There is no lack of bars in San Pedro Town.
They come and go like tourists. Some are successful over the long run and others collapse under their own weight.
The Legend’s location is good, out in the countryside with an unimpeded view of the barrier reef at the end of a long sandy path.
The new restaurant is going to feature barbecue and Kristi wants a clean bar, a bar ladies can feel safe, a bar without riffraff, a bar with bottom lines and profits. There will be live music and Special’s nights. Residents on the north side, many of whom don’t like to go to the south side, have already got a buzz going.
Whether the town will support another watering hole is up to the drinking Gods, but Kristi has a plan, money, and drive.
Working in the kitchen, we don’t even have to turn on fans to get good ventilation.
The trade winds spin the blades for free.
Painting in Belize today is just a lark. When you have worked with your hands for a living, it is hard to stay away from a construction project, even when you are just a volunteer.
Real estate is booming in San Pedro Town.
Jack says, ” if you own real estate and aren’t keeping it rented you are doing something wrong.”
Chez Caribe is his old wood and concrete two story house. He lives upstairs and rents six small units downstairs, and, if the price is right, his place upstairs. Chez Caribe looks like it should be in a Tennessee Williams play and is shaded by towering coconut trees that drop coconuts with a thud.
Old timers here have seen the town population rise by twenty five percent a year but the total of local residents is only ten thousand. Most of the wealth is brought here by pirates from the north ; bankers, salesmen, investors, double dippers, retirees, businessmen, gold diggers, treasure hunters,divers, real estate developers and land men, con artists, ex-pats.
Tennessee Williams would have found some of his characters here but this place is not conflicted enough for his vision. A closer read for this truth would be Carl Hiasson or Jimmy Buffett where hedonism doesn’t come with a guilty conscience.
I am staying behind door number 4 – the Chez Tortuga Suite. Airbnb is a business model that lets people turn their own house into income and use space that would otherwise be wasted.
It is nice afternoons to lounge on the front porch and wait for coconuts to drop, but you need insect repellent. I felt a mosquito land on my calf yesterday and once he filled up he could barely get back into the air.
If coconuts hit you on the head they will part your hair.
Living in paradise comes with costs.
The ocean is a grocery store.
At the end of piers, the tips of jutting land, on bridges or banks, in small boats and large, men shop for dinner.
Early today three men are casting from the end of a pier at sunrise. They have been up all night and one lifts the top off a five gallon paint bucket and shows me his catch – six red snapper.
” You take them to a restaurant, ” he says, ” and they will cook them up for you. “.
They cast their lines out thirty feet and weights carry the baited hooks to the bottom. When the line pulls taut they wait. Sometimes you have a bucket of fish in half an hour; other times it takes all night and a pack of cigarettes to fill your cart.
” Captain Shark’s is the place to get a pole, ” the talkative one tells me.
This morning I find bait and tackle at Captain Shark’s across from Maya Air next to the Hyperbaric Chamber. The store has fishing gear but also boating and diving items. It costs fifty Belizian to walk out with twenty pound test line, extra weights and hooks, a bag of frozen sardines for bait, and a Yo-Yo, a gadget used to hand cast and retrieve your line without tangles.
It will be a sad day when they ask for a license to fish from the pier.
It is a crime to lock the grocery when you have hungry men.
At the end of the pier it is quiet.
A few birds face the wind and move reluctantly.
It will be hot this afternoon, humid, and the clouds will go away till night when the winds blow them back, like un-anchored sailboats.
Early mornings are a good time to be about when people are asleep and dreams are still in their beds.
I haven’t seen many thumbs out in San Pedro Town.
There are a few people moving in the rain but most of those out this morning are laborers pedaling bicycles to work,tourists driving special golf carts, and taxi’s running people to the airport from resorts and fancy lodgings.
I want to catch a ride back to town, from the middle of nowhere, and a young man in a cart stops and asks if I want a ride.
” I’m Scott. ”
” I’m Roberto. ”
On the ride he tells me he used to be a tour guide but works for the local Department of Fisheries and has the day off. His wife works in town and he recommends Elvie’s Kitchen as a good place for local food. If I need a golf cart he can get me one for $60.00 U.S. per day and If I need a piece of land, his father in law has some for sale way out north, almost as far as you can go. Last time he went to Nicaragua he was stopped for having tattoos and had to explain he was on a Christian mission and say his prayers to stay out of jail.
It is a welcome ride and my feet thank me.
When Roberto drops me off at the gas station, a quarter block from my front door, I slip him twenty bucks.
” Take your wife to dinner, ” I suggest.
” I’ll give it to my daughter, ” he decides.
On an island with ten thousand permanent residents the chances are good you will run into everybody at least once a year whether you try to avoid them or not.
Favors, anywhere, are easy to do and not easily forgotten.
Ak’Bol was built into a business by a couple who came to Belize twenty years ago with a dream of nature, health, spirit, and capitalism. The entrance is not well announced and if you are driving you will zip right past in your sprint for bigger resorts on the north tip of Ambergris Caye. Along the new paved road north, Ak’Bol just has a simple sign, is a clearing in the jungle down a winding shady path to the Yoga Retreat.
Sitting at the breakfast bar is a mix of young and old, long hair and no hair, hippie chicks and old men with pony tails who never let the sixties loose.
I talk with a young woman who stands as she eats eggs benedict and tells me about her inner child and achieving adult battles and her boyfriend who is from Taos, likes to fish, and is on the pier in the moment.
A couple to my right are checking e mails, Facebook, Google and nursing health drinks.
The Ak’Bol menu has a section for drinks with alcohol, if you want them, and the coffee is Guatemalan. It is a natural setting and, checking their website, affordable. Visitors seem friendly to talk with like minded souls. Food is moderately priced, and judging from empty plates- good.
On my American Airlines flight from Dallas to Belize City I overheard a local telling visitors about places they might like to check out on the island.
” Ak’Bol is very good, ” he said. ” The food is wonderful and the people are nice and the pier is a good place to snorkel the reef. ”
I can see, on this visit, that reconciling your inner child and achieving adult is a herculean task for which yoga and eggs benedict is the best answer.
This morning, on a walk to the Sir Barry Bowen Bridge that separates north from south Ambergris Caye, I am still in San Pedro Town and take shelter in a bus stand because rain is moving in with dark clouds behind it.
San Pedro Town is in the center of Ambergris Caye in the Caribbean Sea, south of Mexico and east of Guatamala.
As you walk south, away from town, you run into Mahogany Bay Village, an upper end real estate development with a hotel option, custom townhouses, and a three stage development plan starting in the low two hundred thousand U.S. dollar range. As you cross the bridge north you run into the Akbol Yoga Retreat, and further along the road, Captain Morgan’s Casino and Resort.
The land, either north or south from San Pedro Town, is not much higher than the sea. Running parallel to the main paved roads is marshland, lagoons, scrubby trees and tangled roots.
Standing in the shelter with me, three children adjust their trash bag raincoats and talk. The biggest of the three is an older sister who directs her siblings like her mother taught her to do.
Guatemala, to the west, is even poorer than Belize, and Nicaragua is even poorer than Guatemala. The chances these girls will become pregnant and have three kids before they are 21 are large.
As the morning rain abates, the girls leave the bus stand and walk back towards town. I wait for the rain to really stop, not in any hurry.
On an island, you quickly come to the end of the road no matter which direction you go or how fast you travel.
How many kids can’t change their future because no one tells them what their future will be if they don’t change?
Martial arts has moved forward since Bruce Lee dazzled with new fighting styles and choreographed movie fight scenes that are classics.
Now, real fighting happens on cable TV and the ancient ” Friday night at the fights” has been trounced by MMA cage fighting. This remains the most brutal action available and those stepping in the ring seriously have to know that if they are not in the shape of their life the other guy or girl will clean their clock.
This morning in San Pedro Town a lesson is in progress. Fighting still happens here and issues are resolved the old fashioned way.
This maestro explains theory, then shows it. Watching, it is clear he knows what he is talking about, takes his art serious, and gives good knowledge. He doesn’t look in the best shape but I wouldn’t want to mix it with him.
There is talk of physics, motion, momentum, following your punch or kick, spinning and deflecting, picking your spots, defense, body weak points, take downs, not hitting and backing away to give your foe a chance to regroup, using elbows, knees and skull, twisting your knuckles as you strike.
Fighting is an art, but, bottom line, it is avoiding confrontation, and, when you have no other choice, taking your opponent out quickly before he does you damage.
Holly Holm, the preacher’s daughter, just put Albuquerque, New Mexico on the map in her title bout against Ronda Rousey.
This martial arts lesson has my full interest.
It turns out to be a good hike.
There are less than 10 walkers this morning but numbers will grow to over twenty five as tourist season picks up.
One of the most difficult tasks is learning names of the group so I make myself crutches. Dean has a goatee, Dale has a pony tail, Charlie has sand flea bites, Eric smokes a cigar, John has big glasses and likes to tell jokes, Scotty brought his dog and is sometimes called Eric, Dino walks with a limp and has to ride a golf cart, Larry has a blue baseball cap, Rabbit looks like he just came out of Alice in Wonderland. Alan is a quiet guy with a mustache.
This expedition the pace is slow, you drink at your own speed, people talk about who is on the island, who is coming to the island, who left the island. There is discussion about a man who got himself stabbed to death but it was ruled an accident, officially. Unofficially, he slept with the wrong someone. There is talk about how cold it is in Canada, appointments to get wi fi, prices paid to rent on the beach so you get a good breeze and don’t need air conditioning. Sports is covered, politics is quickly dismissed as a fool’s game, and your personal issues remain fair game even if you don’t bring them up.
We leave at eleven in the morning and don’t get back till five in the afternoon. We walk more than two miles, visit four bars, have lunch at one, and all hands are safely accounted for.
I’m going next Wednesday and will wear my official T shirt.
I don’t have to read newspapers to learn news that counts in San Pedro Town.
I’m not a Canadian but this bar sounds crazy and who wants to sit in a bar that isn’t crazy?
As spirits flow, you want to be carried along in a stream of conviviality, experience bursts of laughter, hear jokes you never heard before that are really funny, and only fall down once or twice on the way home with someone,you, at least, get along with.
Crazy Canuck’s Bar was mentioned in Trip Advisor so I make a pilgrimage.
Sitting at the counter for happy hour, several patrons use free wi-fi and have Belikin beer, the national beer of Belize from the Mayan Temple. I like to hear bald faced lies and a bar is the best place to hear tall tales, ghost stories, gossip and real island news.
At Crazy Canuck’s the weekly schedule runs the gamut from crab races, to trivia, to karaoke, to live reggae.
After a half hour at the counter, bar regular Alan shakes my hand and tells me about a weekly Wednesday event that will happen Tuesday this week because elections are Wednesday and the bar is closed on election day.
” We call it the Walkaholic Walk, ” he explains. ” We take a hike down the beach, without stopping. Then, on the way back, we start drinking…… ”
” I’ll go, ” I say, ” What time? ”
” Eleven. ”
Drinking and walking is more healthy than drinking and driving.
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