I took the San Pedro taxi to Caye Caulker yesterday and am liking it here already! The locals are pretty chill, Belikan beer is served cold as cold and the water is clean and clear.
Fell out in my room for 30 minutes, worn out. Woke up and laughed at the changes in latitudes effect on me. I need practice. My Tevas are chafing my little toe. LOL!
Hit the Enjoy pub next door for jerk chicken stew that was pretty good. Oddly, i tasted the cinnamon’y aspect of the allspice more than usual due to the Scotch Bonnet being toned down, i suspect.
4 lime happy hour daquiris disappeared surprisingly fast so i toddled home amid the halloween trick or treaters being escorted by their parents, happily perched on their golf carts and shooting the breeze w their neighbors as they navigated the mean streets of Caye Caulker amid a heaving tide of princesses, skeletons, pirates and spider men.
Woke up this morning hankering for a breakfast Fry Jack, which looks like a regular fry bread crossed with a pita bread, then loaded inside with all the fixin’s you can name. Went to Errolyn’s and ordered mine with eggs, ham, beans and something I forget. Nice but it needs something, not sure what. Take out the sliced processed ham and put in some roasted pork would be cool but it would take a lot of prep time compared to what they are doing now.
Great staff and a nice deck to eat on make it worth going back.
On edit: Argh! The something extra it needs is the salsa verde i saw on one side of the counter. Now i really need to go back, if only to try the salsa.
Then I walked north on Avenida Hicaco to Playa Asuncion grabbing a very nice simple English Breakfast Tea served iced at Magic Cup. Again, great people working there but the music is Adele-light with a little M&M mixed in, not this country boys favorite sound. LOL!
A @ZivBnd travel post!! It has been far too long. This is exciting… Hope you have a wonderful and delicious stay! And that you see some cats or other photogenic animals.
It has been a rainy couple days in Caye Caulker and the wind is churning up the silt so I have not gone snorkeling yet. The theme of my stay so far is walking in the rain. But the food has been pretty good so there is that!
I had a really good fish curry at Chef Juan’s with a side of a nice potato salad with vegies, a nice meal but the unfriendliest place I have been in my entire stay. I may have hit them on a bad day.
Then I had a nice small’ish red snapper with a huge plateful of fish and conch ceviche at the Sunset Pelican. The odd thing was it did not taste of lime or citrus at all and I could not find the conch to save my life. Maybe what I thought was calamari was conch? That dish just confused me, it was not bad, it just was not what I expected I guess.
But then I had probably the best dish I have had during my entire stay. It was Stewed Chicken from Fernandez’ take out window. Simply delicious chicken with a touch of heat and the rice/beans were better than most here, not quite as overcooked and packing just a bit of spice.
But I have been kind of disappointed in the wild life. So far the only lizards I have spotted were the concrete ones on a wall. Until I looked a bit closer…
And I have still not gotten up the nerve to ask what the “pterodactyl” birds are, they are seabirds with bent wings and a forked tail, just beautiful animals.
But I did have a cat encounter. I had a rather good Huevos Rancheros at Amor y Cafe and a tuxedo clad cat came by to say hello. The owner tried to scare it away, cat was having none of it. Owner went and got the spray bottle and missed the cat by an intentional mile. Cat sauntered off and hunkered down under the table next to me. Somehow I do not think the owner is trying to drive this cat away with enough intensity. LOL!
What a treat to read this post! I do think that what you thought was calamari (the small white chunks) was actually conch. Not a fan myself but perhaps that’s because I ate it before I understood that I’m allergic to shellfish. Glad the cat found you!
More rain and an interesting breakfast at Amor y Cafe. I ordered the fresh hot little fry jacks which are a great substitute for corn tortillas. I got them w soft boiled eggs, cucumber, tomato and bacon expecting to put the Marie Sharps Habanero to good use.
So i got the soft boiled eggs and the egg cup only went a quarter of the way up the egg, not 2/3’s like i am used to.
So how does one go about eating a soft boiled egg if the egg cup only goes up 1/4 of the way? I usually remove the shell down to the rim of the egg cup and tuck in w a small spoon but this morning i had my egg tipping over and the jammy egg yolk making a slow run for it or the soft egg white getting split by the egg shell. One egg arrived big end down, one big end up, both were a pain.
I looked at Amazon and though most egg cups were tall ones like i have used before, plenty were shorter egg cup types.
So it was operator error.
I was laughing at my ineptitude but in the future i would like to do a better job of it. The eggs were delicious but i lost some of the jammy richness because i ran out of fry jack to soak up the yolks.
Raining harder now. I travel on shoulder months all the time and until this trip i have always lucked out w regards to weather.
This trip? Not so much.
I am back in Belize and Caye Caulker, six months later! And I just found out lobster season does not start until July 1st.
So far the big winner for seafood was a simple fish filet with vegetables served with plantains and beans and rice at Maggie’s Sunset. Slightly peppery, prepared on a BBQ wrapped in tin foil, completely delicious. Marie Sharps hot sauce for the beans and rice but the fish were perfect on their own.
Then it was off to Barefoot Caribe for a margarita, rocks, no salt and an evening view of the Gulf with frigate birds diving on the guys gutting todays catch. Some nice looking fish, even at a distance.
I also had a good but odd breakfast at the Happy Lobster. Stewed shrimp w eggs and fry jack turned out to be stewed shrimp w a crepe which seems odd. Both the shrimp and the eggs were rather good so i was not complaining.
I find it interesting that Belize has fry jacks. The Fry Jack’s long lost Canadian cousin might be the Newfoundland Touton, another fried dough eaten at breakfast.
I think Fry Jacks remind me a LOT of Navajo Frybread. I was just in Shiprock NM, and had lamb stew with frybread at Nataani Nez and the frybread was pretty similar to Belizean Fry Jack. The lamb stew also tasted a lot like a rather tasty mutton soup, but that is another story.
The funny thing about the lamb stew meal was that the waitress went into the kitchen, talked to the cook, the cook came to the door of the kitchen, looked at me, nodded her head decisively, returned to the kitchen and 10 minutes later the waitress came out with my soup and the largest frybread I have ever seen. Cook did not want this big man to go away hungry, I believe. LOL!
The frybread was served on its own plate and hung over the edges on three sides of the plate.
I had a couple more good meals on Caye Caulker before I left yesterday. Most importantly, I visited Martinez again for their Stewed Chicken. It is made with a red spice mix called Red Recado (Achiote in Mexico) and Worcestershire Sauce plus maybe a bit extra cumin. Very well balanced, layered spices and paired with Rice and Beans with a little salsa… Just phenomenal! Martinez is always rocked, best to go by before the food starts being ready at noon and give your name to put in an order for after 12 noon. Starting at noon Jody (sp?) is busy plating chicken and scooping in the rice and beans, coleslaw and plantain. He will ask if you want the special sauce which I still have not identified. It is hot and fermented, I think, like a horseradish on steroids but looking like finely minced onion. A little goes a long way! Love this place and the food they serve! It is VERY popular with the locals, you will see golf carts pulling up and leaving w 4, 5 or even 6 servings of food one right after another. And so far it is still priced for locals at just $5US a plate. The other reason to order early is so you can stand outside one of the two windows and have the owner yell your name out and say your plate is just about ready. Almost makes you feel like a local.
Well, not really but it is a good feeling.
Then I went back to Maggie’s Sunset for more BBQ fish. Tried a different one this time, garlic and butter, and it was good but not as good due to it being just a trifle dry. Loved the sunset and the people. Nana on the BBQ is a good woman, when I asked if she can make fish taste that good with just charcoal no fancy wood, she was laughing, “Just charcoal!”.
The next day I was onto the Caribbean Sprinter ferry (3 x 225 HP Hondas) and return to the mainland for my flight home. Skipper took us through the middle of Hick’s Cayes, not sure why, but probably because it was a good time splitting the passage at 25 knots or so.
I still prefer the Knot Slow boat. It has 3 x 225 HP Yamahas.
Personal preference but Yamahas just sound better to this old motocrosser. YZ’s rocked back in the day.
