Belize - The Cayes: Ambergis Caye, Caye Caulker, the Turneffe Islands & Beyond

By Vivien Lougheed

We travel to grow – our Adventure Guides show you how. Experience the places you visit more directly, freshly, intensely than you would otherwise – sometimes best done on foot, in a canoe, or through cultural adventures like art courses, cooking classes,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hunter Publishing
• Release date: Dec 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781588438638

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The Cayes of Belize: Ambergris Caye, Caye Caulker, the Turneffe Islands Atoll & Beyond

Vivien Lougheed

HUNTER PUBLISHING, INC,

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© 2010 Hunter Publishing, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This guide focuses on recreational activities. As all such activities contain elements of risk, the publisher, author, affiliated individuals and companies disclaim responsibility for any injury, harm, or illness that may occur to anyone through, or by use of, the information in this book. Every effort was made to insure the accuracy of information in this book, but the publisher and author do not assume, and hereby disclaim, liability for any loss or damage caused by errors, omissions, misleading information or potential travel problems caused by this guide, even if such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause.

Introduction 

HISTORY 

GOVERNMENT 

ECONOMY 

PEOPLE & CULTURE 

GEOGRAPHY 

HOW THE LAND WAS FORMED 

ENVIRONMENTS 

OFFSHORE 

PARKS 

CLIMATE 

PLANT LIFE 

ANIMAL LIFE 

UNDERWATER LIFE 

NATIONAL EMBLEMS 

Travel Information 

FACTS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS 

WHEN TO GO 

WHAT TO TAKE 

HEALTH CONCERNS 

MONEY MATTERS 

PRICE SCALES 

BANKING/EXCHANGE 

TAXES & TIPPING 

PLANNING YOUR EXPENSES 

MEASUREMENTS 

DANGERS & ANNOYANCES 

COMMUNICATIONS 

CULTURE SHOCK 

PUBLIC AFFECTION 

GAY & LESBIAN TRAVEL 

HUMAN RIGHTS 

FOOD 

TRADITIONAL DISHES 

BOOKING A ROOM 

GETTING HERE 

GETTING AROUND 

DIRECTORY

OUTFITTERS & TOUR OPERATORS

WATER TAXI SERVICE

CAR RENTAL COMPANIES

AIRLINES

BUS COMPANIES

EMBASSIES

EMERGENCIES

INSURANCE COMPANIES

USEFUL WEBSITES

The Cayes 

THE CAYES IN A NUTSHELL 

NATURAL HISTORY 

DIVING & SNORKELING 

GETTING HERE 

NORTHERN CAYES 

AMBERGRIS CAYE 

HISTORY 

GETTING HERE & GETTING AROUND 

SIGHTSEEING 

THINGS TO DO 

ADVENTURES ON WATER 

ADVENTURES ON LAND 

EQUIPMENT RENTALS & TOUR AGENCIES 

SERVICES 

SHOPPING 

NIGHTLIFE 

PLACES TO STAY 

PLACES TO EAT 

CAYE CAULKER 

HISTORY 

GETTING HERE 

ADVENTURES ON WATER 

ADVENTURES ON LAND 

EQUIPMENT RENTAL & TOUR GUIDES 

SERVICES 

SHOPPING 

NIGHTLIFE 

PLACES TO STAY 

PLACES TO EAT 

CAYES NEAR BELIZE CITY 

MOHO CAYE 

CHAPEL CAYE 

SERGEANT'S CAYE & GOFF'S CAYE 

RENDEZVOUS & PAUNCH CAYES 

ST. GEORGE'S CAYE 

SWALLOW CAYE 

GALLOWS POINT & ENGLISH CAYES 

SPANISH LOOKOUT 

BLUEFIELDS RANGE 

TURNEFFE ISLANDS ATOLL 

LIGHTHOUSE REEF ATOLL 

CAYES NEAR DANGRIGA 

TOBACCO CAYE 

COCKNEY ISLAND 

SOUTH WATER CAYE 

GLOVER'S REEF ATOLL 

CAYES NEAR PLACENCIA 

LAUGHING BIRD CAYE 

RANGUANA CAYE 

SAPODILLA CAYES 

LIME CAYE 

HUNTING CAYE 

CAYES NEAR PUNTA GORDA 

WILD CANE CAYE 

SNAKE CAYES 

PORT HONDURAS MARINE RESERVE 

DIRECTORIES 

o OUTFITTERS, GUIDES & TOUR OPERATORS

o SHOPPING

o SIGHTS/ATTRACTIONS

o GROUPS/ORGANIZATIONS

o GOLF

o TRANSPORT

o SERVICES

o USEFUL WEBSITES

PLACES TO STAY

PLACES TO EAT

Appendix 

EMERGENCY CONTACTS 

EMBASSIES

CONSULATES

Introduction 

In mid-winter, when gales off the plains of Siberia blow outside my window in northern Canada, I often close my eyes and visualize Belize. I see sun, sand and sea. I see white beaches, blue skies and clear waters. My memory, like a television camera, shifts to the largest coral reef in the Americas, a world brimming with exotic life: eels, jellyfish, sharks and fish striped in green and red, or dotted in purple. 

This vision is what draws most people to Belize. They arrive from harsh climates and head for the islands to snorkel, swim, dive, fish, sail and hang out in the sun. They play golf, eat spicy foods, read books and drink beer. Most of all, they relax. 

But if you take the time, you will find that there is more to Belize than a blissful rest in paradise. For archeology buffs there are numerous ancient Maya ruins to explore at will and an additional few that can be visited after a permit is obtained. Wildlife enthusiasts can visit the animal preserves and maybe catch a glimpse of a mountain cow (tapir) or jaguar, an osprey or toucan. There are over 200 species of birds to identify at any time of the year and an equal number of different types of orchids. Those interested in herbal medicines will find delight in a jungle full of potions to cure almost anything from a love-struck heart to a parasitic infection. For the photographer, there are an endless number of exotic images to capture and seldom a cloudy sky to dull the photograph. Belize is visually stunning. 

The country also has an intriguing modern history involving pirates and buccaneers, wrecked ships and the horrors of the slave trade. Throughout the country, remnants of this history remain. If you take the time to listen, you can always find someone willing to tell you their own version of these historical events. Belizeans are proud of their exotic past and of the fact that their varied cultures live together peacefully, a big contrast to most of Central America. 

Belize offers every type of accommodation imaginable, from the romantic grass hut on a secluded island to the luxurious five-star hotel complete with doorman. Restaurants can be as simple as someone's kitchen in the country or as dazzling as the dining room at Versailles. There are adventure specialists ready to give you a custom tour. If you're an independent traveler, head out on your own using this book or start walking and see where the road takes you. 

The best time to come to Belize is during their summer, between November and May. This is the dry season, when clouds are seldom seen and the winds never rise above a few miles an hour. Winter, or wet season, is between May and November. This is when the waters can be a bit murky and the winds can increase to hurricane levels. However, winter offers its own splendor. The jungle becomes lush, the flowers abundant, and the skies dramatic. Archeological sites are less visited. 

Regardless of the time of year you arrive, your interests or the style of travel you choose, one thing is certain: you will have a grand time in Belize and leaving will be difficult. 

AUTHOR'S CHOICE OF MUST DO'S 

Look for birds in the gardens at Sittee River Lodge. 

Have dinner at Capricorn's on Ambergris Caye, then take the moonlight boat trip home. 

Take a boat tour to see manatee. 

Try overnight caving at Caves Branch River. 

Listen to the tree frogs at night at Aguada Inn. Listen to howler monkeys at the Community Baboon Sanctuary. 

HISTORY 

Anywhere I go, I want to know who was there before me. I want to know their stories. I've been traveling in Latin America for about 25 years now, so it is easy for me to get caught up in pre-Columbian history. 

The history of Belize is part of the history of the greatest of all ancient American civilizations. During the Classic Period of the Maya, Belize was the heart of the empire, with an estimated population of one million people. 

But even before the Maya, who? 

PALEO-INDIANS 

The main pattern of Paleo-Indian settlement in the Americas (20000-7000 BC approx.) is generally agreed upon, though dates and details keep changing and infighting among anthropologists and archeologists is intense. By about 20000 BC, the last ice age was into a long decline. The ice pack that covered most of Canada and the northeastern United States retreated, creating a corridor from Beringia (connecting Asia and North America) down into ice-free southern Alberta. From there the rest of the Americas was wide open, but migrants kept moving south down the mountain chains. They stuck to the highlands because these areas supported the large herbivores that people ate: mammoth, mastodon, caribou, bison, horse, giant armadillo, giant sloth, guanaco, llama and vicuña. 

The dating of sites in the Americas shows the progression, first north to south, then out to the sides. These dates also show how long the process took. Sites like Monte Verde in southern Chile have been reliably dated to about 12000-10000 BC. Estimates are that in Mesoamerica, the occupied parts of pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America, the highlands may have been populated as early as 18000 BC. 

Archeologists also learn from the sites how the Paleo-Indians lived. In Monte Verde wood and skin huts contained brazier pits. Mastodon and other large herbivore bones have been found, along with the remains of seeds, nuts, berries and roots. Tools included stone hand axes, choppers and scrapers; some of these tools may have had wooden handles. The weapons were wooden lances and stones chosen or shaped so that they could be hurled by slings. 

Once the Americas were occupied from top to bottom, population pressure and global warming resulted in movement into the lowlands, along the coastlines (which were further out to sea, then), and onto the Caribbean islands. The rising temperatures changed the highlands in particular, leaving them less habitable. In Mesoamerica, grasslands turned to deserts and large herbivores disappeared, leaving smaller game like rabbit and deer. 

Along the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, grasslands turned into forests. Since Mesoamerica was, and still is, rich in edible plants, like mesquite, cactus and agave, people ate more grains, fruits and vegetables and less meat, though ducks and dogs were being domesticated as a meat supply. By 11000 BC, people were eating wild corn, onions, amaranth (an herb with a showy flower), avocado, acorns, piñon nuts, chili peppers, maguey (used for making an alcoholic beverage), and prickly pear. By 8000 BC, the Paleo-Indian period of Mesoamerica was coming to an end. Chasing game was giving way to clearing land, cultivating domestic plants and raising domestic animals. 

By 7000 BC, the nomadic hunters were growing crops, especially squash, avocado and chili pepper. By 5000 BC, maize - a small, wheat-like ancestor of corn - was being grown in the Tehuacan Valley of Southern Mexico. By 3000 BC, pit house settlements were popular. A pit house was a tent-like wood, wattle and daubed-mud structure erected over a hole dug into the ground. By 2300 BC, pottery replaced stone jars and bowls, village life was the norm and population growth was exploding. 

ARAWAK & CARIB INDIANS 

There are no remains of Paleo-Indian settlements in Belize, though certainly such settlements did exist. Nor have anthropologists and linguists distinguished the shifting territories of the tribes, language groups or cultures that might first have settled in various parts of Mesoamerica. In Belize, the ancestors of the Maya might have come first. Other likely candidates are the Arawak and Carib Indians. Their settlements in Venezuela and the Guyanas date back to about 2000 BC. Eventually, they occupied much of the Caribbean shoreline and most of the islands. When Columbus first landed in America, he met the Arawak. 

Pottery is evidence of early cave dwellers

Both tribes have been traced to the upper Amazon River, the Arawak from around the junction of the Amazon and Rio Negro (where Manaus is now), and the Carib from further downriver. In the Amazon Basin, Arawak farming settlements have been traced back to about 7000 BC. The story of the Arawak and the Carib has become a kind of myth, a Cain and Abel story wherein the warlike, meat-eating (and cannibalistic) Carib chase the peaceful, vegetarian Arawak from the Amazon into the Orinoco, around the Caribbean shoreline and out onto the islands, and then back to the Orinoco again. 

By the end of the 1500s, the Arawak had completely disappeared from the islands. Most of them (about 30,000 are left, due to the Caribs and European exploitation and disease) live in Venezuela and the Guyanas. The Carib are still found throughout the Caribbean islands. 

Both tribes probably settled at various times in Belize, though the only real sign of them is the Carib blood that lives on in the Garifuna, Garinago, or Black Carib of Roatan and Bonacca, Honduras and Belize. 

MAYA INDIANS 

The origins of the Maya in Paleo-Indian America have not yet been traced. Their language, it has recently been discovered, is similar to Uru and Chipaya in the highlands of Bolivia, so their migration pattern could be as complex as that of the Arawak and Carib. 

The archeological record dates Maya sites in Southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Honduras, El Salvador and Belize back to 2000 BC. The earliest known Maya settlement in Belize is Cuello in the Orange Walk District. It existed 2,600 years ago. Some archeologists think that the Maya could have spread from the coast into the interior. 

In the Classic Period of Maya civilization (AD 250-1000), the biggest centers were in Guatemala, Chiapas, Campeche and Tobasco in Mexico, and in Honduras, El Salvador and the Yucatán. The major civic centers in Belize were Altun Ha, Lubaantun, El Pilar, Xunantunich, and Caracol. 

The details of Maya civilization are gradually falling into place, though big pieces of the story are missing, like why the civilization began to decline shortly before the Europeans arrived. By that time, the big cities had been abandoned, and the center of Maya power was shifting north to the Yucatán. Overpopulation and depletion of land is the usual explanation. An overly rigid social structure - that favored inherited rank and knowledge over ability - is another. Many years of drought is the most recent explanation.

Maya civilization, along with the sister Mesoamerican civilizations like the Zapotec and Mixtec around Oaxaca and the Olmecs on the Gulf of Mexico, started to flourish around 500 BC. This development was a result of improved agricultural techniques. There was more time for consolidation and improvement. Textiles replaced hides, ceramics replaced worked stone, bricks replaced wattle. More and more plant types were domesticated (seeds selected, sorted and planted); Mesoamerica, particularly the Guatemalan highlands, was for a time one of the world centers of plant domestication. After harvests, fields were burned and seeds were planted with a pointed, fire-hardened digging stick; the same slash-and-burn method is still used today. 

Governance, too, became more technical. The extended family units of the Paleo-Indians gave way to village clusters, and leadership became more bureaucratic - though the Maya city-states were never part of a monolithic empire as was the case with the Incas and Aztecs. During the Classic Period, Maya society was divided into ranks and classes. The supreme rulers inherited their positions, and were combined secular/religious leaders or priest-nobles. Artisans, merchants and farmers were also separate classes and inherited their specialties. 

While Europe seemed to be stagnating during and after the decline of Roman power, Mesoamerican civilizations flourished. 

The Mayalanguagewas written using a set of pictorial symbols from the Olmec. The symbols were like Chinese ideograms: a single picture represented a word, idea or number. Some glyphs are phonetic syllables that spell out words. Decoding is still in progress. Unfortunately, Spanish priests destroyed as much of this writing as they could. Almost everything written on parchment and bark and bound into books was burned. The Catholic church considered the writing heretical. But giant, carved-stone stone stelae, that seem to record important events and astronomical calculations have survived. 

The Maya also developed anumerologythat they used effectively, especially in their calculations of time. Their number system was based on 20, with the numbers 1 to 19 indicated by dots and dashes and the zero by a shell. This was much more efficient than the Roman numeral system being used in Europe at the time. The fact that the Maya had conceived of a zero put them ahead of European mathematicians. They were able to calculate numbers to over one million. Using their number system and astronomical observations, they calculated the year at 365.2425 days, long before Europeans arrived at their estimation of 365.2422 days. The Maya lunar calendar used a system of 18 months, each with 20 days, to equal 360 days. A final five unlucky days were at the end of the year. After calculating the orbit of Venus to within a few seconds, they even devised a Venusian calendar a full 1,000 years before Europeans were able to achieve this, and the Maya knew that Venus passed between the earth and the sun every 584 days. Modern calculations put it at 583.92 days. 

These calculations, too, were carved on stone stellae, not as part of the calculation process, but to teach the calculations to the public. No one knows why the Maya were so interested in time. Macro-time, that is; they don't seem to have paid much attention to counting hours and minutes. 

Inengineering, the Maya were like the Egyptians as to the size of their projects. They built clay-lined reservoirs in places where water was scarce, and causeways to direct the flow of water or move it from place to place. They terraced hills - necessary when you live in mountains and depend on agriculture. They put swamps into production (mostly growing maize and cacao) with a system of raised fields, dredging out soil and piling it at set intervals to create intersecting ridges. From the air, these raised fields look like small islands connected by dykes. They are being studied, in northern Belize, at the Pulltrouser Swamp, and their use between 150 BC and AD 850 has been conclusively documented. 

Maya ruins like this one are scattered throughout Belize

Finally, the Maya built incredibleceremonialcentersin their cities. They did this without metal tools, the wheel (though they had toys with wheels) and the arch. Basically, they backpacked in rubble, dumped it, shaped it level by level (if a pyramid was being constructed), and then faced it with limestone blocks held together by mortar. Plazas were sloped to let water run off; in dry areas, they sloped into reservoirs or lined trenches that led to reservoirs. Roads connecting the plazas were made of rubble topped with limestone chips and packed with giant stones. 

Temples were built on the tops of the pyramids, and roof combs topped the temples, making the structures very high. The main structure at Xunantunich is the second-highest Maya structure in Belize, measuring over 127 feet (38 meters). 

The Maya never developed the arch. Instead, they put sapodilla wood or heavy stone lintels over doorways and used the corbel vault for chambers in adjoining palaces and temples. With the vault, the stones in a wall were inched inward until the two sides met at the top. The result was claustrophobic compared to an arch, and it made for narrow doors when it was used instead of a lintel. 

Commerce and trade flourished among the Maya. They were not into refining metals, it seems, and importedgoldcame from southern Central America.Saltwas being harvested along the coasts by 300 BC or earlier. Sea salt was eaten with food and used to preserve meat and fish for storage and transportation. Products from coastal areas - like salt and shells used in tools and jewelry - were transported far inland and traded for food and jade. This was all done using backpacks (the Maya didn't make use of pack animals). However, for accessing islands like the Turneffes, (18 miles offshore, past the Barrier Reef) and the cayes along the reef, the Maya built dugouts capable of holding up to 50 people and some freight. Cacao beans were used as currency. Cacao was the Maya's favorite drink; the beans were roasted, ground and mixed with maize and water. 

The Maya had drugs too. Their alcohol was a fermented honey and bark drink calledbalche. It may have been used only for ceremonial purposes, though it would take a lot of evidence to convince me of that. The Maya were into visions as a part of their religious rituals, hallucinations created mainly by bloodletting, but also by the use of balche and wild tobacco which is much more potent than our tobacco. And for sports, there were ballparks, always located in the cities' ceremonial centers. The game, called Pok-A-Tok, featured a five-pound rubber ball and was a combination of basketball, football and soccer. Protective clothing made of wicker or leather was worn. 

A GAME TO DIE FOR 

The captains of the losing teams of the ballgames were all sacrificed toEk Chuah, the Maya