Caye Caulker

We took a day trip to Caye Caulker on the water taxi. Several are available and the run pretty frequently until around sunset - takes less than an hour.

If the cosmopolitan environment of San Pedro is just too much hustle and bustle for you (hah!), then Caye Caulker is a great place to decompress (by decompress I mean going from maybe a tenth of an atmosphere of pressure down to near vacuum). It's smaller, with maybe two unpaved streets with very little traffic running along each side of the Caye, one facing the Caribbean and the other facing the water to the west. I've been to a few Caribbean destinations, including BVI, St John's, Nevis and others and for a completely relaxing vibe, Caye Caulker has them beat. Remember that we are visiting over the New Year's holiday, the high season. There were a fair number of tourists roaming around so I imagine it must be amazingly peaceful as well as beautiful at quieter times.

To give you an idea of the urban life of Caye Caulker, here is the main street and the business district around early afternoon rush hour.

The colors on the island are typically beautiful Caribbean:

And the shoreline is serene and scenic

(both of those pictures were taken from the same spot while sitting on the sand)

Here's a picture of the west coast of the island

There is no shortage of tasty restaurants and snack places. The largest hotels look like 'botique' hotels - we saw nothing that resembled a resort. There are plenty of tour operators if you are so inclined. It's clearly a place where doing as close to nothing as possible is the ultimate goal. And that is not a bad thing.