Easter Weekend at Caye Caulker

Caye Caulker was a delightful change from Belize City, and apparently it is a popular spot to spend Easter Weekend. The more time we spent here, we could understand why it attracts a lot of ex-pats, and the more we came to love this little town along the Belize Barrier Reef.

Thursday April 2, 2026 - Wednesday April 8, 2026

Drowned Cays to Caye Caulker

Friday, April 3, 2026

22 miles | 19 nautical miles

We had positioned ourselves in the Drowned Cays to time our crossing of two low spots on the way to Cay Caulker. Sources for tide data vary greatly and it appeared that morning high tide was estimated to occur sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.m. The National Meteorological Service of Belize offers one tide table for the country, which is about the size of New Jersey, and it listed the high tide as 9:55 a.m. We planned to cross through the second pass by 10.

On the way to the first pass. Ships Bogue, we got caught by a squall. Since we were about to cross through the pass, the sails were not deployed, so the squall was not difficult to manage. Crossing the bogue by 9 a.m., the shallowest we saw was 1.4’ under our keel (meaning the water was 6.5’ deep). An hour later we had crossed Porto Stuck and with 1.9’ below the keel being the shallowest we saw.

The anchorage at Caye Caulker was easy to approach and there was plenty of room to find a spot to drop anchor.

Caye Caulker

A note about local names

Outside of the United States, a key (a small, low island of ancient coral reef) are called a cay (and sometimes caye), but they have the same pronunciation.

Officially the island is Caye Caulker, but Cay Corker is often used in historical writings and the words Caulker and Corker sound nearly identical with older English accents, so it is often pronounced that way by locals. Here is a link to some history of Caye Caulker.

Good Friday

Several ferry boats available to take people across The Split.

Since anchor was set before noon, we decided to head to town for lunch. We knew that Belize celebrates Holy Week and that government offices close from Good Friday through Easter Monday. It turns out that nearly every local business in Caye Caulker was closed up for Good Friday. The places that remained open were the grocery stores, owned by Chinese families, and businesses in the very touristy part of town. We ended up at the Lazy Lizard which sits at “The Split”. The food and service were great, even with it being such a touristy place. It was fun to watch all the vacationers enjoying the sun and the water.

Holy Saturday

The Pelican Sunset became a favorite spot of ours.

In the morning, the water maker leak was successfully stopped by tightening up connections behind a pump assembly. We ran a few errands after having lunch at the Pelican Sunset located further south of the main tourist area. They have a dock that we used for most of our shore trips. Later in the day we went for a dinghy ride and visited the Iguana Inn Beach to stand in the water with lots of string ray floating by. I enjoyed a conversation with a woman from Belize City spending Easter weekend at Caye Caulker.

Easter Sunday

We took a long walk early in the morning where we saw locals greeting each other on easter morning, meeting up in restaurants and hunting for easter eggs in the courtyard of an apartment complex. In the afternoon we enjoyed a dinghy ride, watching people enjoy the water or the bars, and sometimes the bars in the water. Easter is a big party day in Belize and we heard club music thumping its way across the anchorage until midnight.

Various sites from around Caye Caulker.

Easter Monday

Laundry

Since this may be our last town until we reach Placencia later in the month, we gathered up our clothes and linens and headed to town do our laundry. The first two places we tried had Easter Monday hours. Our third option, Marie’s was open! She had us place our laundry into a plastic sack which she weighed and quoted us $25 Bz ($12.5 US), letting us know that it would be ready after 5 p.m. and that she was open until 8.

Marie's Laundrymat on Avenida Langosta.

Stuffed Fry Jacks

Our original plan was to stop off at the bakery for a snack after or during laundry, but the bakery was closed for Easter Monday. Instead, we found Errolyn’s fry jack stand open. We waited in line, placed our orders and waited quite a bit more for the order to be made. While waiting, I was entertained by watching people in the busy town passing by. Once our order was ready, we hoofed it back to the dinghy and ate our fry jacks in the cockpit of Utopia. Not heart healthy, but oh so, so good!

Fuel

We came back to the fuel dock two days later to put very expensive gasoline into the dinghy.

We knew that the fuel dock was closed between 11 and 2 for Easter Monday. Since the winds were pretty light this afternoon we decided to head to the fuel dock. As we began to weigh anchor at 2 p.m., we could see the fuel dock was covered over with boats but by the time we got underway it cleared out. It was looking good for us to grab the deeper, upwind side with good cleats. However, just before getting there a speedy fishing panga swooped in. We were prepared with lines on both sides and just edged carefully to the downwind, shallow side with the broken cleats. All in all, it was a no-drama docking. Instead of topping off the tank, we stopped fueling when we hit 55 gallons at a staggering cost.

Tuesday & Wednesday

Ginger is the house cat of Chinatown Market.

Two more days of running errands in the little stores of Caye Caulker, swimming around Utopia and cleaning her hull and going for walks. Tuesday evening, we had a very nice dinner at Las Palapas, our one “fancy” night out. The service was very friendly, personable and attentive. Our incredibly delicious food arrived faster than I had expected.

We did not meet any other cruisers during our visit, as there are very few boats at anchor here. Our visit has been enhanced by lots of little conversations with locals every day. Often when you take the time to say “morning-morning” to someone, their face will light and they sing the greeting back to you. One afternoon two boys came out to Utopia and asked if they could tie up to us so they could fish the waters, and did not have an anchor. We already had my floating swim rope attached to the stern cleat, so we let it out and the boys fished, talked and laughed behind Utopia for an hour or so.

The boys cleaning their fish across from The Pelican Sunset.

The longer we stayed here, the more I liked Caye Caulker. However, there are some beautiful, remote, offshore atolls that we wish to visit before our first 30 day visa runs out. So tomorrow we weigh anchor and head southeast.

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Blog Post 26-15