It was a full day of chicken bus travel from Santa Elena in Guatemala through to the coast of Belize. My destination was a village called Placencia which is down on the tip of a peninsula in the southern part of the country. Hurricane Iris had been through this area on the eighth of October and I hadn't been able to garner much information about damage from the Guatemalan press. Late in the afternoon as I closed on the peninsula I started asking locals if it had done much damage to Placencia and they said yes. It seemed like it was worth pushing on though so I stayed on the bus.

Within half an hour of the peninsula we had passed through some very large banana plantations and they looked to have copped a fair bit of damage but I was encouraged to see that it was only the trees, which are weak at the best of times. We entered the top of the peninsula and as we headed south along the only road we started to pass a few houses on the waterfront. These were the houses I wanted to see because the blow had come in from the Caribbean and if any houses were going to be damaged it would be these. Like the bananas, the trees were knocked around a bit but the houses looked fine. The peninsula is about 15 miles long and it's a slow trip on the potholed gravel, stopping regularly to drop people off. The further south we went the more obvious the damage became. By time we got down to where the hotels and tourist facilities started, there was quite a bit more damage evident, though the larger stronger buildings were for the most part in reasonable shape. From about this point onwards the timber shacks start, these belong to the poorer of the locals and are for the most part pretty lightly constructed. Quite a few of these had been unroofed or blown off their stumps. Five minutes further on I was the only one left on the bus and we were entering the village proper. It was just on dark. I was now starting to see the results of where the eye of the storm had passed over. It didn't look good.

I decided I was so far in, that there was no turning back so I stayed on the bus until its last stop and turn around point at the end of the peninsula. As I was getting off the driver asked me rather quizzically if I had somewhere to go and I said with a laugh that I did, if it was still there. He gave a wry laugh and I wandered off thinking what an amusing fellow I was.

It was after sunset now, though fortunately there was a clear sky and a fairly bright moon. I humped my bluey and headed for where I remembered the main street through town ended. The main street is in fact a metre wide strip of concrete and one of the things I had found endearing about the place. For the most part it still existed, but the site as I looked up it in the half light was one of complete devastation. It was criss-crossed with the remnants of what had been the main village of Placencia.

The bus had turned around and gone, I was committed. So I lit a smoke to settle my nerves and headed into the wreckage. There were power poles and palm trees and parts of both at all angles over the path and power lines running through and over it all. The path seemed to have acted as a trip wire for buildings being swept through the trees. The seaward side had very little of substance left in it. This strip between the path and the sea is about fifty metres wide and the other side from the path to the "lagoon" is about one hundred metres wide.

From the sea to the path was mostly just the remaining stumps of houses, hotels and restaurants and a few remnants of peoples belongings but the other side of the path was a mass of tangled piles of bits of houses and trees. Most of the palm trees had either been uprooted, snapped in half or completely stripped of their foliage. The loose coconuts must have been blown through the air like bullets.

The path was ripped up and flipped over in sections and the base was exposed. This was remarkable because instead of rocks it is Conch shells, each about ten inches long and laid five across to form the base with the hollow side facing upwards to receive the concrete being poured into them and with the outer points facing down to stick into the sand. The footpath is a good couple of kilometres long and thousands of shells must have been used to build it.

I picked my way through the debris, horrified and incredulous at the damage and fast feeling that the chances of finding somewhere to stay were very unlikely. A couple of army guys wandered along, the military had moved into town to secure it against looters and to enforce a ten p.m. curfew.

I asked them if there was a hotel still standing. They ummmed and arrred a bit and said they thought not but that there was still a big white place further up the beach on the right. I picked my way through the wreckage for a few minutes more, the whole time trying to get my bearings and looking out for signs of the lovely old double story weather board place we had stayed in a couple of years ago. I found the spot. It was gone. The bus driver was right to laugh. Remarkably, the little two story dwelling behind where the hotel had been was still there and looked reasonably undamaged.

By this stage I had strong feelings that I shouldn't be there, that I was just some voyeur with a back pack and no better than the miserable sickos who stand around watching at a car crash site. I decided there and then to do whatever I could to stay.

I was becoming a touch concerned about finding digs, so I walked on. The big white building did in fact exist and was a three storey concrete construction made in a style favoured by designers of prisons…..with a Moorish influence. It was about the size of a big house and the third storey only consisted of one room on the roof top sundeck. The building was only twenty metres from the sea in a lovely position and the sign over the front door said it was the Tipsy Tuna. The owner was obviously a bloke and of some considerable style.

Next to the white cell block was a large open ended tent set up as the barracks for the army. They had chosen to set up camp on one of the nicest pieces of beach front real estate in town. It´s so encouraging to see a demonstration of good taste amongst the troops. A few of the lads were loitering in camp so I wandered over in search of information. I dished out the smokes, we chewed the fat, kicked the sand and soon came to the conclusion that I was up queer street. They offered me a bunk in the big tent for the night which I thought was pretty decent of them and though I had some reservations, it was starting to look like an attractive offer. As we were chatting I noticed the faint light of a candle being lit in the single room up on the roof of the white monstrosity. The place looked as though it was probably a hotel as well as a restaurant and bar. I went over and bashed on the front door. Nothing. I went around the side and called out to the candle. A young fella stuck his head over the balcony and as politely as he could, asked me what the bloody hell I wanted. I did the best imitation I could, from a distance, of a dickhead tourist up queer street and in need of assistance. Under the circumstances, not a very difficult impersonation. God bless the kid, he came down.

I informed the colt, who was called Mark, of my plight and in the true spirit of disaster survivors he said I could camp the night with him. We went upstairs.
The room on the roof turned out to be a quite nice hotel room with a double bunk, double bed, kitchenette and its own bathroom. It opened onto the sundeck and in the light of the moon with the wreckage of the village partially obscured in the half light it was rather lovely. The elevated view was across the Caribbean to the coral cayes. Mark had himself a nice little pad and he had a number of buckets out on the deck catching his rain water requirements.

Mark turned out to be an interesting sort of a colt. Left his southern Belizean village at the ripe old age of eleven and had been working ever since. A kindly boss along the way had seen to it that he had some degree of education and he had also picked up fluency in four languages, which I thought was a pretty good effort considering he was only twenty one. He had a feed festering on the gas cooker and most generously offered to share it with me. I was also able to have a bucket shower, after which he was able to close the door and not have to hold his nose. Chatting over dinner, he did seem to have a somewhat unhealthy interest in my sexual proclivities but I wasn't entirely sure that wouldn't have been the case in the army tent either, so I did my best to ignore my concerns and be grateful for his hospitality.

Having had a shower and a feed my body was in a state where it could acknowledge the fact that the blood alcohol levels were dropping to a dangerous low. This kid was nothing if not sensitive to a fellas bodily needs, he rolled up some of what is colloquially known as "Belize Breeze" and we headed for the deck chairs under the moonlight. It was a great shame Mark had been born the wrong sex.

While enjoying the breeze he told me his saga, of having stayed put during the blow. And he had some good stories to tell. His manner of relating a story was very Caribbean, layed back and under stated. It turned out that almost everybody had left when the evacuation call had come. The only tourists that stayed were a group of twenty north americans who were on a charter yacht. It seems the foreign captain decided to treat the hurricane lightly and threw a party to ride it out. The yacht and the twenty bodies were found on the coast six miles away. Unfortunately the captain was not one of them.

A couple of others who stayed were two looters. Mark heard them climbing the side of the building fifteen minutes before the hurricane hit. Some bastards really are incorrigible. He had a gun but chose to hide and leave the matter to the resident Rottweiler. The dog was fine on his own.

When the storm hit, he had started out on the ground floor, but the ten room hotel next door was picked up and slammed into the side of the Tipsy Tuna at which he retreated to the second floor. Waves started breaking into the second floor, so they must have been at least fifteen feet high, and he had to go higher. He went to the room on the roof, which by this stage was copping the full brunt of the blow, so he huddled in the bathroom and presumed he and the room would soon be swept away. The eye of the storm took an hour and a half to pass over the town.

Next morning he showed me where the house he had built for himself the year before used to be. It had obviously been a jerry built shack, but for the first time I had a real sense of understanding what the old adage meant……a man's home is his mansion. The poor little bugger lost the lot.

Next morning, part of his very Caribbean view of the world was revealed when I asked him what he was going to do for the day. The night before he had told me his boss owned another hotel in the village but it had not been damaged. In answer to my question he said he had do go and help the builders who were already working on this other hotel, rebuilding! I was of course puzzled, he said it had not been damaged, I enquired further. He said it was fine but it was a hundred yards away on someone else's land.

Mark told me he had heard a hotel called Kitty's, which was up the north end of the village, was also still standing and doing meals, so I thought I might as well take a walk up there and see if it was possible to rent a room. As part of the curfew, there was a law prohibiting the store, which had reopened, from selling liquor and my visions of sipping a mix of rum and coconut milk were fast disappearing. So we said our goodbyes and I headed up the beach.

Kitty's wasn't really open, they were doing meals and there were half a dozen or so people around cleaning up and doing repairs but they weren't renting rooms. The big fat pommie manager gave a rather blunt no to my enquiry. I ordered breakfast and sat at the bar watching the activity around the place. One of the bar staff was a native Spanish speaker and seemed rather pleased to find someone he could chat to, so we chewed the fat a bit and I got to learn a bit more of the lay of the land. I think he must have put in a good word for me with the oversized pommie because after breakfast the big fella came back and said they had one of the cabañas in a rentable condition and I could have it for $75-00 if I wanted but only for one night. By this stage I had spent a pleasant half hour perusing what was a small but very well stocked bar. Besides a fridge full of a nice selection of beers, they had the best selection of gins I had seen for some time, but the clincher was a bottle of Glenlivet. Only a skunk would have quibbled with the big prick. Despite being well out of my normal price range I didn't hesitate. I said that would be just fine, I would take the room.

The hotel consisted of a number of separate buildings, all weather board and very much of a Queensland style. Well aged and well enough built to have withstood the storm and spread out so as to all be near the water.

Two years ago we had lunched in the very pleasant, open to the breeze, second floor bar. The view and feel, looking across the forty metres of sand and the remnants of the palm trees to the unchangeably (notwithstanding the odd blow) lovely Caribbean was to say the least, enticing.

I found out later that the cabaña normally rented for $280 a night, per person, even in the off season. It was fantastic, in fact, considerably better than anything I have lived in for quite some time. The bed was easily big enough to sleep a whole Guatemalan family. If there had been tourists about I would have had fantasies of drug and alcohol crazed orgies taking place on such a fantastic play area.

The window to the left of the front double door was rectangular and fly wired, with curtains of a fabric which was obviously of Guatemalan origin. Through it I looked across the verandah to the exterior of the bungalow which was formed in arches either side of the front steps. And through the arches there was a vista through the palm trees -one of which was almost touching the building- to the sea. It was only a stones throw away and the sounds of the small Caribbean swell tripping on the edge of the beach was able to persuade me, very gently, to relax.

I could appreciate this view from the huge bed, which I was sharing with Karen Blixen. I had brought her biography with me as holiday reading. The cabaña had a tiled floor and I do love the feel of cool tiles under foot in the warmth of the tropics.

I settled into the relaxed nature of Kitty's and as chance would have it, each morning Kitty asked me (with a look and tone of voice that clearly indicated she thought I had a screw loose) if I was enjoying myself and each morning the big fella said I could have the cabaña for another night if I wanted. There was not another backpacker in sight, so I stayed a week.

Amongst the memorabilia on the wall in the bar was a framed sample of a ballot paper for a south African election. There was a mug shot of each of the eighteen candidates and along with Nelson Mandela and Pik Botha were a couple of rippers. One of the parties contesting the election was the Women's Rights Peace Party (pretty much says it all really) and their obvious sense of democracy and unity was demonstrated by the fact that they had the mug shots of two candidates, rather than the single representative shown for all the other parties. The two women standing (one black and one white……of course) were presumably trying to demonstrate just how fair minded the WRPP really was. I guess they planned on sharing either power or failure.

On the ballot there was also what I think must go down in history as one of the frankest expressions of self understanding ever (publicly) demonstrated by a political party. They called themselves DIKWANKWETLA Party of South Africa. I don't know what WETLA means in Afrikaans but I was intrigued to see their party symbol was a black arm in a flexed position with a raised clenched fist, complete with bulging bicep. It occurred to me that this may have been meant to symbolize how your arm would look if you followed those faithful to the party name. I raised my gin to them, flexed my bicep and drank in salute to their frankness.

The barman was a ripper too. He would sit cleaning and cutting his farmer like finger nails with the lemon knife and if I interrupted him with a request for a drink he took particular care to use the knife rather than his fingers to prize the ice blocks from their tray into my glass of gin. Hygiene being all important in the hospitality industry of course. Perhaps I wouldn't have been so put out if I hadn't been paying ten dollars a glass for the stuff. Call me stingy.

The bar was being frequented by locals who had come back to clean up and start the rebuilding, also by the local fisherman who had mostly lost their boats or homes or both. These guys had decided there was nothing much to do other than drink huge quantities of beer and they made for some good entertainment. I was the only one in town not likely to tell them they were full of bullshit when the beer took over, so I copped the full brunt of their own blowing and tales of destruction. The winds it seems, peaked at 145 mph but the bulk of the damage was actually done by three large waves. When gassed, they called them tidal waves.

One guy told me a fabulous story which I gather was true. He had a cabin out on one of the coral cays and a few days after the storm, went out to check the damage. As the cay came into view he could make out the outline of the cabin, still standing and the closer he got the more he could see that it seemed to be in pretty good shape. As he pulled up he thought that despite its good shape, there seemed to be something rather odd about it. Then he realised the problem. It was not his cabin. There was no sign whatsoever of his but the new one was exactly where it had been. He checked it out inside and found it was still fully decked out with all the furniture, crockery etcetera and all undamaged. What made this so interesting was that his had been the only cabin on the cay. This one it seems had arrived on a wave from some other place.

I passed my days strolling on the beach, reading and enjoying the fine food and drink. After a couple of days a fisherman produced some lobster and I made the most of it. On the horizon you could see the outline of the nearest cays and some had the profile of the cleaned rib cage of a fish while others were still covered in foliage.

The wind and waves had created some rather surreal sights. A yacht blown onto someone's front yard and rested against the veranda. Houses in unnatural groupings because they have been blown together. You could look at a house and think it was OK but when you looked more closely you would see it was not sitting on stumps but directly on the sand and the front verandah that used to face the beach was now facing the opposite direction. Virtually the whole of the waterfront had been cleaned of houses with the exception of a few particularly solid (mostly concrete) ones.

One of the pleasures for me of having the fisherman around the bar was that Placencia is a popular place to go salt water fly fishing, for Tarpon. Fishing stories and bars just go so well together. Bars are also a good place to vent criticisms, which I do enjoy, as I have generally found that being harshly judgemental allows me to enjoy life without the burdens borne by the politically correct or those of a more generous nature. And I don't get a guts ache from having all that angst build up in me, as I can vent it through rashly arrived at criticisms. But I digress.

The winds it seems, had done considerable damage to the barrier reef and seemed to have destroyed the housing of large numbers of the crustaceans on which the Tarpon feed. One of my new found mates, who was a guide, told me he had never seen such numbers of fish about. Evidently they "tail" like trout in the shallows. If the half drunk fishing guide was trying to whip me into the same feeding frenzy the Tarpon were in, he was succeeding. These fish are long and strong and silver and sleek, grow up to sixty pounds and reputedly, when you stick a hook in their mouths they go ape shit. And you can fish for them with a dry fly. I was dribbling in my beer. These guides normally charge $400 a day and on top of that expect yank style tips if you get a good result, so I resisted any thoughts of indulging myself. The guides were in fact grizzling (when they discovered I was an Aussie) that a group of Australians who had been staying recently and caught some really good fish, had been lousy tippers. And this was despite them having paid what I calculated to be something in the order of $25,000 in fees to these guides!

As he was leaving after this particular session, my new found friend said that if he was coming by with a tank full of gas in his boat he would call in and pick me up and we would go and have a lash at them. Because there was no one around he said he could do with the company if he was going out. My knees started to shake and I plonked back down on a bar stool. It transpired that it was the booze talking, but it did give me some nice dreams for a while.

After a few very pleasant days of hanging around, the weather channel (a mind numbing example of American television excess) on the cable television showed another hurricane building up over Honduras. Numerous people were drowning and losing their homes in the attendant flooding and it was headed north. I watched its development on and off for a couple of days and eventually decided not to go south as planned but to leave the way I had arrived, by the northern route which would take me to the safety of the interior. The storm turned into hurricane Michelle which went on to thrash Cuba.

Placencia is a fairly wealthy little place and the rebuilding looked like it was going to be reasonably swift, encouraged by the need to get the tourists back as soon as possible. I think it will probably be in good shape again pretty soon. In the mean time though, I had drained the gin bottle, and seen what a hurricane was capable of, so I decided not to wait and see what Michelle would do. I got back on the bus.

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