Punta Gorda

Saturday 2nd January 1988

We returned our snorkelling gear to the Post Office and found out from the jolly Postmaster that there was a bus to Punta Gorda at 16:30 hrs. This was good news for us, as our next planned destination was Punta Gorda, from where we were intending to take the ferry to Lívingston in Guatemala.

Punta Gorda is a seaport and fishing town in southern Belize on the Caribbean Sea and is geographically part of the Gulf of Honduras. The town is the administrative capital of the Toledo District.

It was a small fishing village before it was settled by a number of Garifuna emigrants from Honduras in 1823. The Garifuna refer to the town as Peini. The town is about fifteen feet above sea level. Although the town bears a Spanish name, its inhabitants are mostly Kriol/English-speaking, and are primarily of Garifuna, East Indian, Kriol, and Maya descent.

We had breakfast in Jayls Restaurant and discovered that they were making a routine boat trip to Mango Creek for supplies at 14:00 hrs. We packed our bags and relaxed in the porch amongst the nature conservation posters chatting to the Australian couple. Greig gave me a Mexican comic to translate, which was very amusing. The story involved police chased two ruffianos (ruffians) into a lost world!

At 14:00 hrs. we left and met Jayls jolly blue-eyed husband who was loading up the boat. We chucked our bags aboard and joined the motley crew of women and children and crates of empty pop bottles. The clouds looked threatening but luckily it didn’t rain as we chugged through the shallow swamps.

A plane took off in the distance, probably carrying Ron back to the safe haven of the United States. We recalled some of his tales. “Sure, I was robbed, but it was cool. They held a knife to my throat after I had smoked a few joints with them”. “I screwed around with these Caribes. I couldn’t run for President of Belize, but I could run for Leader of the Tribe”! he had boasted.

At Mango Beach we jumped ashore and waited under the porch of the General Store eating biscuits and watching the rain. The wooden General Store could be straight out of a Hollywood western.

A group of local kids amassed with a variety of goods to peddle to the expected bus passengers. Fruit, bread pudding, tacos and potato crisps were held in readiness for sale as the children laughed and played. A couple of teenagers bounced on a pogo stick and the local Rastafarians breezed by looking cool.

A Rasta is a member of the Rastafarian religious movement. Rastafarians have distinctive codes of behaviour and dress, including the wearing of dreadlocks and the smoking of cannabis, and they follow a diet that excludes pork, shellfish, and milk.

Rastafarians in Belize started out adhering to the principles of piety and protest that characterized the Rastafarians when began in Jamaica in the 1930s. After being Rastafarian for several years, village adherents gravitated to new values and lifestyles, not the protest and piety that kicked off the movement in Jamaica and Belize.

The beginnings resembled a revitalization movement, an attempt at making a more satisfying culture. Yet over time, individual Rastafarians in Belize sought material advantages, and the Rastafarians were flattered by the attention of tourists and others. Changes in the Rastafarians’ orientation and practices are were brought about as a consequence of global trends and local cultural influences.

While we were waiting for the bus we faced the Belize Baptist Church Crusade Bus which appeared to be sinking into the mud along with other rusting hulks of old vehicles.

At 17:00 hrs. the bus arrived, and the kids swarmed aboard with their wares like marauding pirates, calling out their sales patter. We fought our way aboard, against the tide of passengers getting off, but all the seats were taken. I ended up sitting on the luggage at the back of the coach.

We set off into the darkness along an atrocious dirt road through the forest. We bumped, jolted and bucked for two hours while people joined and left the coach at the oddest places, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Children got bored and poked each other and bickered like they do the world over, while younger ones were breast-fed into peacefulness. Teenage girls laughed and chattered; their hair set in brightly coloured plastic curlers.

At Punta Gorda, which is known simply as P.G. to the natives, we found a spread-out town on a criss-cross grid plan with a warm friendly atmosphere. It took a tour of all the available hotels to find that $10 Belizean Dollars per person per night was the cheapest and we settled for Mahung’s Hotel at $21 Belizean Dollars for a nice double room.

We ate an excellent coconut chicken and rice casserole at Bobby’s Bar opposite the hotel. The bar sported British Army signposts and badges and the clientele included squaddies and Ghurkhas. We retired to read old “Time” magazines at 21:30 hrs. and Declan couldn’t resist the urge to smoke, buying a pack of Marlboro cigarettes at Bobby’s Bar.

We were pleased to see that someone had been into our hotel room and given us some clean sheets and fixed the light in our room. The ceiling fan is like a jet engine.