The small passenger compartment of the plane was filled with the steamy smell of salty air and hot asphalt as soon as the door opened. We collected our bags and found some shade under the eaves of the small bungalow terminal building off the runway to consult the map. Our hotel was only a few blocks away, so we rolled our bags across the gravel parking lot of the airstrip and down the compact street in the midday heat.

Dangriga, in the middle of Belize’s 200-mile-long Caribbean coast, used to be known as Stann Creek Town. It was once the second largest population center in Belize after the capital, Belize City…until Orange Walk Town in the north overtook it. (Orange Walk Town currently claims 18,000 souls compared to Dangriga’s 12,000. The entire country has only 300,000 people, nearly a third of whom live in the capital.)

Dangriga is a Garifuna word that roughly translates to “standing water.” Stann Creek Town’s name was changed in the 1980s during the resurgence of Garifuna cultural pride in Belize. (The Garifuna are a cultural and ethnic group of mixed Caribbean and African descent that left slave colonies on the Caribbean islands and spread along the Central American Caribbean coast in the 19th century.)

The Garifuna love to do three things above all else: sing, dance, and beat the drum. The drums they make to play their characteristic punta dance rhythms can be works of art, and in fact, there is a large monument in their honor in the city.

The main street of the city is Commerce Street, where you will find the bus station, medical clinic, telephone office, police station and bank. The center of action is the small bridge where Commerce Street crosses North Stann Creek. At virtually any time of day or night, Punta Rock—a local mix of traditional African rhythms, calypso, and electric instruments—plays on several nearby car trunk sound systems. There are also plenty of locals hanging around the bridge and nearby shops and restaurants offering fishing charters, trips to offshore islands, tours of nearby jungle reserves and Mayan ruins, and anything else you want to drink, smoke or drink. ingest. .

As we discovered, most of the offerings of things to do in the city (other than drinking and smoking) involved leaving Dangriga. There is no real beach in the city. That’s because, like most of Belize’s coastline, the ocean shoreline at Dangriga is either mangrove swamp or simply land that ends in the water. The sandy beach along the coast around Dangriga and nearby Hopkins has largely been gobbled up by high-value tourist development.

It is still possible to find beach view lots starting at $60,000 and actual beachfront lots starting at around $95,000 in the area. And settling in Dangriga itself is cheap… typical clapboard houses in the city start at $30,000. There’s also an active orchard and farmland market in the Dangriga hinterland for gentlemen farmers and off-the-grid types who don’t care if they ever see the ocean.

Thirty years ago, with a backpack and waist-length hair, Dangriga’s siren song would have been irresistible. It’s good to know that places like this still exist. For the young… and the young at heart… Dangriga is a small but genuine frontier land of adventure, Punta rock, non-stop street life and exciting Caribbean culture.