Hopkins

The Garifuna, descendants of Carib and African peoples exiled by the British from St Vincent in 1797, reached the coast of what is now southern Belize in the early 19th century and settled in fishing villages along the shore. Their communities lived from the sea, small farms and the forests behind the coast.

Hopkins itself is a young village. It was founded in 1942 to replace Newtown, a village further up the coast that had been devastated by a hurricane, and it lies on the shore very close to the Sittee River. The village is divided into two parts, the Northside, known as Baila, and the Southside, known as False Sittee, stretching in a line along the beach.

Hopkins is connected to the Southern Highway by a road about four miles long. In recent decades visitors have come for its beach, its Garifuna culture and the reef offshore, and the protection of the Cockscomb Basin in 1986 as the first protected area for the jaguar gave the area an inland draw as well. Guesthouses opened in the village and resorts along the coast to the south, and the village lives increasingly from tourism.

Hopkins is one of the main centres of Garifuna culture in Belize, alongside Dangriga and Seine Bight. At the 2010 census about 70 per cent of its people were Garifuna, and the Garifuna language is still spoken in homes and on the street. The language, music and dance of the Garifuna are recognised by UNESCO.

Drumming is at the heart of village life. Drummers play at weekends and a drumming centre gives lessons; the rhythms accompany punta, the best-known Garifuna dance, danced at funerals, on beaches and in parks. Punta rock, which electrified the traditional rhythms, is played for dancing in the village at night. The dügü, an ancestral healing ceremony, is still practised in Garifuna communities on this coast.

Garifuna Settlement Day on 19 November marks the community's settlement in Belize and is celebrated above all in Dangriga, with parades, street music and traditional dancing. The rest of the year the pace is slow and neighbourly, and visitors are welcome when they respect the village as a home.

The 2010 census counted about 1,600 people in Hopkins. Most are Garifuna, with smaller numbers of people of mixed descent, Creoles, Mestizos, Maya and white residents.

Fishing remains part of the economy, with boats pulled up on the beach, but tourism now provides much of the work: guesthouses, cabins, restaurants, bars, bicycle and motorbike hire, dive shops and guiding on the reef and in the forest.

The village has grocery and liquor stores but no fuel station, which is at Sittee River, a village of 439 people in 2010, about five miles to the south. Local handicrafts and wood carvings made from the wood of local trees are sold in the village. Most people get around on foot or by bicycle, and a bus to Dangriga calls in the morning. As across the region, many people work outdoors from early morning, and evenings centre on the beach, the drums and the bars.

Garifuna cooking is the village's own. Hudut is fish, often whole snapper, cooked in a broth of coconut milk with onions and herbs and served with mashed plantain on the side; it is eaten at midday and is very filling. Tapado, another Garifuna seafood dish, is also served. Both take time to prepare, and small restaurants often cook them to order. Ereba, a flat bread of grated and strained cassava, is eaten with fish or with bundiga, a plantain gravy.

Seafood comes fresh from the village boats: coconut-crusted fish and lobster and conch in their open seasons. Belizean standards — rice and beans cooked in coconut milk, stew chicken, fried plantain and potato salad — are widely served, and the village also has pizza, Indian food and cafés serving coffee and breakfast.

Marie Sharp's habanero sauce, a national emblem, is made in the Stann Creek valley, and its factory north of Dangriga is a short trip from the village. Belikin beer and rum are the usual drinks, taken at the beach bars at sunset.