Ragga Gal, from Caye Caulker to Placencia, May 17-19

Sunset over Tobacco Caye

I’m gonna do this and the next few entries in English; I’ve hooked up with Raquel for a few days, and I promised that she would be able to see what I write about her. :-) I also get to practice my English writing skills, which I really need. I hope the rest of you guys can cope with that!

The boat trip was excellent! Apart from me and Raquel, there were two older couples from Australia (Peter & Lynne and Marie & Gary), plus James & Alikin, two kids from the UK. Great opportunity for me to practice my English! Also on the boat were Ramsay the skipper, and Mario the deckhand, two locals.
From the beginning I was afraid that the older guys would cramp our style somehow (after all, it was camping and all that), but quite the opposite: those Australians really are something else! Actually, the whole group really got along great together.

When we set off, we had three days of sailing, snorkeling, and just generally hanging out together in front of us, while being pampered by Mario - or so we thought at least. As it turned out, Mario wasn’t the keenest worker in the whole world, but as soon as we figured out that we needed to ask him for everything one or two times, he and Ramsay got our fruit trays and rum drinks going!

That’s pretty much how we spent the days, just laying in the sun on the boat deck (I have the best tan!), while stopping on some more or less deserted islands for snorkeling and lunch. The food was great most of the time (Ramsay turned out to be quite some chef), and the snorkeling as well. It was really just the day after the storm that visibility wasn’t too good, but more about that later.

The evenings were quite a bit different however… We were going to camp out in tents, so the first evening the others put up the tents while I and James took the spear gun and tried to catch us some dinner. Actually, Ramsay had a line from the boat and caught all the fish we needed, but it would have been fun to catch something ourselves as well. Well, we never actually managed to catch anything, but I totally blame that on James for hogging the spear gun the while time! :-)

When I got back to our campsite, I noticed that the tents were pitched on the beach, which is normally not something that you want to do because of possible high tides, the tent pegs not holding securely in the sand and whatever, but I thought Ramsay and Mario knew what they were doing. Big mistake.

After dinner (and a lot of rum punch!), we started to prepare for sleep when suddenly the weather got really bad. We probably hadn’t noticed the clouds because it was already dark (and the rum punch might have had something to do with it…), but suddenly a really bad storm hit us. The tent pegs (some of which weren’t to well secured to begin with) started to creep out of the sand, and the tents were suddenly starting to look like they were folded up instead of put up!

The picture here is from the morning after; it did not look any better during the storm. Of course the wind blew the rain straight in to the tents, and it did not take long for them to be filled with two inches of water. Meanwhile Ramsay and Mario were completely comfortable in the boat, and I had to run around securing tent pegs (to the best of my ability), securing blankets and other loose stuff under the tents, and even waded out to the boat (we were moored in shallow water) to give Mario some stuff to keep dry while the storm raged.

In the morning, we were eight not-so-happy campers, waking up to more or less a disaster area. At least Raquel had done a great job and cleaned out the water and most of the sand from our tent, so she and I were reasonably dry, but most of the others were completely soaked! I have spent quite some time complaining about the temperature in earlier entries, but I am just so glad that we didn’t have Swedish temperatures – that would have been downright dangerous.

Actually, everything looked like it was turning into a mutiny of some sorts. There was this “Survivor”-like (“Survivor” is the same show as “Robinsson” in Sweden) feeling, with the eight of us forming different and changing groups discussing how we were to act towards Ramsay (I wanted to advocate letting him walk the plank, but I was afraid someone might take it seriously!). Actually I thought the whole experience had been pretty fun, like an adventure of some sorts, but understandably not all the others felt like that.

In the end some of the others had a chat with Ramsay, and after that everything was smooth sailing (pun intended). For the next night, he set us up at a resort on Tobacco Caye (not a fancy one, but still), so that we actually got to sleep in beds and have showers(!), and in general we were really well taken care of (especially by Ramsay). And the whole experience totally glued us together as a group really nicely - just like a team-building exercise, but this time it was for real!

Ramsay also served up the most fantastic meal on the beach, and after some more rum punch, a few of us was off to a house at the northern tip of the small Caye (for my Swedish friends: “Caye” is pronounced like “key” and means small island) to watch Ramsay and some of his friends give a great impromptu drumming concert. His friends came over to us while we were having dinner and begged him to come over, and I completely understand why: not only was he a great cook, but also a great drummer.

The locals took turns at the drums and the dance floor, and just generally hung out – it was great fun! I was the last of our group to go home, but it wasn’t that late. But that rum punch…I was so drunk that not only did I have a cigarette, I also forgot to hit on Raquel back in our room! :-)

So, after a final day of sailing, we finally caught sight of Placencia. I had the opportunity to sail the boat back to Caye Caulker overnight with Ramsay and Mario, but I passed. I learned that they intended to motorsail back because we had started the trip a day later than originally planned: if it would have been only sailing it would have been really nice (if nothing else to get to know the guys better) to sail in the Caribbean night, but since they were in a hurry to go back so they decided they would motorsail back. I’ve never been too fond of that, and also I was looking forward to spending some time in Placencia with the other guys, so I bid adieu to the fair lady ´Ragga Gal´ as I put my slightly unsteady legs on the docks.