CAYE CAULKER, BELIZE - OLD PHOTOS (1940's - 1990's) Original Settler Families

Alamina & Auxillou children swimming  early 1970's

Rose Alamina Marin, grandchild of Valentin and Marina Alamina relaxing on family beach 1960's

Caye Caulker East view 1986

The island in the 1960's & 70's

Harrison Cadle climbing a tall Coconut tree in the 80's

Robert, Annie and Mary Blease as children 1970's middle street at Mrs. Glenda Blease

Sylvano, Ronald and Monica Canto 1970's

Novel Marin as a young man in the  1970's

Mr. Peter Young at his first home on the Young Beachfront Estate.

Front Street junction of front/back pier. Zaldivar's residence on the right 1970.
(Same building is now Hibisca Restaurant)
Tony Vega Estate to the left of buidling and before building. Still the family estate today.

1965 -Alejandro Carrasco (center), son of Orlando and Dalia Carrasco

Alejandro "Handy" Carrasco 1970's

Mr. Orlando Carrasco, Sr. in front of his family estate 1970's. This Estate is still with the family 2021.

Mr. Orlando Carrasco beach estate, and to the Right Mr. Manuel Marin beach estate (Lena's Hotel)

1970's

Alejandro and Erlinda Carrasco, children of Orlando, Sr. 1981

Greg and Martin Carrasco, sons of Orlando Carrasco - 1970's

Orlando Roman Carrasco his mom - Antonia Young Carrasco Sosa and his sister Georgiana Carrasco

Mr. Orlando Carrasco and his son Martin Carrasco 1980's

Ms. Giorgiana Carrasco and her daughter 1960's

Mrs. Dalia Carrasco and grandbaby 1980's

Ms. Nil's Carrasco 1950's

Mr. Orlando Carrasco and his Sister Nil's 1990's

Mr. Reuben Alamina, son of Valentin Alamina sitting with his Father-in-law Mr. Tarin.

Ms. Elida Reyes and her parents Mr. Octavia (Taby) and Mr. Tarin Reyes / Ms. Elida still lives in this home today. Street runs from main Pier East to Cargo Pier west. 1970's

Ms. Taby and Mr. Tarin relaxing under the shade, a great pastime - 1970's

MAIN STREET going South towards Tropical Paradise - The Rosado's/Marin  Estate on the right early 1980's.
The family still resides there today.

Diane & Tina Auxillou Nov 1971 - Middle street junction where Aunty/Chan's supermarket is now

MAIN STREET looking North (VC Office junction)  1960's -
The Cleland home on the right is still there today.

Water front by Mr. Orlando Carrasco

Anchorage Resort area - David Heredia family property

FLUKE at the back dock. Built by Mr. Marcial Alamina Sr. (standing on the bow with the hat) 1950's.
He grandfather to Marsh Alamina III

The infamous "Dodo" Alamina, son of Marcial Alamina, Sr. He was a fisherman most of his life
1970's

"Dodo"Alamina in 1990's - once referred to as "the salt of the earth" lived most of his life next to his Aunt Clotilde Alamina (now Central Park  & John Marin's residence property combined)

The infamous "Comics" - Pablo Canto, a great drinking buddy with "Dodo"

Manually pulling boats up with log rollers as still done today

Primarily a fishing village before Tourism.

The Original Tom's Hotel

Out front by Lena's 1970's. Notice the fish corral in the water to the left and right.

Cleaning the catch of the day

Mr. Manuel Marin of LENA's cleaning the catch of the day

Fresh Rain water rinse after a salty day at sea

Ms. Daisy and Amparo Marin and friends.

Mr. David Marin cleaning Conch, Ms. Edith Novelo on bow.

A young Valentin Marin admiring a Sailfish caught by his Dad. Late 1970's
He later became an avid fisherman himself.

A shark caught by Valentin Marin as a young man. 1980's

Mr. Valentin Alamina cleaning fish at his pier (Sportsbar area)

Mr. Leonel Heredia known as "Chocolate", Water Taxi boat and one of the founding fathers of the Caye Caulker Water Taxi Co.

Tropical Paradise Hotel owned by Mr. Ramon Reyes, Sr. - 1980's

This pole is at the corner of our Health Center/VC office (before built) on front street

The family Ritter's - Waiting for the airplane - CC Airstrip looking South 

The original Caye Caulker Airstrip was a sand strip, no asphalt or welcome huts. 1980's

A home that collapsed after a Hurricane and later was raised high again. Marin's Residence on Front St.

This house of the Rosado's was on back street close to airstrip today. Oasis hotel now on this site.

Looking East to the reef from the Ritter's home (now Quan's Supermarket)

Middle Street - House is now where Jorge and Sheila Delcid have their Golf Cart Business & residence.

Middle street (Across from Syd's restaurant) shenanigans after a hard rain. 1970's

The Estate of Mr. Bartolo Rodriguez on the left.

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Walking back to village center from "The Split", Chil'z Cabins area 1992.

Front St. by Village Council fence 1979 looking North. Rosado's estate on left, Cleland Estate on right.

Back Cargo Dock area  was also a popular swimming spot for the kids in the 60's, 70's & 80's

Fence is Edith's Hotel looking towards R.C. School 1970's

The Original Martinez Hotel on Front Street.

Old Cemetery

 local Children - Early 1970's

Children on the steps of the Caye Caulker R.C. School 1980's

Children of the 1980's - Jaime Lee Rosado, Seleny Villanueva Pott (2021 V.C. Chairlady) Lil and Chantel Marin

Children of the island 1980's

CCRCS Christmas School Play 1971 - Students: Tini Marin and Rose Alamina Marin

4 Generations of Valentin Alamina clan represented in this pic - 1980's

Island wedding of Esther Alamina to Paddy Whelan of England 1960's.

Alamina Sisters: L-R - Ofelia, Isabel, Esther (Bride), Ilna & the youngest "Lali" who had Down Syndrome yet was loved and welcomed by the entire island.

Mr. Valentin Alamina - 1960's

Ofelia Alamina and her Uncle Marcial Alamina Sr. (Mr. Marcial owned most of the Southern part of the island in the 1960's -from the R.C. School to Eden Isles.)

Ms. Ofelia Alamina - daughter of Valentin - lived a life of servitude to
the Roman Catholic Church on the island.

Ofelia Alamina as a beautiful young lady 1940's

Ms. Ofelia Alamina 1970's

Miss Ofelia Alamina 1990's

Miss Ofelia and Lizette Alamina 1980's

Wedding in the 1980's of Ms. Marina and Valentin  Alamina's Grandchild - Rose Alamina Marin (daughter of Ofelia)
Mrs. Lizette Alamina, (daugher of Norman) another grandchild, in front row.

. T

The wedding of Rose Alamina and David Marin 1980's

Confirmation, part of the Catholic Church ritual - 1950's. Ms. Ofelia Alamina standing on top stairs was God-mother to all five standing on the steps of her family home. She remained loyal to the Catholic Church throughout her life.

Sisters -Ilna and Ofelia Alamina share a laugh and cake 1980's

Ilna and Ofelia Alamina 1940's

Island children of the 1940's

Main St. in front of now Central Park (looking North) 1970's

Ms. Ofelia and best friend Ms. Otilia (Rodriguez) as young ladies 1940's

Mrs. Otilia Rodriguez wedding 1950's - Maid of Honor Ms. Ofelia

Mr. & Mrs. Rodriguez 1950's

Martin (son of Orlando Carrasco) and "Bral-T" Abelardo Rodriguez (son of Mrs. Otilia Rodriguez) 1970's

The Wedding of Mrs. Isela to Mr. Emerito Marin 1950's

Caye Caulker young men of the 1950's - Mr. Bartolo Rodriguez (not sure of others names)

Josh Marin and Karl Heushner standing in front of the Police Station 1986

Children early 1990's

(Kid) Joshua Marin and his 1st boat. 1980's = Great Grandson to Valentin and Marina Alamina / Grandson of Ofelia Alamina, son of Rose Alamina Marin. Joshua now has children of his own making it the 5th generation of Alamina's on the island.

Miss Ofelia Alamina attends to customers in the first ever grocery store on the island 1950's

Ofelia Alamina and her first grandson Joshua Marin 1980's

Mrs. Marina Alamina at home on Front St. across the Police Station. With grandkids Christopher Whelan, Carlo Marin and James Jr., son of Mermaid Cargo boat owner and island resident  in the 60's & 70's Mr. James Nealey.

Valentin Alamina, brother to Marshall Alamina and Clotilde Alamina (one of the first 5 settler families on the island, coming from Mexico fleeing the Caste War) in the late 1800's.

Marina Carrasco married to Valentin Alamina (My maternal Grandparents)

Mrs. Marina Alamina and her grandchildren in front of her Sister-in-law (Clotilde Alamina's) home. Today this is the Enjoy Supermarket/Hotel complex.

4 Generations - from left to right - Ilna Alamina Auxillou, Justin Kuylen son of Diane Auxillou Paitsell and Clotilde Alamina, Aunt of Ilna and brother to her father. She owned and lived most of her life where is now the Basketball court and Central Park. She never had children.

Laura "Lali" Alamina on her father Valentin's beach with the lobster traps in the back.

1980's - A young Natalie McNab Steel hanging out with local kids.

Sharon, Wendy, Diane & Tina Auxillou with Cousin Rose Alamina Marin

Rose Alamina confirmation 1971

"Lali" hanging out Linda Alamina and friends at Norman Alamina's first beach bar 1980's
 (Sports Bar today)

Kids in front of the Police Station 1970's (Front Row L-R: Damien & Ivan Alamina, Moses Guzman and dog Rex. Middle: Tina and Diane Auxillou
Back row L-R: Rose Alamina and her aunt Laura Alamina

Ray Auxillou married into the Alamina family of boat builders and learned the trade, building himself several boats there after - Atoll Queen and Sailfish.

Ray Auxillou, Fishing and Tour Guide . Owner of Beach Hotel 1960's

Sharon Auxillou in front of her Mother's Beach 1970's

Sharon Auxillou being crowned Miss Belize 1981 - the year Belize became and Independent Nation. She is the first and only Caye Caulker young lady to win Miss Belize to date.

Marina Carrasco Alamina and Valentina Alamina Children, the beauties of yesteryear! Ofelia, Isabele, Esther (bride), Ilna & Lali

ILNA ALAMINA AUXILLOU WITH CONFIRMATION GIRLS - The Catholic Faith was huge on the island and Sunday Service would be packed as a social and spiritual activity.

KIDS hanging out on the veranda of  MARINA AND VALENTIN ALAMINA STORE across from the POLICE STATION (Front St.)

MRS. ILNA ALAMINA AUXILLOU - Daughter of MARINA AND VALENTIN ALAMINA

With Permission from Michelle Ritter, whose late father took many of these photos in the 60's & 70's which shows perfectly, the ease and tranquility of an era bygone.....a time when the island was LOVE, and the small village worked together and helped feed each other with the catch of the day

Ray Auxillou, Ofelia Alamina and the Alamina/Auxillou/Marin clan in front of HIDEAWAY/ISLAND TRADERS now site of Sailwinds Beach Suites, Tina's Hostel, Diane's Beach House and Auxillou Apartments 1970

The Original Martinez Hotel (Belizario Martinez) - now site of hotel of Ramon Reyes, Jr.

The very narrow  "SPLIT" between North- South island in 1960's and 70's

SPLIT - 1970's

Road to "Split" 1979 (before development)

SPLIT - late 1980's

SPLIT early 1980's

SPLIT early 1980's

1990's - Prime Minister the Hon. George Cadle Price visits Caye Caulker and talk with Ms. Ilna Auxillou, Elida Reyes and Mr. Erico Novelo

Ms. Ilna Alamina Auxillou, first female Chairlady of the Village Council and Prime Minister, Hon. George Cadle Price 1990's

Lazy Lizard Bar at the Split Year 2000 right after a hurricane hit the caye

View of Caye Caulker Roman Catholic School, from standing on the beach East side 1960's

EDITH'S HOTEL - Center of Middle Street - One of the first few hotels on the island 1970's

"Red House" by Tom Young - belonging to Dominga Novelo Young

Outhouses were a regular sight up and down the beach. Almost every beachfront estate had one.

Miss Lois Young wife of Nelson Young ; "DiggyDap" on the beach

Michelle Ritter, daughter of one of the first 'foreigner settlers' on the island in 1960's

ILNA AUXILLOU and her 4 daughters, Sharon, Wendy, Diane & Tina. Sitting in front of her family beach estate around 1969.

 In 2021, Mrs. Ilna  Alamina Auxillou is 89 years of age ,  living a decade  short of a Century (imagine!) on this very same property that belonged to her parents before her. 

Ilna Auxillou, School Principal when she resided at the School Principal House near the football field (the bushy lot in the background)

Joshua Marin on bike 1980's -
First Central Park Design of a basketball court and chairs where families could sit and enjoy the seaside. Today, there are bleachers and a concrete stage blocking the view and breeze. A private water Taxi Company occupies the Park Beach area sending increasing numbers of taxi's up and down the beach.

(we have regressed)

Looking towards the Marin Estate on front Street.

Fishing Village and every house had lobster traps 

Looking at the old LENAS HOTEL site of same LENAS HOTEL today. Some of the young Novelo men.

1970s Beachfront

ILNA ALAMINA AUXILLOU/ ESTHER ALAMINA WHELAN, PADDY WHELAN,

Wendy, Sharon, Diane Auxillou with Cousin Rose Alamina Marin in front of Ilna Auxillou beachfront estate early 1970's.

RAYMOND AUXILLOU with Catch of the Day

Raymond and Ilna Auxillou and their children 1972.

The shallow waters around the main PUBLIC PIER where all the kids would gather to swim and people without beachfront properties could still park their boats.

MAIN PUBLIC DOCK popular swimming area back then

ATOLL QUEEN, Ray Auxillou's Tour Boat for overnight excursions to the Blue Hole

Ray Auxillou boat docked at Main Pier,(now Ocean Ferry Express) - his hotel ISLAND TRADERS in the background site of his children's hotels today.

RAYMOND AUXILLOU and DAMIAN (Bubbles) ALAMINA on ALAMINA Property Across from the Police Station. The house across the street is where the Cuban/Sportsbar is today, but also belonged to my grandparents.

ALAMINA family OUTHOUSE (front of today's Sportsbar)
- POLICE STATION white bldg far right

Old Teachers Residence (football field to the left)   site of M and M apartments  is today.

FRONT STREET:
Imagine standing in front of Village Council office looking to the beach

MARIN'S ESTATE on front St., another original family whose son Valentin Marin still lives there today.

Valentin Alamina, one of the first settler families on the island tending to his Lobster Traps

MS. CLOTILDE ALAMINA (Spent her 90 years living on her property which is now the Basketball Court and Central Park, then across the street - Enjoy Hotel Complex) She remained a spinster her entire life, she once told me "there was never enough of a selection of eligible men on the caye when I was a young girl"

One of my grandmother's first house rental / Ilna Auxillou property front street

Tina Auxillou -  1 year B-day-in front of old Teachers House (M&M's apts). Beach background is site of Vista del Mar Hotel today and Estate of the Badillo's.

SAILFISH - Ray Auxillou home built boat

A still mostly mangrove island before development

Mr. Erico Novelo and "Chapoose" at the back dock gas station 1970's

Mermaid Boat arriving - Back Public Dock

The Mermaid at the back dock,  Back Dock Public Outhouse 1970's

Mermaid passenger and cargo ferry arriving at the back cargo dock 1970's

Mermaid Cargo boat owned by American Mr. James Nealey. (His property is where Wayne Miller's waterfront estate is today)

Local Beauty Ms. Canto at the Split

Christmas on Caye Caulker with the Auxillou girls 1972 - Ilna Auxillou beachfront Estate which she still owns today.

ILNA AUXILLOU - School Principal for decades in front of old School

Miss Ofelia Alamina as the first Manager of Maya Island Air after the airstrip was built.

Valentin & Marina Alamina Children sitting on the front steps of parents home across from the Police Station. Ofelia, Ilna, Esther, Isabel and Norman Alamina. 1940's.

Local Beauty Aleida Blease at the Split

Robert & Aleida Blease with Sue and Mr. Peter Young

Wendy and Diane Auxillou aboard WINNIE ESTELL 

One of the first live bands with the locals, my Grandfather Valentin Alamina far right with SAX, Mr. Manuel Marin and a few others I can not identify at this time.

Some of the Alamina, Marin and Auxillou kids as youths

Valentin Alamina giving away his daughter Esther Alamina Whelan

Ilna Alamina a youthful beauty of the island 1950's

Slide show presentation at Hideaway Hotel/Island Traders (with Biology students from Texas), Auxillou kids joining the presentation at the family hotel 1973

My first Birthday Party when we lived at the old School House by football Field

Mr. Tarin, Ms. Elida's father from street that runs from front Pier to Back Pier

A favoirte pastime, Sailing. Mr. Tarin, Grandfather of Tage Alamina of Bambooze Restaurant and Bar

Auxillou girls in front of Grandma's house (across from Police Station)

Island Traders Hotel beachfront near main pier

Valentin and Marina Alamina (my grandparents) and their children - L-R - Ofelia, Ilna Reuben, Esther, Isabel, Norman & Lali Alamina

1990's Carnival - Chantel Marin

1980's Carnival Celebration on the island where villagers would dress u pand dance.

Going North of Martinez Hotel towards the Split.

Camping was very popular with the few tourists that trickled on to the island before regular water taxi days or many hotels. The British army camp would also send their men for R&R to the islands where they would set up camp at Vega's Inn, Clotilde Alamina's beach by Central Park today, and other areas.

Photo by Billy Doran

Photo by Billy Doran

So if you weren’t hauling, repairing and resetting the traps and diving for conch – tourists would have paid several dollars for any one of the beautifully shaped and delicately coloured conch shells which lay discarded in their thousands along the shoreline – or looking after your children and your tiny, modestly furnished house, there wasn’t a lot to do except sit around and smoke a little and drink a lot. There was electricity only in the evening and only for two or three hours when the island’s petrol generator slowly thumped into life. That’s when most people slowly gravitated to the little square, to the bar and the pool hall. The rest of the time was spent gathering round each other’s stairs or verandas, shooting the breeze.

There was always fish to eat – snapper, a lot of shark, very meaty if a little coarse – swordfish and endless conch, sweet potato, breadfruit and banana. The one tiny shop, at the entrance to the sandy square, sold little beyond tinned milk, instant coffee, sugar, matches and paraffin for the lamps. Where they weren’t self sufficient the islanders relied on regular trips into the mainland on The Mermaid or with fishermen in their skiffs, an hour each way, to shop in Belize City.

Mavis, a large and concerned woman given to worrying, ringing her hands and sighing “lordy lordy” even at good news, was the island’s baker. Most afternoons I’d mount the stairs by the side of her house and wander into her uneven bare floored kitchen for some fresh banana bread and a cup of coffee with condensed milk. Her main oven was under her house, fired by dead palm fronds and mangrove wood but up in her kitchen in her calor gas stove she’d cook her more elaborate breads and cakes and puddings. She was usually in a dazzling floral patterned dress and never without her huge straw hat, and there’d always be a couple of homilies from the New Testament before I was allowed to taste the afternoon’s effort. And it was she who told me about the house over the lane for rent.

It stood facing the sea at the northernmost end of the village, on stilts like the rest under a corrugated iron roof. To its right the main path led to the village and the square. To the left was a short piece of wild palm grove in which enormous lizards, up to three feet long, would skitter or laze on fallen trunks in the sun. Beyond that was the little-used village football pitch and beyond that, jungle and mangrove to the uninhabited northern end of the island. It was of blue painted clapboard with paneless windows, the protection from such wind and rain as could be expected was as always the heavy outward opening shutters on either side. To its right the ubiquitous water butt on stilts balanced the ubiquitous breadfruit tree on its left, in this case unkempt and wild enough to have poked a few exploratory branches through the open window. It belonged to a man who now lived almost all his life on the mainland “or even Mexico, Lordy Lordy, don’t no-one stand still for more than a week at a time today..?”

Mavis was authorised to rent it out and to collect the peppercorn rent. She waddled across the path with a switch broom and a dustpan, shooed away the three basking dogs that were sleeping in ascending order of age across the first three stairs, clattered around inside for a while and then reappeared at the top of the steps, calling me up. Much like all the others it had two large rooms and a small kitchen with a tub, a two ring calor gas stove, and a cupboard with a few mugs and plates and knives and forks. There was a table and a couple of wooden chairs in one room and a small wardrobe in the other. I plonked my hammock and my pack in the middle of the bare wood floor of the largest room, went out onto the sun dappled balcony looking along the main path to the square and that was it – I had a home on Caye Caulker.

Eventually I would borrow a mattress from Tony but for the time being I slung my hammock between two hooks in the main room, went back to Mavis and bought some coffee, condensed milk, sugar and a hunk of banana bread and returned to my house, a man of property.

And for the next three months I did - not much. The island was a cliché of the idealised 1950’s child’s upbringing, an environment without threat, an Eden for small children - of which delightfully there were many - and therefore their parents. No traffic, no malevolent animals or bugs, a benign sea with a shallow sloping beach and a community where literally everyone knew everyone and everything about everyone – there wasn’t even any concrete on which little sun browned knees could be grazed. About the only threat as you paddled in the shallows were the large flat winged rays that would suddenly burst from the sea bed in an explosion of cloudy sand and slither away to deeper water just as you were about to step on them.

By day, I’d go out with the fishermen and pretend to help them with their traps whereas in reality I was probably just getting in their way. Or I’d read a little or just wander the island. Some of my favourite times were spent in the latrine, surely the most picturesque public convenience on the planet, the little hut at the end of the jetty. Open to the vista of the reef but obscured to view from the land it was a small shed over a low wall at the edge of the jetty. You perched bare arsed over the wall and simply let go to the waiting fish below. They saw to it that your issue disappeared in seconds, crystal clear though the water was. It was the perfect spot and pastime for an idle smoke or desultory chat with whoever else felt moved.

When the school finished in early afternoon, three or four of the bolder kids would occasionally come and see me, scampering up the steps shouting their news before they burst in to hang around for a while, fingering my camera or examining my books, sitting in a line on the hammock chattering at me and each other.

At night it was Sans Club, steady drinking punctuated with unsteady games of pool. Around me the men played rowdy games of dominoes, the tiles slammed down on the table with maximum force to ram home an advantageous move. The enthusiasm for what I’d always seen as a childhood game surprised me; so strong was it’s hold throughout the Caribbean that that year a Jamaican singer, Ernie Smith, had a big hit, “Key Card”, a song all about a domino game, never long off the juke box in the corner.

But by August I thought it was time to move on; not that I had to be anywhere but several times on the route down from San Francisco I’d told others that I’d meet up with them at Cusco. “Christmas at Cusco” had become a mantra, almost a mission statement, and while I had no reason to go, I had no reason not to.

So one Thursday I got the Mermaid to Belize and caught the bus west.

1990
to Early 2000

"Chocolate" Heredia hauling his boat up by his beach house near the Split.

"Chocolate" Heredia - Founder of SWALLOW CAYE MANATEE SANCTUARY

The new development area that Boomed in the 1980's was from the Martinez Hotel North towards the Split. This area was given to locals by the government.

HERE IS A RECOLLECTION FROM A TRAVELER TO CAYE CAULKER IN THE 70's:

The following is a lengthy account by a young Englishman who spent some 3 months on Caye Caulker. The mention of Vern Nealey, the Mermaid and San’s Club in those days caught my attention. I used to crew on the Mermaid at that time. Please read through to get an outsiders perspective on how we lived in those days. Some of us elders will relate.

I was 27 when I left my native London and started a trek that took me from New York to Buenos Aires. I spent three months in the summer of 1975 living on Caye Caulker.

I loved it, it was probably the highlight of my 16 month trip and I wrote these reflections. But that wasn’t until thirty years later so if I’ve got some details wrong - for example my memory of the name or background of the captain of the Mermaid could be faulty, and I’m not sure that Mavis was actually called Mavis but looking back she seems like a Mavis - I apologise. Between now and then, more than four decades, I’m amazed I can remember as much as I do, especially as a lot of it was a befuddled pleasurable haze anyway.

I hope you enjoy it and that some of you remember it. If you have any praise, send it to me.

Any complaints, Marty’s your man.

Andrew Cracknell,

London,

April 2019.

70 foot long with a sleek and powerful hull, “The Mermaid” had been a rumrunner during the days of prohibition, creaming through the Caribbean night, threading through the Keys up to the Florida coast. She could outpace any coastguard cutter even though loaded to the gunwales with illicit barrels of Cuba’s finest liquor. When I first saw her many years later she was being used as a ferry between Belize City and Caye Caulker out on the reef on the Caribbean side of Central America.

She was owned and operated by Vern Neely, a Bogartish sort of character who’d been a captain for Pan Am Airways, not as a pilot but as a boat skipper. Their fleet consisted mainly of seaplanes in the early post war days so all over the world they ran an armada of launches and tugs to help marshal and supply and transport crew and passengers from the land terminals out to the aircraft. When they mothballed the last of their flying boats, Neely used his pay-off to buy the Mermaid, then rotting in a back lot somewhere in Miami, had it towed down to Belize, moved his wife and family to a prefab house on the Caye, and rebuilt it.

He was anticipating a boom in tourism and he wasn’t wrong, this being the very beginning of the era of cheap air travel. People, especially young people, aroused and dislodged by the technicolour upheaval of the 60’s from the monochrome path that had always led from school to work to grave, were beginning to roam. I was one of that boomer vanguard and for me Belize City was an unexpected distraction on the way down from Mayan ruins in the Mexican Yucatan to more Mayan ruins in the Guatemalan jungle.

Its rickety peeling clapboard buildings, none more than two stories high, stinking gutters below sea level and revolting giant eels and catfish oozing in the slime beneath the rusting swing bridge in the fetid river, set the scene. This was the backdrop for the teeming crowds of Belize’s multi-racial cast, jostling together on the broken pavements. Crossing the cracked tarmac of the bridge was to push into a press of slouching grass smoking Caribs and shouting jumpy Mestizos, their fiery Spanish blood stirred in with laid back Carib. Then there were the pallid Mennonites, Central America’s Amish, austere on their ponies and traps in their eighteenth century rural work clothes. It was the curtain going up on a far from idealised Catfish Row.

It was exquisite for me, 27 years old and in my self-righteous self imposed exile from business life in 70’s Britain. I was in anti-Western mood and Belize City was the Caribbean baring its shitty arse and telling the well heeled and well manicured tourist, still a few years away, to shove it. By my third day at Mom’s Café by the bridge I was already getting a cool thrill from the half stoned regulars returning my lazy nod as I grooved my way in and sat down for a Nescafe laced with rum. Any moment, I thought, I shall come face to face with the hollowed out eyes of Graham Greene’s “Burnt out Case”. Even better, perhaps I might become him.

I’d been travelling and living in a VW van belonging to a Canadian I’d met further up the coast in Mexico, in a fishing village south of Cozumel. It wasn’t a combi, it was just a van with some Afghan rugs on which we put our sleeping bags and in which he kept his camera and cassette player and his collection of Leonard Cohen (Canadian) and Joni Mitchell (Canadian) CDs. These were as inevitable an accessory for every Canadian traveller in those days as the Maple Leaf on their packs. Later, over a vast New Year’s Eve dinner in Cusco in Peru that had taken fourteen of us Europeans two days to source and prepare and which then went uneaten because easy access to the world’s purest cocaine blunted our appetites, a similar Canadian, under gentle chiding, revealed why their national pride was worn so literally. “It’s not so much we want people to know we’re Canadian – it’s that we don’t want them to think we’re American.”

The van was in a car park on the outskirts of Belize City – which would put it about half a mile from the city centre - and after about five days Brian the Canadian had a yearning for more pastoral scenes. It was June and he needed to move on anyway and be back up in Toronto by the autumn, but I had no particular plans. And I’d become intrigued by a large hand painted poster on the wall in Mom’s.

It showed in garish blues and greens and clumsy perspective, the Mermaid, surging through mangrove islands and past cavorting dolphins on its way to the Cayes, offering a trip to paradise for five Belizean dollars, next to nothing. I’d looked up the Cayes in my South American Handbook and I’d liked what I read. The second longest coral reef in the world runs from off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula southwards down past Belize and Guatemala, and just inside it, a few miles off Belize, are the Cayes, a chain of coral islands. Most are uninhabited but at the time two to the north, Ambergris and Caulker, supported lobster fishing villages. The Mermaid went to both but Caye Caulker seemed the least developed – according to the handbook there was only one small inn and little else apart from the fishermen’s houses – and therefore the more attractive.

She ran out to the Cayes on Saturdays and Thursdays so Brian and I decided to split on the Saturday morning, he to go inland on the jungle road to the Mayan ruins at Tikal and then on to Guatemala, me to the rickety jetty near the mouth of the river and the Mermaid.

She was double decked with extensive open areas for the passengers. She had the feeling of a torpedo boat or something quick and military, although her performance failed her looks. Maybe Vern throttled back, maybe he thought we’d all enjoy it at a more leisurely pace but she covered the twenty five miles east and then north out to Ambergris Caye in about three hours, slicing casually through the calm waters round mangrove islands and open patches of lagoon in an effortless, easy cruise. The passengers were varied; a few backpackers like me, some local people, two couples of middle aged American tourists and, in civvies, a few soldiers from the Scots Guards, the British regiment then doing jungle training in the dense forests over towards the Guatemalan border.

Ambergris Caye seemed clipped and neat after the chaos of the Belize River waterfront and I was pleased I wasn’t getting off there. That it was also the rest and recreation spot for the British army was another good reason for avoiding it. I was tanned, long haired and relaxed and the Squaddies didn’t take too kindly to people like me, a combination of resentment and incomprehension inflaming their distaste.

That was not an idle prejudice of mine. In eighteen months of travel in Latin America, including one paranoid night in the early hours in Asuncion in Paraguay, where fear of the dictatorship was palpable in the deserted streets and behind the hotel door spy holes slammed in my face, never did I feel as threatened as an evening in a bar overlooking the Belize river. I was having a quiet beer at sundown with Brian when several ratings from a Royal Navy frigate, patrolling off shore for several weeks, came clattering up the stairs at the beginning of their 48 hours R&R. Wound up and ready to explode, they could hardly fail to notice Brian and I, the only other drinkers in the bar at that relaxed hour. It was difficult to know which of us enraged them most, Brian with his apparently American accent or me, perhaps even more offensive, a Brit, ostensibly one of them but in cut offs, a denim waistcoat and very long sun bleached hair, a hated hippy even though it was now the mid 1970s. The glares, insulting remarks and challenges got louder so we paid quickly and prepared to leave. As we got up, two of them also rose and came towards us, swearing, but their colleagues restrained them - at this point, they were still sober. I still don’t know why they let us go, their hunger for violence so obvious and urgent.

It was best to avoid them.

We slipped our mooring at Ambergris and headed back south the few miles to Caye Caulker. Most of the people had got off, leaving a lanky languid woman from Texas, travelling for a few months during her college holiday, a quietly spoken Dutchman of about my age and three or four people who judging by the way Neely had greeted them must have been locals. Our arrival was a delight; we came in on the west side of the Caye, sheltered from the reef and the open Caribbean to a narrow wooden jetty jutting out into glass clear water. It was dotted with islanders, some fishing, others who had come down to the jetty in curiosity to see, as I would do many times over the next three months, “what the Mermaid had brought in”.

I picked up my pack, walked down the plank onto the jetty – and that was it. No hustlers selling hotels – there were no hotels. No sight seeing tours – there were no sights. No-one offering a cab or a hire car or even a moped – there were none and anyway there were no roads. Simply a trail leading off from the end of the jetty into the palm trees, in amongst which the glimpses of little gingerbread houses on stilts set on the sandy floor were the only sign of inhabitancy.

I walked through a natural arcade of coconut palms and a clearing opened in front of me, occupied by several of the brightly painted houses. Next to each house a fat wooden water tank tottered on spindly legs, taller than the house itself, and each glassless wooden shuttered window peered out from the shade of its own leafy breadfruit tree.

What amounted to the main street led off from this clearing, more of these houses on either side. Some were on taller stilts than others, one or two had verandas, a couple were made of prefabricated sections; Vern Neely’s was one such. People sat on the steps, chatting quietly, greeting villagers returning from the Mermaid, nodding amiably to strangers like me. I’d asked on the boat and been told that the Welcome Inn, the only hotel, was at the end of this “street”, and there it was, ahead of me, the only two storey building on the island, clapboard like the others and not really much bigger. It was in a sort of village square, a sandy clearing with the Inn on the far side from the street, an open air bar called Sans Club off to another side and a village hall, used mainly for noisy games of dominoes and pool, opposite.

I’d been warned that the Welcome Inn was prey to mosquitoes. In fact the whole Caye was prey to mosquitoes, a large amount of the land at each end being mangrove swamp and none of it more than a few feet above sea level. And I’d had enough of mosquitoes, all of the way down the Yucatan peninsula and particularly in the sweating noisome nights in Belize City. I learned subsequently that during the stifling humid summer months when the whining swarm overwhelmed the island and kept the whole village awake with the grunts and curses and slaps of troubled sleep from the open shuttered windows amongst the palm fronds, some of the fishermen would get in their skiffs and head out to the reef, upwind of the Caye and far enough offshore, to sleep.

It was the same South American Handbook that warned me. Most backpackers and many straight tourists travelled Central and South America with the Handbook as their bible. Written both by editors and by casual contributions sent in from travellers themselves it was as good as having someone along with you with whom you could confer. Big on detail and usually accurate on taste and opinion – as far as I was concerned – it helped those like myself travelling alone with no schedule and no particular goal in the paralysing task of decision making. Which road to take, which scene to see, which culture to poke around in – or, as often as not, which of those to avoid. It was often charming on wee glimpses of the world you were about to experience. It told me for example that The Amandala, the major Carib paper in Belize, was both anti-establishment and written in local patois. Thus when an expensive dredger hired by the government at much criticised expense unfortunately expired on the Belize River, Amandala celebrated with the main banner headline “Di new barge sink!”.

It was the South American Handbook that told me that apart from the Welcome Inn, travellers could often find lodging at B&Bs run by one or two of the islanders, renting out a room for the night. You had to ask around. There was also a man, Tony, who let people sleep either in hammocks slung between palms or in tents or sleeping bags in the grove he owned between his house and the sea. It was an area about the size of a small London square, a soft flat sandy floor, a canopy of palm fronds cooled by the breeze coming in from the reef.

It was late afternoon by the time I found him, a grey curly haired man, short and cheery in a dirty T shirt and baseball cap. He asked for a couple of Belizean dollars – about 20p – showed me where I could leave my stuff safely in his house and waived airily at the grove, saying I could sleep wherever I liked. Like the rest of the islanders, he was White, spoke English with a Spanish accent and a lilt of the Caribbean with a few Spanish words and phrases thrown in for luck.

There were four or five backpackers there already, including the languid Texan girl, but none others I recognised from my six month trek from San Francisco. But we nodded, probably flashed peace signs, compared notes, shared a joint and as it was now early evening, headed for the bar. Of the rest of that night I remember nothing, but if it was like many Saturday nights to follow it would have meant rum and cokes and Belikin beers at Sans, interspersed with trips across the sandy square to the hall for increasingly raucous and unfocussed games of pool, all to a loud reggae background from the bar’s jukebox. All I can remember is that the next day I was woken under the palm fronds by one of the other backpackers, a Dutchman calling himself Herb.

“Hey, man, wake up, wake up! The Mermaid leaves in an hour.”

I groaned awake, swinging gently in my hammock with the sunlight intermittently blazing right into my thrumming head as it flashed through the fronds above. Herb had wandered back to his hammock, slowly picking over his things preparatory to packing them up.

I watched him for a while and then stared around.

“Water!” I croaked.

He sauntered back over and offered me his canteen. I drank and looked around again as he leant against one of the trees supporting my hammock.

“Nice”, I said.

“Mmm” he said.

“What time does the Mermaid leave?”

“Two”, he said. “In about an hour. Hungry?”

I didn’t answer but looked around for a third time. Behind me, through the trees, Tony’s wooden water tank, two stories high, leant slightly on it’s rickety legs as if whispering something to the tall corrugated iron roof of the house itself, bright blue with yellow shutters thrown open to allow the sea breezes through. Balancing the tank in bulk if not in height, a vivid green breadfruit tree stood to the other side of the house while to my left the island end of a wooden slatted jetty started its hundred yard projection out into the sea. At the far end stood a tiny wooden cabin, the dimensions of a small bus shelter, a cabin with which I would become familiar on a daily basis.

In front of me through an arch of coconut palms the sandy grove sloped down to the Caribbean, that day agitated in little wavelets in shades from a chemical light blue to milky white. About a mile off shore the line of surf breaking on the reef ruled a stark brilliant white demarcation between the darker blue of the deeper sea and the flat matt blue of the sky. Two pelicans floated across my vision on invisible rails just inches above the water. And like a promotional film saving its most persuasive argument for the finale, as I was about to turn back to Herb, a hundred yards off shore the waters parted and two dolphins arched and plunged in perfect slow motion synchronicity

“When’s the Mermaid next running to the mainland?

Herb shrugged. “Dunno. Thursday I think?

An American, rolling up his sleeping mat nearby nodded. “Yeah, next one’s not ‘til Thursday.

I lay in the hammock and stared at the canopy above, feeling the breeze and hearing the sea and the swish of palm, thinking of the swilling streets in the oppressive heat and crush of Belize City

I wasn’t due anywhere.

I stayed two or three nights in Tony’s palm grove, just getting the pace of the island. It didn’t take long; there wasn’t much island and there was even less pace. This was, after all, a minor outpost of a tiny country that was itself bypassed by the world. I can still remember the headline news story on the main bulletin on Belize radio one evening during the height of the then Middle East crisis and the Watergate trial. It was about neither Nixon’s misdemeanours nor Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy, they came third and fourth. It was about a man who’d just returned from two weeks in Miami. The big news was he’d successfully completed a typewriter repair course.

The Caye was no more than two miles long, tapering to points at its northerly and southerly ends, and in the middle at its widest no more than a few hundreds yards across.

It was in this middle section that all houses were clustered on the sand floor, no more than fifty in total. The only concrete building, facing the sea, was a long low school house, built more solidly to double as a hurricane shelter. Caye Caulker is little more than a vegetated sand spit raised just a few feet above the Caribbean, but the reef protects the windward shores through most normal meteorological events. Some high winds could occasionally sweep waves right across the island, which was why all the buildings were on stilts. But nothing wooden and flimsy could stand in the way of the seasonal 180 mph hurricanes which sometimes hurtle in from far out in the Atlantic to shatter everything in their path. The last big one to hit Belize had been Hattie, fourteen years before I’d got there - but they still spoke of it with resentment and fear.

Apart from a very small dive school at the southernmost tip of the island whose staff and pupils I never seemed to meet, the only business on Caye Caulker was lobster and conch fishing and supplying the modest needs of the occasional backpacker like myself. In most of the little gingerbread houses there would live at least one lobster fisherman, either the head of the family, the son or even the grandson. They laid their traps in their previously carved up territory off shore and tended them in skiffs, basic speedboat hulls with outboard motors. They’d formed a cooperative and their catch was taken in bulk a couple of times a week to the mainland, deep frozen and sold on. Later, when I got to know them, every now and then I’d come home to my house and find a couple of lobster tails laid on the bottom step, a gift from one or other of them. It gave me no small satisfaction to know that the rest of the catch would be selling for $20 a plate in New York within a couple of days.