More Than Snorkelling
28 February 2015 | Pelican Cays, Belize
Beth / bathing suit and flippers
While the main draw at Pelican Cays is the snorkeling, we found lots more to delight us there.
In the evenings, we often went ashore to have a drink on Hideaway Caye, where Dustin makes a killer rum punch, and Kim cooks up delicious fish dinners, and sweet little 2 yr old Ama charms us all. They like to know a few hours ahead if folks want to come for dinner (set price of $40 B, rum punch $8 B)) but you can just drop over to the bar for a drink or a visit in the late afternoon. They monitor VHF 74, and a call ahead is not a bad idea since their big black dog has a serious bark and doesn’t like outboard motors. If they know you are coming, he is securely locked away.
In fact, the only time we ever saw him was on his regular morning swim around the bay. Dustin and Ama go out for a long leisurely paddle in the bright yellow kayak, followed by their fearless friend. On the morning this picture was taken, they were delivering French bread hot from the oven to those of us lucky enough to have ordered it the night before. Imagine – morning bread delivery by kayak!
Mary and Peter (Rendezvous) were there when we were, and following their lead, we ventured around the corner to visit Steven – a local fisherman. He and his wife, Teresa, their little girl and Teresa’s brother were staying at their camp on one of the cays, and he had freshly caught fish for sale. He fileted a big mutton snapper and cleaned a couple of pounds of conch (8 of them) for us, while Peter did his own fileting of 3 schoolmasters.
I panfried the snapper filets, sprinkled them with pepper and lime juice and served them with coconut rice and a grated carrot salad in balsamic vinaigrette for dinner one night, and made a batch of conch fritters on another night. There is still some conch in the freezer, and I have to make another batch of fritters because these weren’t quite up to scratch – not crisp enough and lacking a little bit of je ne sais quoi – salt? hot sauce? The Captain will have to taste test!
Peter speared a huge crab and was kind enough to share some of that delectable meat too. Although we have a spear, we never take it with us because we’d both rather look at the fish than hunt them. Our fishing is done more often with a line trolling from the boat – and frankly, we’d just as soon buy or trade with the local fishermen. (Sorry Liam – we’re not keeping up your fishing tradition!)
Our mornings started, as usual down here, with Chris Parker’s weather broadcast on Single Sideband Radio at 0730 local time, followed by the Northwest Caribbean Cruiser’s Net at 0800. This is where we listen to see which boats are where, and to let folks know where we are. One morning, we were thrilled to hear Pat and Dave (Ten Years After) checking in with the comment that they have been following our blog for several years and look forward to meeting up with us! Pat called later on VHF to tell us that it was our mutual friends, Ken and Connie (Oz) who told them about Madcap’s travels. Thanks you two! We look forward to a visit when we manage to meet up in person. It reminded us of the time we were motoring up the New River in Fort Lauderdale and someone called out from the shoreline, “Hey Madcap! We love your blog!” and the time we were sitting on a shuttle bus at the Annapolis Boat Show and when we introduced ourselves to the folks behind us, they said, “You’re Madcap? We read your blog!” Or the time when we were cruising down the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida and we got an email from Steve who said, “I read your blog and I’ll be in Cocoa Beach and I’d like to meet you!” Such experiences never fail to delight us both.
The mooring balls have all been occupied every night we’ve been here, and most nights there are a couple of boats anchored as well. It’s a large bay but since it is so deep, boats need a lot of rode and we believed we wouldn’t be able to anchor here at all because we just don’t carry that much chain and rode (nylon rope). But along the northern edge, it is possible to find 40-foot depths, so while that would take all the rode we carry, we could manage it in settled weather. (We generally use a ratio of 5-1 feet of rode per foot of water depth.)
We will come back here for sure! In the meantime, we’re going to try to make our way north to Garbutt Cay for the next few days.
Since we don’t have internet here and for some reason Jim is unable to get an email connection on SSB, who knows when this will get posted or if we really will get there.