You think you are crazy? Try Belize!

You Think You Are Crazy? Try Belize!

Introduction
Upon much reflection, I have decided to write this book about the insane things I saw while living in Belize. I lived on Ambergris Caye in a small village called San Pedro, for many years. Ambergris Caye is a tiny Island off the coast of Belize, in Central America. The local population is diverse beyond description. People come from all over the world. Mix that with the native San Pedranos, shake with rum, and hang on! Most of the Ex Pats living there have a story that they don’t want anyone to know. But, if they are drunk enough, and you listen… You will discover things that they would not tell anyone. This book is about those very things. Come into my parlor, and I will invite you into a place that few know. The names will be changed to protect the guilty, not that anyone uses their real name anyway. Don’t be afraid…. Truth is stranger than fiction. You can’t make this Shit up!

Sharon Strips Nude in the Street
Ok…..Sharon….Oh Sharon….I damn near married the girl. She was a firecracker with a lit fuse. I loved the way she could take the attention away from all the stupid shit I did. I’d be the talk of the town for one reason or another, and Sharon would one up me in stupidity. This incident happened in the evening around 6 o’clock. A police officer made the mistake of accosting her in front of the old Hideaway resort, on Barrier Reef Drive. It was destroyed later by Hurricane Keith… But I digress. Evidently the officer thought she was carrying weed. She didn’t smoke much pot, and got pissed. When the officer asked her to empty her pockets, she threw a fit and said… “Listen here mother fucker, you want to search me?” She then proceeded to strip nude in the street, throwing her clothes at the dumb founded cop. Sharon by the way was a knock out blond. The officer ran like hell back to the station to inform the police chief of the incident. Captain Flowers was furious! He screamed at the cop…” You got to see Sharon naked and you didn’t come and get me!” That my friends is Belize.

I Fell On the Crocodiles

After years of living on the Island and hanging out with several tour guides, you learn the tricks of the trade. I brought a girl friend down from Texas to show her our “Paradise”. We were staying at a friends place on the Lagoon side of the Island. The front is reef. The back is a brackish lagoon. It was around midnight when I got the idea. We’d been drinking rum all night at Crazy Canucks Bar. “Would you like to see a crocodile”? I asked. This being her first trip to San Pedro, she said that would be really cool. I scampered up to our room and got a loaf of bread. The Crocs mostly sleep during the day. They hunt at night. I had seen one napping under a mangrove across the canal a few days earlier. I pulled out my Mag Light, balled up the bread and tossed it over there. Sure enough I got his attention. I kept tossing…each time a little closer to where we were standing. He was not alone. He was seven footer but he had a five foot friend. As they neared the sea wall, my girl got a little nervous. “Should I back up a bit?” she asked. I told her that was probably a good idea. As I brushed her back a step, I lost my balance and fell right on top of both Crocs! Scared the hell out of all three of us. The crocs split, my girl friend was terrified, and I was laughing so hard I could barely make it back up the sea wall! I had bragged to her that you have to pay a hundred US. To see this shit. She got her monies worth!

Benny and I Hit the Reef

The water in Belize is fantastic by any measure. People come from all over the world to see the largest Barrier Reef in the Western Hemisphere. Chrystal clear….You can see the bottom at a hundred feet. So …it was five o’clock in the morning. Benny and I had been playing a show at Fido’s Bar, and after packing up our gear, we decided to go boating in the middle of the night. This was not really unusual. We’d go out on the reef and snorkel and spearfish when the sun came up. Well….One thing led to another, and we got into a fist fight at full throttle. This was also not that unusual! Brothers fight! The boat was careening at about thirty knots, and we were fighting in the stern. I was just about to knock his ass out, when we hit a major coral head. We both flew out of the boat and I landed hard on the reef. The engine quit and the engine cover flew off. We didn’t care! The fight was still on! We were punching each other in the water, when I noticed that the boat was drifting away quickly in the current. We were near the cut and the current there is powerful. I looked at him and said…” Benny! The boat is headed for shore!”. Fuck!!! The fight was over! We both swam as hard as we could, and Benny got a hold on the dangling anchor line. We hauled ourselves inboard, totally winded. I’d gotten cut badly on my elbow in the fall on the coral. I was bleeding all over the place. Fuck! Infection can kill you from that. We couldn’t find the engine cover in the dark, so we marked the spot by land sight, and headed for the closest bar. We limped into the Purple Parrot and woke up the owner. She gave us a few beers and a lime for me to rub into my wound. That doesn’t exactly tickle by the way. I later nearly died from Staff C on that one…. But that is another story. Later that day we went to find James the White Boy and he helped us find the engine cover. It was a twelve foot free dive to retrieve it. It took all three of us to haul it to the surface. Moral…..Don’t fight on moving vessel when you are drunk at night….HAHAHAHA

Ashcroft the Barracuda
The sea life off of the reef is incredible! I mean it’s all there… Still unspoiled in most places. Of course close to town has been fished out, but you need not go far to see what it has always been like. As a local, you begin to take it for granted after a while. My Danish friend Eli and I got to the point that we wouldn’t even untie the boat to go out! We’d pick up some beer, and just sit in the boat and shoot the shit. Why waste the gas to go to the reef? We’d been there a million times. We knew everything that was out there. A tourist would kill to be in our position, but we just sat in the boat and looked out upon the reef. We did however have a special friend on the reef. A giant barracuda that we named Ashcroft. We named him after Lord Ashcroft, a British billionaire who owned the banking system in Belize. Somehow it seemed to fit! I’ll never forget the first time I saw that bad ass fish. I was on a run to Caye Caulker with my wife, and our best friends, a native couple from San Pedro. Now, these Islands are only about five miles apart, but completely different! Ambergris Caye is primarily Hispanic, we border Mexico at the north end of the cut, and Caye Caulker is Kriole. Two completely different cultures. We’d gone to Caye Caulker as a kind of vacation from the hustle and bustle of San Pedro. Caye Caulker was even slower and more laid back, and we needed a break! The gossip and BS in San Pedro can beat you down on occasion. We rented a couple of cheap hotel rooms and spent a merry night at the Tree House Bar. The bar was literally built in a tree and you sat in single man hammocks and just chilled in the tree! That was the first night that James began to teach me the finer points of speaking Kriole. We stayed up late that night and the women went to bed. We even-tually came out of the tree and went to our rooms. The next morning we decided to go to Coral Gardens, a favorite wild life spot on the reef between Caye Caulker and San Pedro. Libby wanted to try and catch some small reef fish with a make shift net to sell to the aquariums at the resorts. We figured it would off set the cost of our fuel and rooms. Fuel is at least twice the cost as it is in the US. In fact, everything is. Belize is a very expensive country! We fished around in the water for a couple of hours. The fish were elusive, and we finally gave up laughing. We headed back to San Pedro, but pulled up to the reef to have lunch, just down the way from B.C.’s. Libby jumped in to pee, and then I saw a feat that defied gravity! Now… Lib is not a small woman, sturdy would be a cool way of saying it, and I love her dearly. She dove in …. And sud-denly came flying out of the water, and literally flew into the boat like a porpoise leaping at Sea World! Holy cow! She was scared shitless! I looked out into the water and saw the largest Bar-racuda that has ever lived! He was seven feet long if he was an inch! I heard later from some of the old local fisherman that he was estimated to be at least seventy years old! He was one big, mean looking fish. Now, emotionally he looks really scary, but we are not part of the barracuda food chain. They eat fish! Not people. Hell, they can’t even swallow us! We are competitors, not game. He sees us like he would another large barracuda. He will try to scare us off, but he really poses no serious threat. I’ve been out in the water long enough to know that. We go back in and tie up. The next day I go over to Eli’s house. “You want to see the granddaddy of them all?” I ask. “What do you mean?”…” I’m telling you Eli, I saw the biggest barracuda in the world yesterday and he’s right there in front of B.C.’s!” “Can you find him?”…” Hell yes! He lives in that flat behind the coral head, just short of where we usually anchor… I can’t believe we haven’t seen him before!” “Let me get my shorts on!” We go down to his boat… Shit low on fuel… That’s okay. We need bait anyway! We go to the Texaco dock and fuel up. I buy a bag of anchovies. This is going to be good! I show him where to anchor, and we get into the water with our masks on. Neither one of us use fins, too much of a hassle to lug them around. We swim around the big purple coral head…I’m dragging the anchovies on a line behind me. You don’t hold the bait in your hands! I give it say twenty feet of slack so we can both see close enough when he strikes. I had cut holes in the plastic bag to allow the scent to permeate the water. He comes out of nowhere, and fast! Wow! Lightening fast! We barely saw him, and the bait and my line was gone. Sheeeze….. We swam back to the boat. “What the fuck was that?”…That is when we named him Ashcroft, sneakier than hell, and fast as lightening. No wonder he had lived so long. He became our pet. We’d go out every few days to feed him and watch his amazing prowess. He got used to Eli and me. He would even hang with us in the water at a safe, out of spear gun range. He was not stupid! We never had a spear gun, but he was on the safe side anyway. In a strange kind of primordial way, we bonded. Ashcroft, the giant barracuda!