Go Slow — the low-key Caribbean island where golf carts outnumber cars, the lagoon is turquoise enough to seem fake, and the barrier reef is 20 minutes by boat from the dock
Caye Caulker is a small coral island in the Caribbean Sea 35km northeast of Belize City, accessible by a 45-minute water taxi from the city's Marine Terminal — a village of 2,500 people on a strip of land 8km long and 600m wide, with no cars (golf carts and bicycles are the transport), one paved road (the Front Street running the length of the village), and a collective ethic summed up by the island's motto 'Go Slow' (hand-painted on signs throughout the village). The island sits on the inner edge of the Belize Barrier Reef (the second longest barrier reef in the world after the Great Barrier…
Caye Caulker (the name from the Spanish 'Cayo Corker' — an island where caulking materials for ship repair were available, possibly from the mangrove resin tradition) was used as a temporary fishing base by the Baymen (British logwood and mahogany cutters who established the Bay Settlement that became British Honduras, then Belize) from the 17th century. The island was permanently settled in the 19th century by Spanish-Mestizo fishing families from northern Belize and the Yucatan; the Catholic fishing village character (the village has no Protestant churches and the fiesta de San Pedro, the f…