There are two routes from Placencia in the south of Belize City further north. One goes way inland first, the other is the Coast Highway. Google said we should take the Coast Highway and I had no problem with that. Google knows everything there is to know. It’s the closest thing there is to omnipotence.

After refuelling our Renault Duster at the only petrol station in the country outside of Belize City (or so it seemed) Google, via Emma, directed me to turn right. I would have. I mean I meant to and all, but the road where Google thought we ought to go didn’t show any outward indication of being a highway. The road where Google thought we should go was dirt and rock and potholes, so I drove straight past it.

One should not argue with omnipotence however and Google soon made known its displeasure at our lack of obedience. The dirt and rock and potholed road was the Coast Highway and we were being directed to drive it. So we did a U-turn, lest google become upset and withdraw its services as a form of retribution.

Onto the Coast Highway we went. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon your perspective, our journey along the inappropriately named highway was not as exciting as I have built it up to be. It was 60 kilometres of bumping along, crossing bridges that looked like they would fall down the moment we added the weight of the Renault and of wondering who had stolen away all the other people of the world.

It would have made for a better story if an errant rock had ripped a hole in one of our tyres, the spare tyre was flat, and we had to traipse through the jungle in search of friendly locals to help us make our way out of the Belizean wilderness. But that didn’t happen. We got to the other end safe and sound and I imagined Google sternly reprimanding me for my lack of faith.

At the northern end of the highway, just thirty minutes from Belize City is the Belize Zoo. The Belize Zoo says the Belize Zoo is the best little zoo in the world. So we stopped in. There were lots of cool Belizean animals, all in very natural looking habitats and all rescued from unnatural early deaths rather than plucked from the wild for anthropocentric amusement.

The coolest critters were the tapirs, Belize’s national animal. They are the cutest, ugly, animal and very personable despite warnings that fingers poked into their enclosure may not remain attached to the owner’s hand. When we showed up the tapirs came over to say hello, long protruding snouts circling in the air like mini elephant trunks and giving their mouths the appearance of grinning inanely. There were also jaguars and a different toucan to the ones we spotted in Guatemala with a fantastic bright yellow beak.

Post zoo, we dropped off our hire car and headed for the Belize Express ferry terminal for a journey to Caye Caulker. We scoffed down left over bagels, cream cheese and a tomato for lunch before boarding a brightly coloured ferry which we strongly suspected had less than half the number of lifejackets required. This however did not warrant dwelling on. If the ship went down, at least the water would be warm.

Forty-five minutes later and without cause to test our theory on the lifejackets, Caye Caulker came into view with its brightly coloured low lying buildings, myriad of jetties, palm trees, and waters displaying the appropriate shades of turquoise and blue. We were picked up in a golf cart, the fastest and most powerful vehicle on the island, and driven through a maze of sandy roads.

Some places you go are unpolished and rough around the edges and they are unpleasant as a result. Other places other unpolished and rough around the edges and they are charming as a result. What makes the difference is beyond me, but Caye Caulker was charming from the outset and kept my camera snapping.

Our apartment was up the end of the island, right next door to a tiny airstrip where a Cessna sized plane landed or departed maybe once or twice a day. Our hosts showed us how to operate the Netflix which we later availed ourselves of to watch Toy Story, Star Wars and the Karate Kid and handed us a bottle of oil which they promised would help stop the sand-flies from making a meal out of us. It didn’t, but perhaps it made it better than it would otherwise have been.

The events of the following four days are now something of a blur but generally entailed rolling out of bed in the morning when we felt like it (I am going to miss that next year), schoolwork, exploring the island on bikes with seats so low your knees felt like they were spinning around your ears, swimming and eating pasta with red sauce and a salad because it was the only complete meal which could be assembled from the local supermarkets.

Our preferred swimming spot was on the back side of the island just around the corner from what is known as The Split. It’s called The Split because it’s where a hurricane literally split the island in half.

Here there is a rustic old jetty which sags and slopes and which to outward appearance was constructed progressively in the absence of any masterplan and is therefore imbued with character which cannot be consciously created. Upon the jetty sat four or five equally rustic chairs, with peeling paint revealing grey and weathered wood. The chairs looked longingly over glassy tropical waters.

We often made our way here late in the afternoon. We would lock our bikes beneath a palm tree on the corner of the sandy road, walk out upon the jetty, strip off and dive in. The water was neither too warm nor too cold and looking back to shore was to look back on old barnacle encrusted boats, palm trees and a little old thatched roof shelter, all illuminated in the golden glow of the late afternoon.

As we swam the sun would drift slowly toward the horizon and afternoon turn to evening. Amy and Oliver would climb all over Emma and I, and leap off my shoulders and it sometimes occurred to me as all this went on that I felt happy. I realised, without meaning to, that I was where I wanted to be and with whom I wanted to be there and it was all just so perfect that there was no point contemplating the past or fretting about the future.

Of course, it didn’t last. ‘This too shall pass’ goes the old adage, and so it did. Someone got hungry, or someone got tired or the light dipped just below optimal signalling it was time to go. We would dry off on the old jetty, unlock our bikes and pedal back through town, picking up pasta, red sauce and salad again for dinner.

On our second day we signed up for a day’s snorkelling on the reef with ‘Carlos Tours’. I was most pleased when it turned out that Carlos took his tours out on his forty-foot catamaran and not a ten-foot bathtub with a ten-year-old outboard like all the other tour operators. I have developed a phobia of old outboards, particularly when I am reliant on them to transport me multiple kilometres back to terra firma.

They Gypsy Queen however was a sailing vessel and therefore had built-in propulsion redundancy and this pleased me greatly. Not to mention the fact that sailing is an inherently pleasurable way to travel. Perched upon the bow of the Gypsy Queen with warm winds billowing our sails was a hypnotic pleasure. The waters were not deep and the seagrasses, sand and coral of the ocean floor made for a swirl of colour beneath the swell.

We stopped to snorkel three times during the day. The first time was just on the edge of a gap in the reef where the larger ocean swells swept into the inshore lagoon. The Gypsy Queen rose and fell on its anchor as we leapt overboard to snorkel just tens of metres from where the reef forced waves into crashing white water.

The second snorkel of the day was a stop atop a seagrass meadow like the one we visited near the Silk Cayes. As the anchor was dropped a schools of nurse sharks, jack fish and rays swarmed the back of the yacht. There were masses of them. So many we had to jump in to the water a little to the side of the back of the boat to avoid landing directly on top of them.

Like the Silk Caye trip, it was amazing to be in the water with so many sharks, fish, rays and turtles especially because there were lots more of all of them this time around. Our guides also had a thing for swimming up behind the big nurse sharks, giving them a hug and gently rolling them over onto their backs before massaging their bellies. They seemed to love it and just lay there totally relaxed as we came forward one by one to stroke them as well.

When we were done, the sharks were rolled back the right way up where they seemed to wake up from a peaceful sleep and lazily slink off into the blue. We made a third stop at another smaller gap in the reef where we swum between corals overlooking a deep channel. A large green moray eel and multiple sea turtles including a loggerhead and a green were the best bits. We sailed back across the waters late in the afternoon as the sun slowly lowered itself.

We left Caye Caulker after four days, returning the way we had come and still actively avoiding contemplation of the lifejacket situation on board the ferry. We were delivered to the airport in a hair raising and frenetic taxi ride where we perused the gift shops to use up every cent of our Belizean cash and changed into warmer clothes in anticipation of our arrival in the sub-zero temperatures of Toronto in winter.