A Kayak Trip in Belize Bound to Please Bath-warm seas, beer and lobster
By Debra Cummings
Re-Printed from: The Province-Feb 1, 1998)

Glover's Reef, Belize-Once upon a time, far away, in a land atwitter with green and orange and purple birds, a man with red glasses was booted out of his house. One day, his story goes, his wife simply turfed him.

Shouldering the burden of raising seven children alone, she wiped her hands on her apron and said to this man called Frank, "Go, mon, you do me no good."

But when you're trapped in the tiny Central American country of Belize, where's a guy like Frank supposed to go?

"Here, mon, that's why I'm here, right here, mon," says Frank, patting the smooth grooves of a palm tree 65 kilometres offshore on Southwest Caye.

Fiver years ago, Frank sought refuge on this spit of land, owned by the influential Usher family. He promised to stand guard against any 20th century pirates who might try to pilfer the handful of homes on the remote atoll.

And so lives Frank, in a wooden shack on three-metre stilts, surrounded by mounds of empty rum bottles, coconut husks and rusty Spam cans.

The 50-year old Rasta man fidgets with his Medusa mop of dreadlocks as he shows us around. Frank's little fiefdom is anything but the Gulag. Living in exile on such an idyll is more like assuming a part in a Caribbean cliché or a Gauguin painting.

Overhead, a ceiling of palms rattles softly in the breeze, the giant leaves casting razor-sharp shadows across the island. Occasionally a coconut thuds to the sandy floor, kept immaculately swept by Guadeloupe, the island's caretaker.

The outhouse and ramshackle kitchen building are framed with pink, shiny conch shells. Empty hammocks hang with off-season loneliness, waiting for kayakers who come here November to May with Vancouver's Island Expeditions.

So here I am in mid-September, with one of the company's owners, Denver Willson-Rymer, and a paddler from West Virginia, John Maloney. It's just us, Frank and Guadeloupe.

Later in the week, some of the Usher family turns up for a late night fish fry.

Like last year's 500 tourists who came with Island Expeditions to kayak waterways in Belize, I want time to unravel slowly, languidly.matching the pace of this place.

After leaving behind the heat and grit of Belize City, we spent two hours bashing trough waves to reach the tip of Glover's Reef, where Southwest Caye pops out of the ocean.

Too battered to kayak, I set up my tent and then squeeze on a mask and snorkel, wriggle into some fins and hike backwards into the bathtub-warm waters to take a closer look at the coral reefs I first spotted from the clouds.

Five metres offshore, the world's fifth longest coral reef begins. Little rubbery fingers of crimson coral snap around me.. The fish appear. Triggerfish zoom past, taunting spiky urchins far below. Parrotfish gnaw stony bits of coral against an underwater wall and lumpy trunkfish whirl their paths over the coral floor.

Then a black shadow blots out a cave in front of me. It's Pappy, our Belizean guide-cum-spear-fisherman extraordinaire.

Armed with a two-metre, triple pronged Hawaiian sling, he plunges in, stabs two lobsters and hauls tem up, all in one breath. "Supper," he grins, pulling off his mask.

Sizzled in butter, rum and fresh coconut milk, our lobster feed is washed down with Beliken beer. Then Pappy and Frank retreat to their hammocks, wedges of coconut cake in hand, to gaze at the sheet of stars overhead. And the stories begin.

The tales flow as steadily as Caribbean rum, from outrage over a new, nearby Taiwanese lobster operation, to Pappy's cultural calamities on his nine-month visit to Canada. And, just like most campfire chats that tread on political ground, everyone is united universal glee of slagging one's own government.

It was Pappy, a man of may proverbs, who summed it up best: "Any government is like a coconut tree. You can paint the tree but will always bear the same fruit." To a tourist, such moments of cultural exchange appear to flow naturally. But the seeds were carefully planted by Canadians Tim Boys and former co-owner William Sirota, when they brought their first visitors to Belize 10 years ago.

Their philosophy was simple: Bring Canadians to this pristine area and give them more than just a sport-related or skill-based adventure. Expose them culturally and physically to another environment.

And who better to tell the country's legends than Belizeans themselves, whose working language is English. Now each tour group-they'll run 70 trips this year-is headed by both a Belizean and a North American.

"Our Belizean guides give our clients a sense of this country's history and culture where our North American guides are likely to have a marine biology or ornithology background and come with excellent first-aid skill," explains Willson-Rymer.

Depending on the trip-whether it's the eight-day Glovers Reef/Coral Jaguar Expedition, the Coral Islands paddle or the one week inland Mayan tour-cultural opportunities pepper the itinerary.

Our Glovers Reef trip wraps up with a visit to elder drum-makers in the ramshackle village of Dangriga. We are entertained and fed local cuisine such as cassava bread with mango dips, grilled seafood and stewed chicken served with the proverbial piles of rice and beans.

The Mayan river trip revolves around visits to remote villages such as Aguacate in the Toledo district and a music festival.

Perhaps, adds Wilson-Rymer, the ultimate cultural exchanges are the new school programs that run over spring break and include kayaking, coconut oil-making, cassava preparation and drum-building workshops.

Some trips break camp every day, kayaking along this necklace of sandy cayes. We chose Southwest as a base camp.

For a destination, you can paddle to a marine reserve and research centre several kilometres away, poke through miles of mangroves as other nearby outcrops, or simply while away the hours like we did.

Paddle for a bit. Hop overboard in snorkelling gear, poke around the coral and admire the shimmer of fish below, then pop back in your boat. Paddle farther. Fish a bit.

Be prepared to catch something. John and Pappy hauled in 5.5 and 6.3 kilogram barracudas using a primitive hook and line.

Snorkel. Repeat process. Again. And again.

Then head in for a few beach-bound, slothful hours.

Here, the relaxed ethos of the Belizean way is even more pronounced. There may be nowhere else on Earth quite so soporific as Southwest Caye.

Before you drift off in a hammock, lulled by the lap of warm waters and swish of palm trees, be sure to check the leaves above you. Coconuts have brained more than a few tourists.

The penalty for such stupidity, chuckles Frank, nudging his red glasses up his pudgy nose, "is to live here, mon, in paradise with me, mon."

To live like Robinson Crusoe-not a bad fate, I thought to myself. As for Frank, "the mon," he too would be okay if he'd kick his Belizean passion for spam.

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