked one of the New York Times crossword puzzles
from the book I brought with me. Then back to Belize City on
the water taxi, a balmy, fun ride this time and back to Dangriga
with Tony and Therese (who had been attending a Tourism Board
meeting). A pretty good excursion.

I am going on the trip to Red Bank to see the migrating macaws
this weekend, so that will be my last trip before turning home.
I'm going with Godfrey who is a great guide, very good at spotting
iguanas beside the road, and all manner of birds, so it should
be a fun trip. Maybe we'll see some orchids too.

January 14: Geckos

I know I promised to write about cultural stuff, but I also
wanted to fill you in on some of the characteristics of geckos,
those lizard heroes who eat cockroaches and chirp me to sleep.
I have quite a few around now and they seem to be used to me.
Often if I wake up at night, there's a nice sized one sitting
on the window screen above my head, always in the same place
and I'm pretty sure it's the same one. My guardian gecko?

The
other morning I shuffled into the bathroom to brush my teeth
and there was a tiny one sitting in the sink looking at me. Scared
the hell out of both of us. It's important to understand that
these geckos are chameleons, i.e., they change colors depending
on what background they're resting on. So Laura speaks of them
as "those pinkish lizards," but at my house, they're
whitish. I have to say they're prettier at her place. They seem
to be born with this camouflage ability because even the tiniest
ones - no bigger than a skinny, leggy cricket - are rarely
caught in a contrasting color. As you have surmised, my walls
are white. And my underwear is mostly black. This is relevant
to the story.

For some reason, the babies are attracted to damp laundry.
So when I do my hand-washing and hang it on my little plastic
Chinese carousel with the built-in clothes pins, they like to
sit in among the underwear. If I forget and give the carousel
a little twirl, sometimes the baby geckos get surprised. And
then I have little slate gray lizards scrambling madly up the
walls toward the fuse box (a favorite hiding place) paling as
they go. Well, this is a slight exaggeration. The highest number
I've ever surprised in my underwear is two. If you were wondering,
they don't chirp as they scramble. They're very focused and very
silent. If they think (?!) you see them, though, they flatten
out and play dead. This does NOT seem like a very good survival
trait, since the slowest predator would likely find them in the
3 or 4 minutes that it takes them to turn (imperfectly) into
a wall. Possibly this works better in the jungle.

It's the weekend again, my last here and the Red Bank trip.
Wish me luck with the Scarlet Macaws.