The Caye

getting there was interesting - the plane held 13, including the pilot and one passenger who sat in the co-pilot seat (with the stern warning not to touch the stick or the pedals, hmmmm...).

the drag is that we flew in the dark so we didn't get to see the beauty of the water and reefs and cayes, but we were right there for the navigation and GPS, so I knew exactly how long until we landed, which was fine - and quick. about 15 minutes from wheels up to wheels down.

then we went to the high security baggage claim, where we thought we were being hustled by all the folks wanting to know where we were staying, but in reality, they were all waiting for us to get us into our taxi and to the Casa Redondo... quite nice, every step was taken care of.

The airport is in the center of town, so it's easy to get where you are going. The predominant mode of transpo is the golf cart, so the roads suck and at times amount to little more than sand tracks with huge puddles and boards laid across the soft spots. The island is sinking, it's clear that it's either subsidence or the ocean level is rising, but the whole place is about 2 inches above water.

The Casa Redondo is beautifully located south of town, not inconveniently isolated, but away from the bustle if you could call any action there that. the palapa is ubquitous here, and we had a couple of lovely choices, one on the peir, on at the pool.

the La Isla Basura comes from our noting two facts upon arrival - 1) like most places of unparalleled natural beauty, the locals rarely appreciate it as anything other than 'where we live' and therefore, any place off the road was fair ground for dumping trash and there were plenty of large piles of unmanaged garbage everywhere, and 2) the road to the dump was somewhere between us and town, and sometimes the wind blew the wrong way.

there is however, as noted and hinted at in photos, lots of natural beauty, and we'll get to that; we even explored and saw undeveloped areas that were great, it just never fails to surprise me how omnipresent garbage is!

more later