Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

The  Slickrock water sports resort at Long Caye, Belize  is an impressive example of appropriate technology in action! The island is 35 miles off shore, outside the barrier reef. People live simply here, but they have quite an array of comforts.

Each cabana has a solar-powered light. The cabanas are oriented toward the trade winds for natural cooling breezes — no  AC here! — and no rumbling, smelly diesel generators to provide it.

The kitchen, the largest building at the resort, has it’s own 1000W solar array plus a 400W wind generator.  Since the sea breezes occur most of the time, the wind generator produces quite a lot of power. A bank of golf cart batteries store the power, which runs the house lights, iPod player, a chest freezer, and 2 electric refrigeration units — all on 12V power.  Cooking stoves  and a couple of older refrigeration units run on butane. The low voltage appliances do a great job, while just sipping power — they are designed to be super-efficient, plus have 4” of foam insulation, which is essential in the tropics. There are additional solar and wind systems on the Caye, which run more buildings farther from the kitchen.

Shower water is pumped up to an elevated tank, and flows to the showers by gravity. A 200 foot coil of black poly pipe on the shower house roof heats up in the sun, and a small pump transfers the heated water to the shower tank.

The drinking water at Slickrock is rainwater, which is caught on the tin roofs of several buildings, and stored in large polyethelene tanks. This is the traditional source of drinking water in the cayes.

Between rain storms, the tank inlets are covered. When a big rain moves in, they let the rain clean off the roof for 10 to 15  minutes, until the water runs “sweet,” not salty. Then the inlet covers are removed and the tanks fill. Wash water for dishes and laundry comes from shallow wells, which are fairly good during the rainy season, but become more brackish during the dry season. The wells are about 3’ deep, and water is just a foot or so down.

When you have a water table this high, septic systems are not an option. In the old days, folks on the cayes used outhouses, which tend to be smelly with hydrogen sulfide and methane.    Slickrock has a composting toilet system, which works well and quickly in the heat of the tropics. There is a big fiberglass tank under the toilet building, with large chutes coming up to the pottys. After you do your business, a cup of planer shavings are put down the chute, as a bulking agent. The tank has a vent  fan, and air is pulled through the mass of compost, keeping the organic action aerobic. Aerobic bacteria make water vapor and carbon dioxide, so the process is not smelly, to the amazement of many guests.

At the end of the season, after a rest period, the compost is removed and used to fertilize coconut trees. The compost looks like good potting soil, and is not obnoxious or smelly. The process has allowed the new hybrid coconut trees to thrive and grow quickly. Compost toilets treat the organic waste more thoroughly then septic systems, destroying  pathogens and even viruses well.

The resort is purposely rustic, and reminds many guests of their youthful summer camp experiences, with the addition of a chest cooler full of cold beers and sodas, largely made possible by renewable energy.

One of the only surf breaks in Belize with a surf center, our guests can opt to spend the day either surfing, surf kayaking, or standup paddleboarding. Check out the short video clip of the pack at play on the waves! Fun, fun, fun.

Belize bonefishing is famous among anglers. The bonefishing is amazing on our island, and one of the reasons is we have a resident school. We often see the school pass by when snorkeling. Here a snorkel diver captures the passing of this huge school of bone fish at Long Caye on Glover’s Reef.

Here’s a quick clip from one of our guests of lunch on the island.

There wasn’t much information in the brochure about nighttime on the island. They said to bring a headlamp, but didn’t mention that you hardly ever need it — I only used it on the rare, velvety-dark, moonless nights.  In fact, if I recall correctly, in all those pages of web and print content, Slickrock never once mentioned the moonlight on the island!

So imagine my surprise one night upon first undertaking the trek to the “facilities” in the middle of the night, and discovering a wonderland completely unhinted at during the day.

Moonlight dusted the island.  Not as bright as day, of course, but bright!  And the moon was only half-full that night.  Silver light reflected off the white, packed-sand public areas, and I could see everything.  I could see the palapas, the dock, and the surf break in the distance.  But most hypnotizingly, I could see the shadows of the coconut palms.  Straight trunks, curving fronds nodding in the breeze, shadows moving like a cat’s tail caressing the sand.  The floor looked like a living silhouette, like a puppet shadow play in the tropical style; palm trunks regularly spaced, curved fronds connecting them, creating dark pathways across the sand.  And not a (human) soul in sight.

That night, and many nights, I didn’t need that headlamp at all.  I could see everything as I explored by moonlight.  I could see hermit crabs slamming their shells down around themselves when they spotted me, and blue land crabs frantically sprinting back to their burrows with a nervous clacketing when THEY spotted me.  I could see Papillon, the island’s enigmatic black bunny, come hopping up to me, hop in a circle around me, stop, hop in a circle around me the other direction, and hop away.  Wait, did something special just happen?

It’s an atmosphere you need only your eyes and your heart to observe.  It purrs, “Don’t go back to bed yet.”

So you wander off toward the middle of the coconut palm orchard, between the “facilities” and the sea kayak palapa.  Halfway there you realize — “Wow, this is exciting!  What if I were a spy, sneaking up on the dining palapa?  Could I make it?”  And the urge to slip invisibly from tree shadow to tree shadow becomes overwhelming.  Sneak, sneak, a kid again in the moonlight.  Don’t let them see you!

Or maybe this is a night for just walking around awhile, absorbing, trying to record and remember how the moonlight feels.

So much of the island is not really about the island, but about how it makes you feel.  For a week, it’s your island, your moonlight, your black bunny.  Explore it!  After all, everybody else went to bed right after dinner, right?  ;-)

Only the moon is watching.

-Susan B., a recent guest in January of 2012

There aren’t that many places in Belize where you can snorkel right from shore, but you sure can at Glover’s Reef!

Every October my partner Cully drives to Belize with a pile of kayak and surf gear and arrives on the island a month before guests arrive for the annual building extravaganza. We always have more that we want to do than we have time and money for, but each year, step-by-step, the place gets better. It’s fun coming up with what is next on the list. This year it was our wash station.

Our eco-resort doesn’t have private restrooms, we don’t want to flush anything into the sea since that’s where we are swimming! So at a centrally-located spot is the composting toilet and the wash station. This is where you can shave, brush your teeth, and do your laundry. It has solar power for lighting after dark, and running rain water!

We built it years ago and upgraded it along the way, but this season’s project was a complete re-build. Check out the difference! And it has rainwater collection also.

Before

After

Last March Meg Griffiths, our kitesurf and advanced windsurfing instructor, kept track of wind speeds through the month of March. Sailors visiting us this March will be glad to see most days are plenty windy for Belize kitesurfing! (photo above by Pete McDermott)

One of our guests shows off his island cabana.

On Glover’s Reef at Long Caye, we go kayak snorkeling every day. Guides are skilled at teaching guests to safely exit and re-enter their sea kayak without overturning. This allows everyone maximum access to snorkeling the 900 patch reefs on Glover’s Reef.

Here we are snorkeling at Horseshoe Reef, about 3/4 of a mile from our island. You can see that one of the guides has a spear gun. He is trying to spear an invasive species, lionfish.