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.
Going out without an umbrella is taking a risk in San Pedro Town.
Rain is forecast and today doesn’t disappoint. A woman, passing in a golf cart, waves back at me while I video this drenching.
The storm is over in fifteen minutes. It gets hot and humid as water begins to evaporate, flows into low spots, and soaks into sandy soil.
Residents love rain and talk ruefully about dry season.
” In summer, ” they remind me, ” you would sell your own mother for a rain like this. ”
My mother would be the first to tell me to enjoy this moment today.
When the rain is done, I head back to my lodgings, walking down a dirt path that looks like an aerial view of Minnesota’s 11,884 lakes.
Not even a mother knows where her kid’s will end up and what they will or won’t accomplish.
Life, as a puddle swallows my right tennis shoe and rain water soaks my tennis socks, is mostly a blessing, as long as we feel it that way.
San Pedro Town waits for her photo shoot like a beautiful model that has spent her whole life understanding what people see when they think they see her.
November 2, 2015 is a walking day.
I smell a fresh cinnamon roll and go searching for it. Cold, fresh squeezed orange juice would be perfect. This whole day has a wide open schedule and ” have to do ” is not in my poker hand.
San Pedro Town is hardly bashful.
Her bikini is only a few strings holding up a small triangle of cloth.
Whether it is Saint Thomas, Saint John, Dominica, Grenada, Bequia, Boca Del Toros, or San Pedro Town you see Caribbean similarities immediately.
Ambergris Caye is off the coast of Belize and runs along the second biggest barrier reef in the world with tourism its primary income stream.
There are foreigners here who make their retirement dollars stretch but opportunity is in a rising real estate market, a chance to open a business where locals don’t have the money, education or desire to start one of their own. Waiting at the airport, the sun is dropping and I can hear reggae on boomboxes in little neighborhood bars where men play domino’s and women complain about other women.
Coming back to the Caribbean is like coming home.
Jack, my host, doesn’t get to the airport to pick me up but a taxi dispatcher at the airport uses his personal cell phone to call Jack since my cell phone doesn’t have service here. Jack asks him to call Orlando. The taxi dispatcher calls Orlando and Orlando picks me up in fifteen minutes and delivers me to the Chez Caribe.
” Glad to see you, ” Jack says, sitting on a couch on the bottom floor front porch in a T shirt, levis, flip flops and shaven head.
I sit and listen as he practices ” La Bamba” on an old acoustic guitar and then get introduced to my room. It has a yellow green color scheme like my own house in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It is small but will do fine.
Being picky usually doesn’t have good consequences.
I come from a land of manana, and, making the most of where I find myself is my normal plan of any day.
This ride is not smooth, but it isn’t bumpy either.
Down below us are little green islands sticking their heads above the Caribbean Sea like turtles, fishing boats, and turquoise water. I can almost see the grassy bottom of the sea from the air.
We are packed tightly in the plane and our pilot navigates by looking through his planes front window through rotating propeller blades. He has a small instrument panel and this flight is analogous to riding a city bus in the sky but it is the quickest and cheapest way to get to San Pedro Town from Belize City late in the afternoon.
Enroute, we land first at Caye Caulker, another tourist destination. We deliver a few guests, then make a U turn back to the beginning of the runway we just landed on. The pilot turns us around, again, and we take off for San Pedro Town, again. The plane’s little tires suffer from potholes but we lift off just before we reach the runway’s end and the water’s beginning.
Leaving the United States at 8:00 am and arriving in San Pedro Town at 5:10pm, on the same day,for two hundred seventy five bucks total, is a good piece of travel.
It is good to be out of New Mexico and have people ask me again where I am from.
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