Mango Creek

Tuesday 29th December 1987

We were very tired and consequently slept in too late to catch the 06:00 hrs. bus to Mango Creek in the south. We had breakfast and headed for the Z-Line (pronounced Zee Line) Bus Depot in Magazine Road.

The morning traders were out around the swing bridge and a few shady-looking characters asked us if we needed any assistance. We waited for 45 minutes at the ticket window for a tedious ticket issuing system that involved making triplicate copies of each ticket.

The bus had layout with three seats then an aisle then two seats across each row with little legroom. Many of the women sported plastic curlers in bright yellow and green, in Coronation Street Hilda Ogden or Ena Sharples style, and chatted happily together.

Most families carried children, cardboard boxes and ghetto-blasters (portable, but substantial music cassette/radio players). We stopped briefly at Belmopan, a seemingly small town, but the new Capital City of Belize, where I had a chance to move off of the wheel arch and stretch my legs.

Belmopan is the capital city of Belize. In addition to being the smallest capital city in the continental Americas by population, Belmopan is the third-largest settlement in Belize, behind Belize City and San Ignacio. Founded as a planned community in 1970, Belmopan is one of the newest national capital cities in the world. Since 2000 Belmopan has been one of two settlements in Belize to hold official city status, along with Belize City.

The next stretch was along a pitted dirt road through the forest to Dangriga through the Stann Creek Valley. Dangriga, formerly known as Stann Creek Town, is a town in southern Belize, located on the Caribbean coast at the mouth of the North Stann Creek River. It is the capital of Belize's Stann Creek District. Dangriga is served by the Dangriga Airport. Commonly known as the "culture capital of Belize" due to its influence on punta music and other forms of Garifuna culture, Dangriga is the largest settlement in southern Belize.

Dangriga was settled before 1832 by Garinagu (Black Caribs, as they were known to the British) from Honduras. For years it was the second largest population centre in the country behind Belize City, but in recent years has been surpassed by San Ignacio, Belmopan and Orange Walk Town. Since the early 1980s Garífuna culture has undergone a revival, as part of which the town's name of Dangriga, a Garífuna word meaning "standing waters", became more widely used, but was initially adopted around 1975.

Here we changed buses, another Z-Line (The Bottom Line!), buying more triplicate copy tickets while an elderly, and quite possibly drunk Carib talked unintelligibly to Declan. We set off and bumped along an even worse road calling in at villages along the way to pick up dusty black people in American T-Shirts.

At last we got to Mango Creek, a town that seemed to consist of a well-stocked general store and about twelve wooden houses on stilts with galvanised iron roofs. Independence and Mango Creek are adjacent villages in the Stann Creek District of Belize. For the purposes of the census, they are counted as one community.

The locals loitered on the porch of the store. We got off the bus and followed a dirt road down to the waters edge and managed to charter a boat for $30 Belizean Dollars destined for Placencia. The light was fading rapidly as we roared across the mangrove swamps in the sheltered water inside the peninsula.

A few locals rowed in the opposite direction, their oars splashing in the darkness. The night air was warm on our faces as we rushed towards the low black shapes in the distance. This was great, this was what travelling was all about.

We finally cruised down a narrow channel and pulled up at a tiny jetty. We clambered ashore and walked through the palm trees and came to the main drag, which was a two-foot-wide concrete path. The beach was only about fifty feet away on the other side of the peninsula.

We checked in at Ran’s (Ron’s?) Travel Lodge for $15.75 Belizean Dollars, a pleasant tropical wooden building with a corrugated iron roof and a nice reception lounge. We ate in a little wooden shack café almost opposite and had one of the best fish meals we’ve had so far.

We met an American and chatted over a rum and Coca Cola to the locals. They were really friendly and promised us a great party on New Year’s Eve to see in New Year 1988. The American had arrived at Belize City and was robbed by the taxi driver who took his cash and camera. “He then rolled me a huge reefer (cannabis roll-up) to smoke when he dropped me off, so it was cool”, he said.

Declan and Diego bought some cigarettes and we sat on the beach amongst the palm trees in a stiff breeze and light rain listening to the sound of the surf.