Pirates of the Caribbean – I’m on a boat!

Sea, sun and an insane amount of fun

A serious adventure it was!

I’ve been postponing writing this blog for a week now, just because I couldn’t get around the question “How to describe the best sailing tour of your life in one measly blog post?”, (and because for some reason Blogger was blocked at Selva Negra!). So I’ve decided to start at the end: with the collaboration of a few new friends, we made our own version of the parody video “I’m on a boat”. On an actual sailboat. In the Caribbean. Now, if you want to know how the hell we pulled that off, read through the adventure as it unfolds.

We were smiling until the boat launched into waves that even a sea monster would fear!
- Thanks Emily & Alicia for the photo

Pimp mobile?

We should have heeded to notice about "for shady people"

Our salted, sun-drenched escapade kicked off in Caye Caulker, Belize, surely the most chilled out island in the world. Small sandy streets devoid of any vehicles and dotted with wooden beach shacks, palm trees waving in the breeze and calm azure waters thanks to the world’s second largest reef. Lest I forget the unavoidable yet very welcome rum punch and the tempting smell of street-side BBQs. It’s like the best summer Saturday, times a hundred, every day.

My crab won! Go #4!!!!!
Just some of the fun to be had on Caye Caulker

The sunny side of the shady bar (Caye Caulker)

After causing much ruckus with our new friends Emily and Alicia (think white girl rapping Salt ‘n Peppa’s “Shoop” at the local karaoke joint, Michael Jackson dance-offs in a beach side bar, and random wanderings in the street wearing legionary style hats fashioned from palm fronds), we felt sufficiently prepared for a 3 day sailing trip down the reef with Ragamuffin Sailing Tours.

I'll give you $10 if you match the text above to this picture
(not really, but if you skimmed the text, go back and read it!)
- Thanks Emily & Alicia for the photos in this section and the good times

Look a little closer, and you'll  see just what a fine establishment we were in.
The text in the pic reads: "Why men put beer on the bottom shelf in the fridge"

Just for the record, I still had Mandingo's hand-made hat the next morning

Normally, when you fuse together a group of adventurous, outgoing and ridiculously silly travelers the outcome is pretty cool. But when you do this on a sailboat in the Caribbean, it’s freaking effin’ amazing! Camping on the tiniest deserted islands, snorkeling the brilliant reefs and kicking back on the deck was the call of the day(s). Tie this together with a crew of three of the coolest cats Belize has ever seen, an abundance of fresh delicious seafood and some cool tunes and you have one incredible vessel of fun cruising the Belize Breeze down the coast. Time lapsed. An outside world seemed unfathomable. Rum punch flowed freely – so freely in fact that our captain had to raid the rum stash from the sister boat, where wiser souls and innocent children were kept out of harm’s way as they trailed in the wake of our debauchery.

What a fine lady she was!

We camped out on this little patch of sand on the first night - Goff's Caye, Belize

Chilling out on Tobacco Caye on the second day of the sail trip

Crew member Shane sang and rapped along to a never ending medley of songs about “Mama’s kitchen” and something about “Rice and Beans” while his dreadlocks kept beat. Captain Kimani expertly navigated and lectured us about the evils of the world while crew member Ally made sure nobody destroyed the reef or chased the dolphins. She got very upset when we tried to follow the friendly dolphins who visited during our snorkeling stops. And she wasn’t too pleased with Vinko and Lars’ spear-fishing bounty (although the squid Vinko bulls-eyed through the eye and the other two fish the guys caught were totally legit!). “Cheers mate!” to the Aussie boys in the back who caught us the delicious Barracuda and Spanish Mackerel for dinner – we needed all the energy we could get…

Captain Kimani

Future rapper-singer Shane

… to produce a hilarious version of the “I’m on a boat” music video. Resident photographers/ media gurus Melanie and “Randy” directed and participated in the making of the next great video to hit YouTube. We may have to wait a bit to see the final cut, but I promise to plague you with its release. In the meanwhile,  I’ll let it leak that it may feature some cat crawling on the deck and that Vinko’s behind may feature in a snippet or two. Enough said. It was absolutely awesome.

Randy Ryan in caught in his "cat pose". Melanie was left unharmed (for the moment)
I especially love Vinko's model pose.

The peeps on the boat got along so well that, once on land,
we all congregated again for a little karaoke (or some form of noise making),
much to the despair of the locals who reckoned themselves the Next Idol.