If you read my pieces about Maxhapan or La Cubana, then you know how this story starts, if not then let me enlighten you. I was not, I repeat not a happy camper coming into Caye Caulker. I actually hated it the minute we stepped off the boat. I was exhausted; we had just finished taking a 6 hour long bus ride with no air conditioning from Placencia to Belize City only to be thrown around on a high-speed boat from Belize City to Caye Caulker that just absolutely felt like it would never end. Every time we thought "this just has to be Caye Caulker" we would pass the slice of land and keep right on trucking. This happened a lot. From there we hiked it to our AirBnb, which was further than we thought (but not actually far from town, we just thought it was closer which made it seem that much farther when we realized we had to keep going), while rolling and hauling our luggage. And to top it all off the whole island (peninsula? town?) had a fishy odor to it. When we set our stuff down and biked into town, every store and restaurant seemed to have odd hours, many of them weren't open, and everything was so crunched together that I was getting even more overwhelmed and stressed out. Just send me back to Placencia already!! We finally found a place to eat and I hated my meal, but loved Christina's, and then we headed back to Maxhapan Cabanas feeling defeated.
Boy what a good night's sleep on a full belly can cure! We were fresh the next day and ready to explore, I think having a snorkeling trip planned also helped get our energy and excitement level up. I was ready to trade the previous day's horrible water experience for a peaceful ride, looking at sea critters from the boat and up close in the water. And it was my birthday, so I was double thrilled. The snorkeling was great, our guide was lovely and I was so stoked to see a couple of eagle rays. They're just so majestic. We also met a solo traveler named Juila on the snorkeling trip, who we bumped into quite often after that. It was nice to have another gal to hang out with and join our two-person group and our fun. Most of our time was honestly spent in a hammock, wandering around, meeting stray cats (okay, just one, but he had one eye and was super cool), or eating/drinking and I was just fine with that.
In the end I wound up falling in love with Caye Caulker more than Placencia, just feeling even more calm and relaxed here, which I didn't know was possible. What I at first didn't like about this spot, besides my initial grumpy judgement, was the lack of anything to do. It seemed that Caye Caulker was more of a hub, just a place to stay in order to do all these different day trips and things. But, that's what I ended up loving about it. There wasn't much to do in terms of exploring really. But what you did get to do is run into the same people over and over, making conversation with them, dancing with them and being able to say hi to each other as you passed in the street or wound up at the same bar for the night. I've never been able to do that anywhere else and it was a nice little sense of community. I thoroughly enjoyed taking real advantage of the nice weather to sway in the hammock on our AirBnb's porch, wandering the streets to see what sights you may have missed the day before, and partying, dancing, and drinking with aforementioned strangers that became familiar faces. I think I really found my zen here and would love to return just to have a few days of pure relaxation either before or after another trip nearby.
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