Placencia and Dangriga, May 19-22

Music Festival in Dangriga

Staying in Placencia would really mean just more of the same as Caye Caulker, and none of us were too keen on that. The Aussies were heading south to Honduras; James and Alikin were also heading south, while Raquel and I had some plans to go north (more on that later). But we all thought we should go out with a bang, so after finding accommodations in different hotels (we all had different budgets and different taste, but mostly because all hotels in Belize are small – none was able to take on eight people at short notice), we met up at the best restaurant in town for a grand farewell fiesta.

We just generally had a good time, taking pictures, comparing pictures from previous parts of our respective trips, and had a really good meal! I had a snapper, and that was excellent! I do wonder about the price of catch-of-the-day fish, though? At Rasta Pasta in Caye Caulker the catch of the day was Barracuda, and at 6 US$ it was among the least expensive on the menu, but here it was, at more than twice that, the most expensive item. Strange…

On Caulker, Raquel had heard there was supposed to be a music festival in this place called Dangriga north of Placencia, and I got that confirmed while we were staying on the resort. Raquel thought that sounded interesting, and I was really excited by the whole idea, so we have decided to band together for a few days.

Raquel is this totally sweet Australian/English chick. She was born in Australia, and there’s certainly a lot of that adventurous spirit that I could see in the other Aussies. But she has been living in the UK for 12 years now, and there’s certainly something of that more cool and sophisticated British streak in her as well.

She’s something of a free spirit type of girl who has done a lot of traveling over the years, and I just feel like a complete amateur next to her. She’s been all over the world, and I can’t wait to get to Kyrghyzstan so that I will at least have been in one country that she hasn’t yet! :-)

She’s also into crystals, healing, and all sorts of spiritual things, and you all know that I am definitely not! But it is really interesting to listen to her and learn about all this stuff that I knew absolutely nothing about. We might not agree on everything (such as basic scientific principles… :-)), but we totally have this great time together!
So anyway... This music festival wasn’t quite a music festival but something even better: a county fair! Well, maybe not quite (it did not have a greased pig for us to catch), but still more than just a music festival.

Dangriga is the biggest town in southern Belize, but there are only 8800 people living here, and both Raquel and I have somewhat fallen in love with the place. There are no other tourists and this really feels like the “real” Belize; even more so than Orange Walk. Although we have some conversations with the people here every now and then, mostly we just watch people go about their normal daily grind, and that’s just great! One great example: the two biggest stores here seem to be a paint store and a lumber store – no souvenir shops or five-star hotels in sight!

So for this three-day county fair, people seem to have come from the surrounding villages as well as from Dangriga itself, most of them all dressed up and with all this anticipation shining like a light from their faces! It’s obviously a very important part of their social calendar, that’s for sure. It’s just so nice looking at everyone, especially the (very!) pretty girls even though Raquel tells me the boys aren’t half bad either, smiling and having a good time. And there’s none of the fighting, over-intoxicated youngsters, or other crap that we get at similar festivals back in Sweden.

We haven´t been able to catch much else other than the music, since we missed the first day and a half, and the rain pretty-much destroyed the first half of the third day (I would have loved to see the pie-eating contest though!), so we mostly focused on the music events instead, and let me tell you, the music is excellent!

The Belizean music style is called Punta Rock and is a pretty intoxicating mixture of Caribbean music (like reggae) and western music, all mixed up with some reggae and other stuff from the two scenes here. Good stuff indeed! We have bought two CD’s, but as I’m writing this I realize they are both more soul-oriented than Punta Rock is, so maybe I’m going to buy some more CD’s before leaving?
Leaving, yes…I don’t know quite know when that is going to happen. We’ve looked at the weather forecast for the next week and a half, and there are only thunderstorms, thunderstorms and more thunderstorms over the whole Caribbean. And none of that “even if it rains it’s only going to be for an hour or two in the afternoon either”. But that’s why I brought all those films, TV series and comics on the computer, right? I just might as well stay here at Val’s hostel for another week – its cheap, its clean, I have a great porch to sit on with the computer, and the company is excellent!