The Locals

Welcome to the Tackle box - which until I got there I thought was called Taco box, thanks to my inability to understand almost anything our guide said.

Let me explain. On Sunday night me and a German girl from the hostel went here with one of the locals named Wally - who I thought was named Milton until he finally managed to explain it to me at the end of the night. Wally speaks Creole, and has dreadlocks down to his knees (really, he does). Creole is hard to explain, but the best I can do is to say that if English is a square, Creole is a circle. Not to say they're opposites, but creole is like English with all the corners shaved off - Nina (the German) was trying to get the locals to teach her, which I have to admit was hilarious to watch. It's the only language I've ever heard that sounds the same no matter how drunk they get - the words are already so slurred that it doesn't seem to make any difference. To say hi to someone in creole, you'd say something like "owya doon boi?" but with all the words slurred together, any hard consonants rounded off into vowels, and spoken as fast as possible. We drove to the Tackle Box in Wally's golf cart and hung out there for a few hours listening to the locals sing karaoke and even singing a few ourselves.

When we left we walked back along to the dock to the shore and ran into some young guys in camo gear with automatic machine guns slung over their shoulders - I only had a second to be worried before Wally attacked them with hugs and handshakes and they turned out to be very friendly guys. After that we drove home to the Inn, stopping several times for Wally to meet and greet people along the way, then after a long chat (of which I understood about half) the night was done.

The Bristish Occupancy

I have to note, it's interesting how the society seems to function here - Belize was a British colony until sometime in the early eighties (you may rem,ember it as British Honduras) and many brits seem to have stuck around, those that were born here are now running hotels of their own, and there it definitely a feel of "British rule" around those places (like Pedros) that are owned by the brits. That's not to say they are unfriendly to the locals, but they are definately in charge.