corvid | Belize - Wandering Long Caye

So.

Even though it was only 11 acres, the small number of people on the caye made it a very calm and peaceful place. There are three parts to the caye. Slickrock Adventures, which runs the tour we were on, has the biggest share, pretty much the entire eastern side. Then there's Off the Wall, which has a dive center and scuba resort which owns the middle section. The very west part of the caye has a private owner that is never actually out there. He's got this little, seriously run down house on the west tip of the caye, that's now mostly used by itinerant fishermen that come out to the reef.

All told, Slickrock had 19 people while we were there (seven of us tourists, five staff, plus the owner, his girlfriend, and some friends of theirs that came out to open the island for the first tour of the season). Off the Wall had total of ten guests & staff, and maybe there were a couple of fishermen on the west tip at any point in time.

Now, consider that Glovers Reef has only 5 cayes total, spread out over 134 square miles. And that of those cayes, Long Caye had 29 people, maybe a dozen over on Northeast Caye, maybe a dozen at the marine research station on Middle Caye, and Southeast and Southwest Cayes being essentially uninhabited, we were beautifully isolated out there. Close enough that a satellite phone could have gotten us a boat or helicopter sent out for an emergency evac, but far enough out that at night, we could see a couple campfires on Northeast Caye at night, and no other signs of civilization. Every day or two, we'd see a lone container ship on the horizon, but I never once saw a contrail during the day or the strobes of an airplane at night.

The important takeaway here? No light pollution. When the skies were clear, we could easily see the Milky Way. We arrived on the new moon, and the sky was so dark that we could see the full disk of the moon illuminated by earthshine.

All of the electricity was provided by a few solar panels and a wind generator. The generator powered the kitchen refrigerators for us & the dive shop, and their air compressor. Once the sun went down around 5:30-ish, it got full dark on the caye. The kitchen had overhead lighting, hooked to the solar panels' batteries, but that was about it. Everything else after the sun went down was done by our own personal flashlights. So we'd typically turn it in earlier in the evening. Rosi & I were usually in bed between 8 & 9, and then I'd get up about 6 with the sunrise to walk the island and have some coffee on the beach before breakfast.

Our daily schedule was breakfast at 7:30, then some activity put together by our guides at 9 - often they had a couple choices for us. Then, lunch at noon and some more activities at 2. Happy hour at 5, dinner at 7, and a bit of socializing before all the exercise out in the fresh air sent us all to bed.

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Slickrock's part of the caye.

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Northeast Caye in the morning light. A different resort owns that caye.

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Long Caye is primarily made up of coral rubble and sand, held together by palm tree roots and a few mangroves on the west tip.

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The sheltered lagoon on the north side of Long Caye. When they don't have a storm screaming out of the northwest, that's where a good deal of the fun happens.

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A couple spiny tailed iguanas basking in the midday sun.

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And their buddy.

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The kitchen, with our tour leader, Neri, and his assistant Luis. And a bunch of coconuts, rum optional.

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And our kitchen from the outside.

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These were the inhumane conditions we had to tolerate on the island once the storm passed. A wind chill all the way down to 81°. No wonder my Northern-European blooded, Wisconsin-dwelling skin got sunburned.

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OK. I lied about these being daytime sights. At night, these blue land crabs would come out of their hidey holes. One of my favorite things to do at night was to walk around the caye, listening for the crabs to scurry around. These guys were so earnest about dealing with threats, rearing up on their hind legs and holding their claws out, like, "FEAR ME. I ARE BIG, SERIOUS CRAB WITH A SHELL FULL OF ASS-WHUPPING FOR YOU!", and I'd be like, "Dude, chill. You're 9 inches tall when you stand up like that."

Of course, watching these guys walk was always vaguely unsettling, because they'd do that sideways skitter where the legs are all clattering along, but the body itself just glides smoothly as if hovering.

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El Gargantua was all, "Dude. Screw you and your headlamp. I'm going to my hidey hole."

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An invasive coconut palm disease had gone through the caye a few years earlier. One of the treatments was to innoculate the trees with antibiotics. The easy and cheap way to do this was to pop the priming charge out of a bullet casing, and fill it with silicone. Then hammer the casing into the tree. When it's time to give the tree another dose of antibiotics, they just have to put the needle into the bullet casing and pump it in.

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The little boat on the right is Off the Wall's dive boat.

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Some of the local flora at the edge of the lagoon.

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Sunset on Long Caye...

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Sunrise the next morning, right from the front porch of our palapa.

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And a bit further into the morning.

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"Extreme Hammock Surfing" was one of the many available activities.

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This is Papillon, the groundskeeper's patrol bunny. We were very safe out on the Caye with Papillon on duty.

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Frigate birds were a common sight in the skies over the caye.

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The caye also has a nesting pair of ospreys. They like to sit on perches to eat their fish, and until this perch was built for them near their nest, they'd use the benches on one of the docks...

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And the other osprey, minding the nest.

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Hermit crabs everywhere, day and night.

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This is the molted shell of a crab, just sitting out on a rock.

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Yo, Dawg. I heard you liked shells, so I put some shells in your shell so you could collect some shells while you collect a shell.

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And one of the many snails that lived on one particular palm near our palapa. This tree had a good dozen snails on it, and a bunch around it, while there were no snails on any other trees nearby.