CAYE CAULKER TOURIST HISTORY

The Hideaway Lodge was the first hotel on Caye Caulker. The photo is there on my BLOG. An eight bedroom affair upstairs and a downstairs dining room, bar, kitchen,etc. It was built about 1965 or 1967, by the son of a man who owned a drugstore in Belize City. The son came back from the USA when his old man died and converted the drugstore into a USA style emporium. Previously it had been a dark hole, with cardboard boxes in the entryway and all over. The drugstore went bust in the port, as the customers didn´t like sliding cheerful glass doors and stuff modern style. They thought he must be overcharging. The guy came and talked to me and built the hotel you see in the photo. I forget the date or year exactly but he sold out and went back to the USA. He was a Franco, Sabido, or something else. Can´t remember his name. But he had the hotel for 2 or three years and I bought the two deed pieces and hotel building for $18,000 Bz, which was a fortune at that time around 1969, or so. I got the money by selling shares in Island Traders Co. Ltd. at $500 each to my tourist friends who were guests at the time. They got dividend certificates for so many free days vacation each year from the company, depending on investment size. Many just liked me and put in $500 and forgot about it and I never saw them again. Most became very close friends. It is still that way in the tourist business. Everybody but me are dead now. It´s all in making guests feel like family, or close friends. Leo Peachy owned the next piece on the beach, an Englishman, and he sold me the extra triangle to make the lot a sort of trapezoid, nearly rectangular.. He in turn had bought the hotel from the original owner/builder. I bought from Leo Peachy. I believe it was 1968 or 69. Don´t remember, but it was late 1990´s when my daughters were seeking to build their own homes on the Caye and businesses and I put the property into a 99 year Auxillou TRUST. They can´t sell it, or lien it, and the land is owned in common. By that time, I just had a day trip snorkel business and small two piece wood home on the property. Tina built her hostel and tore down my shacks. She had previously been operating for five years on rented property further up the beach, but it got sold from under her. I got bored with the Caye and left to do something else. I´d been divorced and at loose ends. I spent some years sailing and building boats in the Bahamas and Eastern Caribbean. Eight or nine years ago, I planned to return to Belize in old age and retirement. Five years ago, my newer wife and I made it fact and are quite content here in Western Belize. We live upper middle class on what would be a HOMELESS person´s budget in the USA. Could never make it in the USA, we would have to live in a car. Now that beach property has two sets of condos, eight in all, a guesthouse two story and a hostel. Tina and Diane are the only ones expanding on the Caye with new piece of property. Tina, Sharon and Wendy have properties out West here nowadays. Someday their children who are now in their 20´s and 30´s going to College, or University will become TRUSTEEs of that property and probably divide up their grandmother´s holdings as well. So it is hoped the home village of Caye Caulker will continue to be the base of the AUXILLOU CLAN. ( grin! )
Caye property is like owning your own small gold mine. You can never starve, there is always food in the sea and someway to make a few pennies to buy rice and kerosene. Which is all you need to be happy.

Ray AUXILLOU

The Hideaway Hotel was later lost in a fire, to be replaced years later with those shacks of which Ray speaks. I spent my childhood in that hotel and riding around Belize's seas in my dad's hand-made boat, the Atoll Queen.

his daughter Wendy

Fascinating, Ray!

Celi McCorkle opened the Holiday Hotel in San Pedro in 1965, which is usually claimed to be the first hotel on Ambergris Caye (though Reef Colony had been built earlier but was destroyed by Hattie before it opened). Wonder if the Hideaway Lodge opened before or after Celi's place?

--Lan Sluder


Celi´s husband John Grief and I were contemporaries and more or less developed tourism in tandem ( same years ). We were friends and often did similar business deals together. We also shared tourists and a lot of our friends and guests would stay with both of us from time to time and enter into adventurous speculation, like buying pine house lumber from Puerto Cortez with the Winnie Estelle ( boat ) and the guests or tourists would chip in to buy the load and share in the profits, which were mostly non-existant, but we had a hell of a lot of fun and adventure, when most of Central America and Honduras was into revolutions and civil wars. John had the idea he was going to turn Ambergris Caye into Barbados, I on the other hand, wanted Caye Caulker to ban vehicles and forbid the selling of lots to foreign ownership. For the most part, the beach on Caye Caulker still is like that. My vision was similar to some Northern islands in Lake Superior, wherein no motorized traffic should be allowed. To keep the quaintness and charm of the place. It was paradise, why spoil it.


The British maps of the day, did call it CAYE CORKER. But I changed that and in all my advertising I called it Caye Caulker. The spelling was gradually corrected over the decades. The island had been a sailboat building capital of British Honduras for a century or two. Boats were built on the beach. Caulking is what you pound with a mallet, a fiber type rope of material to stop water leaks between planks. The most famous boat builders in Central America were on the island. These were the Young brothers. Peter Young, Simeon Young, Reuben Alamina, his father, Wendy´s grandfather Valentine Alamina, Reuban Alamina who is still alive and Wendy or Tina have a video of him playing a guitar at a family gathering over the holidays in his 80´s. I learned from these old time boat builders. Then different of them gave me a few technical boat building books to learn from. These people were famous from Nicaragua to Campeche. A sailboat built by them took years to build. At least three years. I took about 2.5 years to build a wood boat on average, of different sizes. Atoll Queen in the photo took me that long, and cost for the hull and paint about $2500, ( not counting labor ) which I would scrape the money together $5 at a time and invest in planking, or framing lumber. One diesel originally came from my previous boat the 24 ft cabin cruiser SAILFISH which was a single cylinder Volvo Penta 7 hp. and guests bought shares in the hotel operation, which financed the second diesel for this twin diesel motorsailer, a 15 hp Volvo Penta with a 3.5 reduction gear and a 19 inch prop. I could beat everybody around. I would go anywhere to sea exploring with my tourist guests stockholders. They and I loved it. It took me about 11 years to explore all the islands and atolls and rivers in Belize by boat. I had shallow draft to get across the river bars. For long trips such as to Cuba, or the Bay Islands, I would carry drums of diesel on the side deck of the boat and siphon fuel into the standard small 4 gallon fuel tanks these small engines had.


Ray

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You're talking about all these hotels that were pioneers in the tourism industry in Belize, but I see no mention of the Continental Hotel, Smith's Hotel or La Vida Alegre. Everyone growing up in Belize knows that those hotels had a lot to do with tourism as well. Or perhaps it was whorism? Can't remember.

a friend
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Those were port town hotels and yes they were CAT HOUSES and in the case of the Continental, the girls were free to come and go. Many had worked in places as diverse as London and Amsterdam on their travels. It was also a night club and would swing on a weekend for a diverse crowd, including me and my wife and I did magic shows there at midnight on Saturday night. The Vida Alegra was always a cat house, but the girls were white slaves, tricked into arriving and kept in place by debt peonage and controlled by the port town Central Police station. They would be beaten if they tried to leave by the police. I forget the name of the Corporal who was the main bully boy. The churches of the time and George Price condoned the Vida Alegre as a slave place. That was the port town though, not the rest of Belize, or the Cayes. the girls from the Continental were professionals and had medical cards and all that, just like required all through Latin countries were prostitution is recognized as legal.

Ray



I don't even remember a Palace Hotel, just the Palace Theater. Where was that one located?
OK, now you got an old man (72) trying to remember what a 17-year-old saw. Best I can recall, the Palace Hotel was on Front Street, same side of the street, and fairly close to, the Post Office (Paslow Building). My recollection is that the hotel -- bar in particular -- was home to a lot of expats.

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Ahhha! I place it now. The Palace had been an abandoned building and without fixing it up, some guy on the run from the USA had to stay out of the states for two years or three years. He opened the CAT HOUSE and bar in this abandoned building, never fixed it up, just used it as is. The girls were free to come and go. Smiths hotel,was just a one story set of wood and zinc shacks joined together and cost $1.50 for short time ( one hour ) It was used by city girl street sex workers. You paid by the hour. You would be asked long time, or short time. The Continental was both a night club and a cat house and catered to upscale clientele. Run by Dicki Gardner.

Ray

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Bamboo Bay with the white catfish was the old soldier hang-out... always had fights. These soldiers were sent to Belize after their stint in Africa to cool off before they were sent back to England.

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Paapi had the best syrup!

Best goat shit and cotobrute from the lady on Castle Street.

Best pepitos from the lady at Holy Redeemer (an Espat I think).

Roy for oranges!

Gonz for panades!

Nice and Nasty!

Good times fi reel!


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Oh mein! My favorite street-side fruit was always puuk-unu-bwai (sp?)... Still love that fruit. That and governor plum with salt, pepper and lime.

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paapi had the best syrup..on north front street beside where the fisherman's cooperative is now.
then we used to buy rapadora in front of Hop Sing on the corner now occupied by Hofuis. the guys would also be there selling iguanas and other country stuff.
Then we used to buy tableta, cotobrute and the best goatshit from a lady close to St. Ignacious.
And does anyone remember the little shop at the corner of Cemetery Road and Amara Avenue that used to specialize in the comic books. Loved the little ones with Jeb and a ghost in his tank. awww, the memories....

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I don't recall Mr. Shamah having his drug store/restaurant on Albert Street.

My first memories of Mr. Shamah was also across from the Police Station on Queen Street, right before Valencia's which was on the corner of New Road and Queen Street. It was also where Rick Robateau used to have his liquor store and record shop.

After Willy Wiley burnt down, Mr. Shamah then moved to New Road, right next to the kinnel across from Holy Redeemer back yard. Valencia's moved further down on New Road, two houses from the corner of Pickstock Street.


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I always thought the best tableta, cottobrute and goatshit was from Mr. Hislop, across from Full Moon Bevas on Hyde's Lane. Always stopped in there on my way to or from Holy Redemeer school.

And the best fudge was from Bredda Roy who used to sell from his push cart across from Holy Redeemer.

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you northsiders had your best and us southsiders had our best. vaguely remember the Hyde's Lane stuff but the lady by "Natius mih dih bring it!
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You are correct. Shamah was on Queen Street. Down from the bakery..llyons??

Anyone remember Don Marin..... Used to sell golden plum wid pepper salt?

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That was Hood's bakery, which was behind the Friendship Youth Association (FYA), across from Independence Hall (PUP Headquarters). FYA was founded by Fr. Panton. You should remember him. He used to join us in the old Belize Kolcha chatroom back about 13 - 15 years ago. He was living in Jamaica at the time and was the senior bishop or something like that for a parish in Montego Bay. I met him in July 2001 when I was vacationing in Mo Bay. His parish was about 1/2 mile down the hill from the hotel where we stayed. I just happened to be walking down the hill one morning and saw the sign with his name on it so I decided to drop in later on and visit.

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Woods Bakery with the pointed titty bread....delicious
Lyons was on Cemetery Road at the spot that eventually became Continental, later Textile and now a Hardware Store.
Don Marin was a legend and so was Don Charlie who was the caretaker of Holy Redeemer Lower for many, many years.
Smelllshit Roy had the bicycle cart across the street in front of Distributors. There was an old trick that worked everytime. We would approach as a group and one who tease him and when he chased that one, the others would help themselves to orange and sweet.
Bredda Roy is still around and looks the same as he always did. Now runs stuff for folks from the market in his bicycle cart. Not sure if it is the same one that he always had.

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yes, yes you're right....Hoods not Woods. FYA was the spot at one time. Had some super dances on Saturday nights. Where I once met one of Steve Swasey's sisters and was the lightest dance I ever had. I have never forgotten that dance. I wasn't bad on my feet myself and went through thousands of dance partners but that girl could dance. I have met a couple of his sisters but for the life of me, cannot remember which one it is now. Maybe I should ask them to dance one at a time.

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That "titty" bread, you break off the end, pull out the soft inside and pour condensed milk into it!

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Hot bread and condense milk....my boy that was absolutely sinful.
Did I tell you about the time when I got myself locked in at Lyon's Bakery? Figured I would eat a few breads and then sneak out. The door was padlocked from outside so I had to spend the entire night.
Well, not one to waste an opportunity and with an insatiable appetite, I ate up one isle and down the other. I ate no backs, only middles....then I washed it down with the sugar and water that they used to paste on the buns and make them shine. Then I ate some more, and more and by the time they opened the door in the morning, I could not move.
I just laid on the floor and groaned. This time, they had gone to the Police and were looking for me all over town.
I have not received the kind of ass whipping I did that entire week and would hope not to ever again do. But for that one night, it was heaven!!!!

THE HISTORY OF TOURISM STARTING IN COLONIAL BRITISH HONDURAS, later name changed to BELIZE!