Caye Caulker
— — a sand street, a slow afternoon, the reef just offshore.
Not only on a wall.
“A coral and mangrove island on the leeward side of the Belize Barrier Reef, about thirty-five kilometres north of Belize City. Sand streets, no cars, a golf-cart pace the locals call Go Slow. Hurricane Hattie cut the north end into a separate cay in 1961, leaving the swimming channel known as the Split. The reef itself runs about a kilometre east, the second-longest barrier reef in the world. — from the studio
Caye Caulker, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Caye Caulker is a coral and mangrove island about eight kilometres long and 1.6 kilometres at its widest, lying thirty-five kilometres north of Belize City in the Belize District. It sits on the leeward side of the Belize Barrier Reef, which runs roughly a kilometre east of the island and stretches some three hundred kilometres along the Caribbean coast of Central America. Population is around 2,000, concentrated in Caye Caulker Village at the south end. The island has no paved roads; transport is by foot, bicycle, and golf cart.
The Belize Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996, is the longest barrier reef in the western hemisphere and the second-longest in the world after Australia's Great Barrier. The channel through Caye Caulker, known locally as the Split, opened during Hurricane Hattie in 1961 and has slowly widened since; it now serves as the village swimming hole. South of the island, the Hol Chan Marine Reserve protects a cut through the reef where nurse sharks and southern stingrays feed at the channel mouth.
Water taxis from the Belize City Marine Terminal run to Caye Caulker roughly every ninety minutes from six in the morning to six in the evening, with a forty-five-minute crossing. Belize's domestic carrier Tropic Air also flies twice daily into the Caye Caulker airstrip. The dry season runs February through May with calm seas; the rainy season from June through November overlaps Atlantic hurricane season. Snorkel and dive trips to Hol Chan and the Great Blue Hole depart from the village pier.