Let me tell you about our Saturday excursion. We decided to explore the coastal highway. It is basically a dirt road that runs along the coast but far enough away that you can’t actually see the coast. If you just drive the road it is about an hour and a half or so one way. For those of you that know Alfred, we could never just drive a road. We had to drive down every little path off the road to see what was there. This makes for a much more exciting trip. (one of these days even the four wheel drive won’t save us, I’m sure.) So, for those of you that may be looking for things to see when you visit and for those of you that are simply living vicariously through the blog, here’s what you can expect from the coastal highway.
Our first detour was down an overgrown ‘maybe once was’ road. It had been hacked through with a machete at some point which made it possible to drive without actually having to go through the trees. At the end of the ‘road’ we found ourselves in the most amazing bamboo forest. It was beautiful! And eerie! The breeze blowing across the top of the bamboo created a deep moaning sound and the bamboo banging together created a hollow clacking sound. It was very easy to imagine that we had stumbled upon some kind of enchanted, haunted place. I was wishing we had remembered our machete because some of the bamboo really caught my attention and I would have loved to take some home.

Carrying on down the highway, we found a very well groomed dirt road that seemed to have had a gate at one time. Of course we headed down there to ‘have a look’. We found that it led to the Sea where someone at some point had cleared the mangroves and made a beach. We spent a lot of time there beachcombing looking for the most colorful or different shells we could find. And we found quite a lot. We tossed them into the cubby of the truck and carried on to Gale’s Point.
Gale’s Point is a little village who’s only claim to fame is the manatees that live in the lagoon. We thought we might take a tour and go visit them. So we stopped at Gentle’s Cool Spot (in Belize almost anywhere that sells drinks is called ‘cool spot’) where he advertised food, drink, and tours. Mr Raymond Gentle is quite the man. He met us as we mounted the steps to his house. The cool spot part is his deck, the rest of the house is where he and his wife live and not open to strangers. He ran back to tell his wife to throw together four plates of food and then he joined us on the deck. He explained that he couldn’t take us on a tour because someone had stolen his gas. He knows who but doesn’t want to cause trouble. Then he spent the rest of our visit telling us the history of the village and all about the manatees. It was a very pleasant interlude. Here’s the picture I took of Mr Gentle:
The rest of the trip down the road was totally uneventful although the scenery was lovely. All was going well until we needed to stop at the end of the road for gas. Standing in the door of the gas station was a police officer. Just outside the door was a very drunk man, about 50 years old or so, dancing punta. For those of you unfamiliar with punta, it is the (possibly unofficial) dance of Belize. It is basically a continual display of suggestive and blatant sexual moves on the dance floor and very embarrassing to watch. They teach it to the kids in school. As Alfred hops out of the car and goes into the store, the drunk man begins to dance just for me. The police man eggs him on laughing and Brynn and Kori are laughing uproariously in the back seat. (OK I was laughing too – mostly) Alfred took what seemed like three hours in the store and when he finally came out, the drunk guy asked for a two dollar tip for keeping me entertained. We gave him the money and he happily returned to the store to buy more beer.
This would have been the capper on the day if it weren’t for the evenings events. After returning home we proceeded to arrange our beautiful new shells on the table we have reserved for that purpose. Later one of the shells fell on the ground. Kori grumbled about me putting it too close to the edge of the table and went to retrieve it. That’s when it moved. Kori did the girl thing and called her dad who managed to catch the shell and put it outside.
So our lessons for the day were these:
Drunk old guys dancing punta don’t do it for free
When collecting shells, check carefully to be sure you aren’t transplanting some poor, unsuspecting crab.
Words to live by!