Signed by Scarlett

Welcome to part two of the backpacking diaries and this part is all about Belize, more specifically Caye Caulker.

Caye Caulker

A bus journey and a ferry ride later we had arrived in our second country of the trip and to the beautiful island of Caye Caulker.

Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official language, however with a Caribbean twang and the Belize Dollar is decorated with the late Queen Elizabeth II due to us colonising the country (and many others…).

Caye Caulker island is only five miles long and adopts the motto “go slow” as locals and tourists get around by bicycle or golf cart and always take everything slow. I walked a bit too quick down the street and had someone shout at me to go slow!

On our journey here, we met Rachel from Australia, who we quickly got along with and we would find out we were in the same room at our hostel! We also met two other girls called Sophie and Eva who were really lovely.

Hostel: Bella’s Backpackers – £10.74 pppn

If you’ve backpacked Central America or researched Belize, then you’ve probably heard of Bella’s Backpackers, and not really for good reasons.

Having a reputation due to a few reasons, it’s not the cleanliest and hasn’t got the best facilities. For some reason they turned the water off at night so just keep that in mind when needing the toilet! But we met some really lovely people and were honestly quite lucky with our room so we loved our stay in Caye Caulker.

Except the 6-year-old girl who kept looking in our window and calling me and my hair ugly, curly hair girls who can’t brush your hair you understand the problem!

The food and drinks on this island are great, from Caribbean chicken and a ‘fryjack’ (deep fried dough served for breakfast usually with traditional breakfast food like eggs and bacon inside) to bagels from ‘Ice n Beans’ (which believe it or not was my first ever bagel).

Also pro tip, everyone here is so lovely so if you go somewhere and ask if they can do happy hour, chances are they will make one up for you and you’ll get three drinks for the price of one!

And with this beautiful view…

A key reason why people visit Caye Caulker is to go on the snorkelling tour, we looked at a few different tours in the area and eventually chose ‘EZ-Boys’ after feeling it was the best bang for your buck.

The tour was from 9:30am – 4:30pm and consisted of lunch, multiple snacks and unlimited rum punch as we visited the ‘Coral Garden’, ‘Shark and Ray Alley’ and ‘Hot Chan Channel’, which is the second largest barrier reef in the world.

This has got to be one of the best things I’ve ever done as we swam with nurse sharks, sting-rays, a turtle and many fish and coral.

One of the tour guides swam in with us and would deep-dive to point out certain fish or coral and come back up to tell us what it was and some very interesting facts.

The whole day was fantastic and will be a day I’ll never forget.

That evening a ton of us from the tour and our hostel decided to go to the infamous ‘Wish Willy’s’ – a local man who cooks for the locals in his back garden, he said he usually serves 150 people in an evening. A quick question of meat or fish and he’ll serve up an incredible meal with rice and veg with a huge selection of drinks that you can help yourself to.

We may have helped ourselves a bit too much as the group of us found ourselves later on in the bar with Willy himself and his golf cart as transport on this very small island.

Another part of the island you can go and help feed sting-rays every day as tens of them come to be fed and they will swim all over your feet, if you sit, they will even go up your side!

This island has got to be one of, if not, the most unique place I’ve ever had the pleasure of staying.

We wish we stayed even longer and I would be back in a heartbeat.