Ooye! Raggamuffins!
We got on the trip!
After quite a bit of being messed around, we finally got on the Raggamuffin trip sailing from Caye Caulker to Placencia. 2 days later than we'd hoped to depart but it really wasn't too taxing having to spend another couple of days on Caye Caulker. We chilled out, drank rum and saw one massive sting ray when snorkelling off The Split. The water was about 4 feet deep and it swam right under me. I nearly cacked my pants.
We set off from Caye Caulker on Friday morning, having grasped a few names of the 20 people we were travelling with. The crew's names were easy: Captain Ramsey, Shane and er, Shane. We would have the next three days and two nights to get acquainted with everyone else.
The sun was shining, the sails were up and the motor was going. So not exactly plain sailing but very much that feeling! We had been promised at least 2 stops for snorkelling each day. Well, we got them and the snorkelling was so good!
The water so clear! After our first session lunch was waiting and we were definitely not going to go hungry on this trip. Rods were set up to trawl off the back of the boat and although we didn't catch anything the first day, Captain Ramsey did a spot of fishing to make sure we wouldn't go hungry for dinner.
As we sailed on through the day we saw so many cayes/small islands. There are hundreds of them off the coast of Belize. Our home for the night came as a huge surprise. We knew we would be camping on a caye but we didn't know that it would be this small! Rendezvous Caye is about 35m long by 25m wide. It's so small that a wall has been built to stop it from being washed away. We found out after that it's disappointingly owned by Carnival, who built the wall and dredged the sand to make the island bigger, but as you can see from the photos, it's still very small, with just a few trees and huts. Very windy and of course sandy, too, so it wasn't the greatest night's sleep but still a very cool and actually quite surreal place to lay your head.
The next day there was more snorkelling and one of the guys even caught a barracuda! Shane put it out of its misery: death by rum.
On the final day we stopped off just after Tobacco Caye, where one of the Shanes gave us a guided tour of the reef and showed us all the different fish and coral. Then we stopped at another reef just off another caye. It had the nicest beach, with really shallow water, I could have sat there all day.
On the way back to the boat I saw another huge Eagle ray, though this time it was less scary as it was much further away! So I'm now trying to put Steve Irwin (RIP) out of my mind to make that a short lived phobia!
After that all our snorkelling was done! And then we had the whole day to sun ourselves on the boat while we continued down to Placencia, where the trip would end. It was actually too much sun! We spent so long sat out in it, but after three hours we'd had enough, so we had to call it a day and move inside the cabin, where happy hour had already kicked off.
While we were cruising along this little bird flew in to the boat and just sat there, resting. He looked like he had been flying around above the sea, lost for hours and didn't move a muscle, no matter how close we got. As we approached Placencia and land came into view, he suddenly flew off, as if he just sensed it was near.
So, our 3 day sailing trip ended in Placencia. We hadn't done any fishing, like we thought we would, and we hadn't done any of the sailing, like we thought we would but we had an amazing time. We met some really nice people, the snorkelling was incredible, the islands we stayed on were out of this world, we had some of the most delicious and fresh food, and we drank and were merry.
The sun was shining, the sails were up and the motor was going. So not exactly plain sailing but very much that feeling! We had been promised at least 2 stops for snorkelling each day. Well, we got them and the snorkelling was so good!
As we sailed on through the day we saw so many cayes/small islands. There are hundreds of them off the coast of Belize. Our home for the night came as a huge surprise. We knew we would be camping on a caye but we didn't know that it would be this small! Rendezvous Caye is about 35m long by 25m wide. It's so small that a wall has been built to stop it from being washed away. We found out after that it's disappointingly owned by Carnival, who built the wall and dredged the sand to make the island bigger, but as you can see from the photos, it's still very small, with just a few trees and huts. Very windy and of course sandy, too, so it wasn't the greatest night's sleep but still a very cool and actually quite surreal place to lay your head.
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| Rendezvous Caye |
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| Home for the night |
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| Our boat, the Ragga Queen |
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| Shane spearfishing for our dinner |
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| C found a conch, not much to eat in it though |
That night we stayed on Tobacco Caye, which is a little bit bigger than Rendezvous Caye and even has permanent residents. There was more snorkelling though I didn't stay long in the water as I was scared of the massive Eagle rays we'd seen when docking!
That night the rum punch was flowing, as was the reggae music!
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| Snorkelling at Tobacco Caye |
On the final day we stopped off just after Tobacco Caye, where one of the Shanes gave us a guided tour of the reef and showed us all the different fish and coral. Then we stopped at another reef just off another caye. It had the nicest beach, with really shallow water, I could have sat there all day.
On the way back to the boat I saw another huge Eagle ray, though this time it was less scary as it was much further away! So I'm now trying to put Steve Irwin (RIP) out of my mind to make that a short lived phobia!
After that all our snorkelling was done! And then we had the whole day to sun ourselves on the boat while we continued down to Placencia, where the trip would end. It was actually too much sun! We spent so long sat out in it, but after three hours we'd had enough, so we had to call it a day and move inside the cabin, where happy hour had already kicked off.
While we were cruising along this little bird flew in to the boat and just sat there, resting. He looked like he had been flying around above the sea, lost for hours and didn't move a muscle, no matter how close we got. As we approached Placencia and land came into view, he suddenly flew off, as if he just sensed it was near.
So, our 3 day sailing trip ended in Placencia. We hadn't done any fishing, like we thought we would, and we hadn't done any of the sailing, like we thought we would but we had an amazing time. We met some really nice people, the snorkelling was incredible, the islands we stayed on were out of this world, we had some of the most delicious and fresh food, and we drank and were merry.
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