The People of Hopkins

We sit outside, under the overhang, at our table facing the life of the Garifuna village of Hopkins, Belize. We order our food and sip our drinks and watch as a world we only think we can imagine passes by. Bikes, toting entire families -- dad peddling, mom on the handle bars, baby on her lap, sister somewhere in between; round women walk by with floral dresses, their large breasts swinging towards the ground; laughter and the friendly call of goodnight; Garifuna children, their hair in pretty little braids, their simple white dresses dulled with road dust, play baseball with a piece of driftwood and a small coconut. A base hit! -- the child screeches with glee and runs towards second. A Rasta man strolls by, his braids swaying to the tunes from the restaurant; more bikes, bare feet pumping lazily; and dogs, always dogs, looking plaintively our way, tails wagging a slow wag -- have we received our food yet? Would we feed them? Our restaurant mates yell sharply from another table. The dog slinks away and I am saddened. I might have slipped her a little food. Two young chickens cross the road; flip flopped feet stroll by; a quick and noisy flock of parrots wing overhead; the soft Caribbean breeze kisses my neck as I swat at a sand fly; and I am disinclined to ever go home.


The Garifuna are just one of the many cultures that define Belize. This culture, descendents of Carib, Arawak and African peoples, created by man’s inhumanity to man, by greed and circumstances, have survived all that time has thrown their way. Beginning with a shipwreck on the island of Saint Vincent, would-be African slaves, never reaching American soil, blended their genes, their knowledge, their tenacity, with the already intermingled Venezuelan Caribs and island Arawaks -- and the Garifuna were born. They lived in relative peace with the French colonists for years until the British came, sparking death and war. The victorious British forcibly removed what was left of the Garifuna people to Roatan, one of the Bay Islands off Honduras, where they eventually migrated to the mainland and colonized along the Caribbean coast forming small peaceful fishing villages. And they brought with them their drumming and their cassava; their stories and their love of the sea; their warmth and their hardships. Now, two hundred years later, they are still struggling to keep their language, their history, their traditions and their place in the world.


And this small restaurant, owned by German expats, called Thongs, sits in the center of this Garifuna village; and it is charming. Often, we eat at one of the many Garifuna restaurants which are attached to the owner’s home, but tonight we chose to eat something different than fish or stew chicken or rice and beans. Thongs is a place that looks safe to a tourist -- foreign, yet not too foreign, painted a pretty orange, welcoming front porch, cute little tables -- so that we are not surprised, as we eavesdrop on their conversations, that the other patrons are all first time tourists.


The young waiter comes to one of the other tables to take their order and I chuckle to myself in an arrogant sort of way as these Americans answer him in clumsy Spanish. Do they not realize they’re speaking Spanish to a German in an English speaking country? But I know I am very wrong to think this way. No matter that I’ve been to Belize a dozen times and I own a house here -- I too am a tourist. And even when we move here fully and I can raise my status to expat -- even if I obtain my residency as so many of our friends in Belize have done -- I will never truly be part of this village, full of culture and rich history; and I will never know the conflict of walking the dusty pot holed streets of my ancestors -- now mingled with foreign investment, Chinese grocery stores, ‘fancy’ restaurants, condos and change -- and watch as the tourists and expats and foreigners eat their dinner while watching me back.

Full Moon Over the Caribbean

These were taken on a night as light as day, where a soft breeze caressed the palms and moon shadows stretched across the sand.

Belizean Times

There is time, and then there is Belizean time. “Now,” can be an hour or a day. “Soon,” can be a week or a year. “Fast.” Well, let’s just say, fast has its own definition in Belize.

On this most recent trip to Belize, my husband and I brought our two daughters and a boyfriend (one of my daughter’s -- not mine or my husband’s). We were all on our way out of town, leaving the village of Hopkins on the way to the bustling city of Dangriga. The younger crowd was hungry (they’re always hungry or thirsty or both) so we decided to stop at Maggie’s Fast Food.

Maggie’s is nestled in the sand, surrounded by new plantings of bananas and palmettos and coconut palms and bright colored exotic leafy plants whose names I do not know. This tiny restaurant, painted in soft blue and yellow stripes, is their livelihood and their home, consisting of a small inside eating area, a deck as large as the building, a kitchen and in the back, I assume, a place to sleep.




We entered the building and were greeted by a pleasant Garifuna woman, Maggie, I presumed, and her four-year-old child. After ordering three burritos and an order of tostados, I asked the little girl, “What’s your name?” She slipped shyly behind the wall and would not answer. We stepped outside to the sandy yard to wait, and sat down at the widest, largest picnic table I have ever seen. We all sat on the same side except for Emily, who isn’t terrible large, almost flipping the thing on top of us. We smartly redistributed our weight and waited.

The little girl began to play with us through the screen of the door. First she was a dog. “Bark! Bark!” She jumped behind the screen. Then a cat. “Meow!” Then a terribly frightening roar. “A jaguar!” I guessed. “Dinosaur!” she cried. We laughed, she tore at the small hole in the screen with her dinosaur claws. We screamed in horror. This went on for quite awhile. The tear in the screen got considerably larger.

No Coke, so we drank red Fanta, which was syrupy sweet and turned our tongues an odd shade of pink. We swatted at the bugs. We took some pictures. I got bored and wandered around the estate, checking out the bananas and other vegetation. The little girl grew braver. Casey (the boyfriend) coaxed her outside with coins. We told him this was wrong, but she accepted the coins, and they played catch with a small coconut.

More time passed. “I guess Maggie had to kill a chicken,” Paul said. I nodded and wandered up the road. I decided to check out the hemp place I’d been meaning to check out for years. Sarah followed. We entered the brightly colored old school bus. “Sew Much Hemp,” was painted on both sides.



A white woman with long thick dread locks, sold us her hemp bug repellant. The bus was her business and her home. She claimed the bus still ran, but I hadn’t seen it move in years. She’d traveled all over Central and South America in her bus promoting hemp. The virtues of hemp, she extolled, ranged from necklaces to decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. She complained that the Belizean government, in cahoots with the U.S., forbid the growing of hemp. I’m not sure where she secured the ingredients for her creams, but I have never noticed a shortage of hemp-type products in Belize.

Suddenly, lo and behold, Paul was driving down the long dirt road to the hemp place! Over forty-five minutes later and our fast food was done! We scrambled into the truck with our hemp cream in our greasy little hands, the truck filled with the lovely odor of Maggie’s Fast Food, and made our way over the bumpy dirt roads towards the highway that would lead us to Dangriga.

Jungle Float

Here's a little essay I wrote after my last trip to Belize. As we will be escaping soon, from the this cold deary winter and into the warm embrace of Belize, I felt it time to post another story of this wonderful place.

What typically happens to me when I’m in Belize is that I meet someone. Someone who is a visitor, as I’m am; someone who is here to live the magic of Belize. And it’s strange, because my husband, Paul, and I are not the sort of people who go up to strangers and start a conversation. But there’s something about Belize. One year, we met James. We loved James. He palled around with us for days. We took him to all our favorite places. We had a great time. One of the things that makes this so easy is that we have always been privileged enough to rent a car, which is very expensive in Belize. It’s not an easy place to get around in without a car, so we like to share the transportation with others.

Well the trip I took to Belize with my eighteen-year-old daughter this summer proved to be no different. When my daughter, Sarah, and I left the upper falls of Antelope Falls, we met Valerie and Ryan, from Vancouver. Antelope Falls is a beautiful, strenuous hike near the Mayflower ruins off the Southern Highway between Dangriga and Hopkins. I just naturally asked them, as we pulled our hiking clothes over our wet bathing suits and prepared for the hike back down the mountain, if they wanted to go to Cockscomb Basin with us later in the week, as they had no car and it’s one long walk into the park.

Valerie and Ryan were on their honeymoon. They’ve been backpacking through Central America for two months. They were sweethearts in high school and were brought back together via a high school reunion. He’s going to be going to law school and she’s a horticulturist. By the next day they are showering in our unused bedroom suite of North Hopkins Bay where we are staying for the week. My husband and I built a house south of Hopkins two years ago. We have long term renters living in our home who work at Hopkins Bay, so we have a sweet little arrangement allowing us to stay at the resort on those visits where we don’t demand the use of our own home. Ryan and Valerie were camping, with sand flies and barking dogs. They were on their honeymoon. They deserved a king-sized bed!

So, the four of us went hiking in Cockscomb Basin, up the Tiger Fern Trail. The hike is a challenge, but not impossible, even for a woman of my advanced years. What makes this hike my favorite are the twin falls and the beautiful jungle pools into which the waters cascade. But what makes this hike a great big pain-in-the-rump, is that once you reach the top of the mountain, you must then hike down a very steep twenty to thirty minutes decline (depending on how closely you’re related to a mountain goat) to get to the falls. Once there, it’s pure heaven! The problem becomes, that you either have to decide to live the rest of your life by a jungle pool in Belize, or you must drag your tired body back up and out of there.

But, where I’m heading with this is that I need another reward for getting out of there. The first reward, being, of course, swimming in the jungle pools and the second reward is renting a tube for $2.50 US from the park office and spending an hour floating down a lazy river in middle of Cockscomb Basin.

This is what the four of us do -- Sarah, Valerie, Ryan and myself, after we’d made it up and down and back up and down the Tiger Fern trail; we go the park office to collect our tubes. There are two places you exit the river when you’re done tubing. We always float to the second exit. As we pay for the tubes, I told the park ranger that we’re going to the second exit, where the rope is tied across the river, clearly marking the exit; and he says, “I think the rope is still there . . . ” This bothers me a little, that the rope might not be there anymore, but I’ve done this tubing several times before -- I know what I’m doing. I joke with him. “So if we miss the exit, we end up in the sea?” He mumbles something about getting out somewhere else and walking several miles back up the road, but I didn’t quite catch it and besides, I know what I’m doing.

So I lead my daughter and our new friends down a path and into the jungle, toting our tubes, a bag of beers Sarah’s insisted on bringing, and my dry bag with: car keys, bug wipes, Ryan’s and Valerie’s passports, papers and money. They’ve already been robbed once on their journeys, so they’re not taking any chances. Sarah and I have on sandals, Ryan and Valerie are barefoot.

It is a longer hike than I remembered, but we finally reach the entrance point of the river and it’s divine! The sky is a clear blue. The river is a calm movement towards the sea. The butterflies are bright splashes of color. The birds are flittering movements of pleasure . . . We sit ourselves in our tubes, an open bottle of Belikin stuck between our legs, and float with lazy rapture through the jungle.

Well, the first minor glitch is when we reach the first exit point. I am ahead, as I am an extremely fast floater, and I wait for the others to catch up. At this point, my beer is gone, and I am only mildly concerned. When my companions reach my spot on the river, I tell them that I am ninety percent sure that is the first exit and that we should keep going. The words “I think the rope is still there,” are floating about in my head. Ryan and Valerie like the odds and Sarah is, “Whatever.” We float onward.

It is not too much longer before Ryan stops. My ‘dry bag’ is no longer dry. Everything is wet -- their passports, their money, their wedding vows, my bug wipes . . . But they’re cool. We reseal the dry bag.


We soldier on. A few lazy turns in the river later, Sarah announces, “I’ve lost my pants.” “Your pants? How could you lose your pants?” She’d removed her pants to float in her bathing suit and tied them to the tube -- now they are on their way to the sea. Oh, well . . . Onward, down the river. Then we reach a fork. I stop again and wait, as I am, of course, ahead. I recognize this fork -- I’m almost certain. And I swear that there used to be a sign -- an arrow telling you which way to go. But there is no sign -- no arrow . . . Do I know where the hell I am? Once my companions catch up, I am honest. “I’m pretty sure we take the right fork. Ninety percent sure,” I say, with authority. Ryan likes the odds. Sarah and Valerie are silent.

We soldier on. The fork becomes narrower and narrower, the jungle bends down around us, the water grows dangerously shallow. My ninety percent seems to be shrinking away. “Let me walk on ahead,” I say, as it is not too late to push back up the river and take the other fork. It is only a short wade down the river before the fork widens and joins the other fork. I am greatly relieved, but still wondering about that damn rope.

We float onward. I push ahead. Valerie is right behind me and the water begins to move faster. We are zipping along and I’m thinking of rapids and waterfalls and nights spent in the jungle unprepared, when suddenly, like an answered prayer, I see the rope! We are saved! I have not led three people astray in Belize!

Valerie and I get out at the exit. We are both happy. Her faith in me is restored. We wait. “I wonder where they are?” I say casually. “They were right behind us . . .” “I saw Ryan stop,” she says. We wait. Finally, Sarah is floating towards us. She grabs the rope to stop herself, and says, “Ryan’s lost his wedding ring.” “What!? You’re joking, right?” is Valerie’s response. But Sarah would never be that cruel.

So the three of us desert our tubes on the bank and swim back up the river to help Ryan look for his ring, which, by-the-way, is not an easy task as the current was strong, the water deep. When we finally reach him, poor Ryan is standing in the shallow water. He’s been looking for quite awhile. He’s peering down at a riverbed sprinkled with small colored stones and looking lost -- his hand naked. His wife stands near, her hands to her sides, peering at him. He looks at her. “My hand hit a branch. It just pulled right off . . .” They both look as if they might cry. I see their entire marriage raveling apart. First the wet passports, the ruined wedding vows -- now the lost ring . . . I have failed them . . .

But before we even get the chance to help scour the riverbed, Ryan suddenly looks down. He bends over and picks up the ring, which has wedged itself between two stones. We all look with relief and wonder at the ring he holds up, secure between his thumb and his forefinger; and that’s when I knew that these two would always be together; and not me, or Belize, or rivers could change that.

Coconuts: That’s why I love Belize

Small terns strutted ahead anxiously, never taking flight, as they were not quite sure of our intentions. The day was awesome -- the air still, with no humidity -- the sea, a shimmering blue. My daughter, Sarah, and I walked along the beautiful, debris covered beach of Hopkins, Belize, Central America. We studied the fresh array of unmatched shoes, coconuts, plastic bottles, brown clusters of seaweed, copious amounts of green sea grass, shattered unidentifiable pieces of plastic, neatly sliced halves of oranges with their gut sucked clean, the severed head of a pineapple . . . All of which had found their way onto the shoreline of Belize.

As we walked, Sarah suddenly declared that she wanted a coconut. I said, “Take one. They’re everywhere.” She found this beautiful large green monster of a coconut. We walked on awhile with it before we came across a rare, but hard, rock thrusting out from the edge of the surf. This rock was next to a pier and a group of small Garifuna children were playing and splashing in the water under the end of the pier. Sarah, who isn’t all that large, started throwing the coconut against the rock in an attempt to break its thick green covering and get to the good stuff. I began to help her. We took turns thrusting this thing against this rock and the children -- five boys and one girl -- the oldest no more than seven -- came splashing out of the water and grabbed this massive nut.

We stepped back in surprise, and then amusement, as they took their own turns throwing the nut against the rock. They got down on their knees in the surf, the Caribbean waters glistening and slipping off their bodies, and held it in their hands and banged it against the rock. They stood up again and threw it some more. Sarah and I just stood there, smiling and watching. I threw in a, “Wow,” here and there, but the children weren’t talking to us -- they were strictly concentrating on the task at hand. Finally, after a good ten minutes, the thing started to give up and split apart, and then these boys got their little hands, and their feet, and their fingers in there, sitting in the surf and having a tug of war. This involved more banging and more pulling.

Another ten minutes went by. We were still standing there watching and smiling, the hot Belizean sun beating down on us. The green husk was gone at this point. All that was left was a fuzzy round ball about the size of a small cantaloupe, and these boys were tugging on the whitish fiber that covered the inner stone, throwing the strands of fibers about their heads and flinging it into the sea, until, at last, a perfect light tan globe was revealed.

The oldest, and most hard working of the boys, after a half hour of work, stood up, dripping from the sea and proudly handed the coconut to Sarah. She bowed slightly, smiled and said, “Thank you! Let me shake your hand.” And then she shook all the children’s hands, and then they ran, without a word, back out and into the sea. And that, is one of many reasons, why I love Belize . . .