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  Hopkins, Belize
Friday, January 28, 2011

S: This morning we woke up at 5am, only because we had to be on the 6am bus heading out to Hopkins which was our next destination. We caught another local bus (old American school Bus) and as you can probably imagine it got packed in by locals going to work and kids going to school. We were sitting between two lots of mothers and their cute little rusta children. In front was a mum and 3 little girls under 5 plus a 6 month old baby. They all crammed into the 2 seater bus seat in front of us, making it look like they all had plenty of seat space. All the girls had their hair braided, which is the going look around here since their hair is so afro and out of control. Sorry ladies but a GHD hair straightener just won't do much for this type of hair….anyway the thing that got Adam’s and  my attention the most was watching the mum fix up one of the girls braid. Her hands were like lightening and before you could really even blink the braid was magically done. It was very impressive but I guess after giving birth to 4 girls, you would eventually get the hang of it and not have time to stuff around. Sitting behind us was 2 little rusta boys along with their dad all with matching funky bandanas, must be a family tradition or maybe just a bad hair day. As there was local reggae music being played on the bus, we got the chance to listen to the two little boys singing their hearts out for the entire 1 hour bus trip. Now as most of my family and friends would know, I am a real sucker for kids especially babies so I was in my element the whole trip, in between playing peek’a’boo with the little 6 month old girl and listening to the sweet little rusta voices of the boys. It was a nice bus trip!



We were advised by the bus driver when we got on, that we don’t actually get taken to Hopkins and that he would drop us at the highway junction, where we would have to catch another bus or taxi or walk, its about 8km from the highway to Hopkins. Now usually we would of happily walked this ourselves but since we were all kitted up with our big heavy backpacks, there was no way we were going to make the 8 k’s by foot, well Adam may have but I sure as hell would not of! Once we got off the bus at the Junction bus stop, we approached some locals and asked when the next bus was coming through. Well it was 8:00 in the morning and the bus wasn’t coming until 10am so we decided to start walking and hope for best..e.g hitch hike. (Mum, I can see your eyes bulging out of you head right now!) So we started our walk to Hopkins and of course some cars drove past us but they were all going in the opposite direction, seemed that everyone was heading out of Hopkins for work but no one was heading in. Since we hadn’t had breakfast, we pulled out our new favourite musli bars. Its a peanut butter flavoured granola bar and bloody delicious. We will be sending a letter to Natural Valley when we get back to Oz requesting that they bring those awesome musli bars to all Woolworths in Australia.  So we walked along happily munching on our tasty breakfast when we heard a car coming up from behind us. All it took was a single flick of Adam’s hand and the car pulled over. To our delight it was an American lady and she offered us a ride into town straight away. It must have been our lucky morning as Kim (American lady) was only driving down this road because when she woke up this morning and got in her car to go buy herself a coffee, she realised she had no petrol and the only petrol station was back out on the highway. So we jumped in and got the low down on Hopkins from Kim. She was kind enough to drive us to two different hotels as the first one was full and the second that was recommended was too far to walk with our packs on. Kim dropped us off at the second hotel and went on her merry way to get the morning coffee that she desperately needed. She told us that we needed to speak to the hotel owner called Wanita. Unfortunately Wanita wasn’t at work yet so we were told to wait for her and she would be around shortly to give us a room. Since we were right on the beach front and there was two deck chairs sitting on the water front, we decided to sit and read our books and wait for Wanita to show up. Within the first 5 minutes of sitting down, 2 dogs approached us for pats. One was a hyperactive female black mixa dog who looked to be still a pup and the other was an older male. He was cream with Tan patches (Adam named him Rocky, but I’ll tell u why soon). Now Rocky took a particular liking to Adam, (See photos) he just sat next to Adam while he read his book. This dog had us thinking it was so friendly and must just want to be patted. 10 minutes later a lady walked passed us on the beach. Well Rocky went off at her, flew straight at her and nipped at her heels. The poor lady looked at us in sheer terror while we are yelling at Rocky in between telling her that it’s not ours. He finally stopped snarling and nipping at this girl and made his way straight back to Adam and sat down. How weird we thought, maybe this dog isn’t so nice after all. So we sat for another half an hour reading our books, dogs by our sides when another puppy turned up. This one was all tan coloured and really cute. Well both dogs flew out at it barking and snarling at this poor little puppy that just wanted to be patted. So once again Adam was up yelling and smacking these two random dogs to which they listened to him and settled back down next to him. We ended up waiting nearly an hour and a half for Wanita the hotel owner to turn up and were getting pretty over it so Adam decided to go for a walk in search of other accommodation. As soon as he got up and walked off both dogs went with him.  Upon return which was about 5 minutes later he was back with a dog on each side of him and 2 thumbs up as he had managed to get us a room elsewhere. So we made our way over with both the dogs following us. We went inside our room and 10 minutes later when we came out the dogs were sitting on the stairs waiting for us. We decided to go for a walk around town in search of a much needed coffee and food, we all went together of course. So we are walking down the road minding our own business and Rocky is trotting particularly close to Adam. A man passed us on his push bike and Rocky flew at him as well, and this happened for nearly every person or dog that we passed, It was like Rocky was our protector. So we found ourselves repeatedly telling these poor random people glaring at us that it wasn’t our dog.

Seeing how big the town was when we first drove in with Kim, we decided to rent some bikes. This gave us a lot more speed but Rocky somehow kept up with Adam the whole duration but we lost the other black dog. We stopped into a café and had some brunch. Rocky joined us of course. He happily sat in between Adams legs, under his seat or the table. The only time he would move was to have a go at another dog that came to sniff around and boy would he go for it. An American man sitting at a table near us noticed how defensive "our" dog was and so we told him the story of how he found us. “So, what’s your dogs name?” he asks. “He’s been with you for over 2 hours, you must have a name for him by now?” That’s when Adam decided on 'Rocky’ as in Rocky Balboa since our little friend wanted to fight everything but us. After our Brunch which lasted for over and hour since it took so long to be made, we got back on our bikes and continued to explore. With Rocky by our side, fending off every other dog in the street that came within a few meters of us. We were riding around for ages and could see that he was getting quite tired. We rode back past where we were staying at that’s where rocky departed for a much needed nap.



A: We spent much of the afternoon riding our bikes out of town, on a dirt road that seemed to never end. On our journey out of the local village we discovered the just south of Hopkins had been invaded by the grotesque home developments of retired American and Canadians with too much money. The size of these holiday homes (which a local advised were only used for small periods of the year) were huge and very luxurious. These multi level homes with personal boat docks and multiple car garages seemed completely absent of owners, while their gardens were being maintained by local Belizeans. It makes an absolute mockery out of villagers with their substandard living arrangements in the local fishing village.

Our day finished up with a short walk on the beach, where we ran into our buddy Rocky. He was hesitant at first, but quickly realised who we were and ran over with a bounce in his step. After a quick pat, we said our good byes and proceeded home for a nights rest.

Hopkins hotels Slideshow Share

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Blackie the other dog

Enjoying eachothers company at the cafe

Rocky and Adam on the beach

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