According to Rabbit, retired bartender, Ramon’s Village is one of the better values in San Pedro Town. If you are coming to Ambergris Caye for a week and want to have convenience, service, good food, security, access to the water, a good home base for your explorations, nice accommodations, for a good price, Ramon’s is the place for you.
The resort burnt down several years ago and was rebuilt with work going twenty four seven. Ramon didn’t want to re- open but did anyway. His resort has an international flavor, and, unlike many lodgings on the island, is maintained by a full staff of worker bees.
Ramon’s is maybe not the best way to get to know the island, close up and personal, but lots of people visit San Pedro Town with no desire to move here and want the island to be accompaniment to their vacation instead of the melody.
Even Ramon himself, greeting breakfast diners, asks me this morning how I am doing?
I compliment his hotel and listen attentively..
Maintaining and managing a profitable business anywhere is worthy of respect.
Lake Caribe has not vanished.
This morning a path is built of cinder blocks so those of us walking from the house to the street don’t get our shoes wet. Some say there is no progress in this little slice of Paradise but this path is living proof that us humans adapt to Mother Nature when we have to.
Walter and I build the cinder block stepping stone path the morning after the big rain, and, except for a little sliding of blocks when you walk on them, it works perfectly.
The world news today is terrorist bombings in Paris, France. That country continues to let refugees into their country by the hundred thousands, don’t know their intentions, and seem surprised that they are getting victimized by those they seem to think they have to help.
In San Pedro Town, the world is out there somewhere, beyond the reef.
Hopefully, that is where the world stays.
Building a simple cinder block path to get from the house to the road is more pressing than Paris and is something Walter and I have control over.
This church rents a shut down movie theater on Sundays for two services -8 :30 and 10:00 am. The mother church is in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Sagebrush, I have been told by an Albuquerque friend who is a member, is on Albuquerque’s west side and has locations in other New Mexico cities.
Sagebrush Belize is raising money in San Pedro Town to build a new facility, over the bridge, in sight of this movie theater, right where a wood sign now sticks in a sand lot.
There are questions raised by church members about spending a million dollars on a building but the official answer is that it is expensive to rent and the church needs room to grow. What began as a Bible study in an upstairs room has become more.
Belize has pressing needs. Churches serve more quickly, economically, and responsibly than government.
Having a million dollar temple is not going to get you closer to Jesus, but it isn’t going to hurt recruiting.
The resort and casino are on the north side of Ambergris Caye and you get there in a taxi by the new road, or a water taxi with Coastal Express, or catch one of the resort’s own shuttles that bring guests to and from their accommodations.
This time of year the resort is not bustling. Saturday’s guests are off doing tours or sleeping from too much sun, too much party, too much jet lag, too much culture shock.
Captain Morgan was, by most accounts, successful. He was a privateer rather than a pirate. He was authorized by the Queen to steal Spanish gold, sink Spanish ships, kill Spanish seaman and citizens. Pirates steal from everyone, have no allegiances, and are enemies of the state.
Captain Morgan was a clever fighting man and retired in Jamaica where he amassed land, riches, and died in his own bed. There is a rum named after him and on the walls of this resorts guest houses are wood planks with names of fellow privateers that prowled the Caribbean.
Captain Morgan’s spirit is still lurking in these islands and who knows when he will swoop in to the casino, draw his broadsword, load guest valuables into his large brimmed hat and finish a bottle of spiced rum before disappearing into the seas on a full moon night with the prettiest girl under his arm.
The biggest news is the casino doesn’t open till six in the evening.
If he had it to do over, Captain Morgan would run a casino instead of pirating
With gambling you don’t kill your customers.
There is street food in San Pedro Town.
This little enterprise, ” La Taqueria “, opens at seven thirty each morning on Coconut Street where the road turns towards the Average Joe Bar and Caribbean Fuels gas station, and turns again past the S & P Hardware store to points south.
The taqueria’s, chicken or pork inside a small rolled corn tortilla, are three for a Belizian dollar. For six U.S. dollars you can buy fifteen and a drink and not have to eat the rest of the day.
On one of the stand’s windows is a business license and hot food is in slowly simmering pots. A short woman, with a fork, scoops meat out of a pot of your choice, spreads it on a tortilla, then rolls the tortilla and wraps them in foil for take out. You can have onions and a local hot sauce for no extra charge. Her husband sets up folding tables for dine in’s and puts money into a little metal cash box.
This morning I wait for a man ahead of me who orders twenty one.
Street food gets a bad rep. These kitchens are cleaner than some restaurants here plus you get to watch your meal being prepared.
Licking hot sauce off my fingers, that oozes out of the taqueria, as I bite, gives this trip panache.
There are at least two hundred invited guests but anyone can join this wedding..
Wayos is a popular beach bar in San Pedro Town and Wayo, pronounced Y -oh, is a popular owner.
When the groom arrives in a black golf cart limo, there is applause and cheers. As always, his bar is open and weather is uncooperative. It rains in spurts and people crowd under tents, roof overhangs, and in the bar to escape another torrential downpour.
The wedding ceremony is short and the couple recites handwritten vows under a big tent overlooking the Caribbean Sea.. They promise to honor and cherish and encourage and support each other, and, in front of important people in their life, draw a big heart in the sand with their names inside it.
Before, during, and after the ceremony, people re-connect. It is a close knit group on this Isla Bonita and meeting people is not difficult here. When people come here they cast time and routine out of the boat and lifting anchors that hold them elsewhere.
It is a good wedding and a happy time.
Nature isn’t co-operating but another lady well wisher, standing next to me, tells me it is good luck to be married on a rainy day.
If that is so, this couple will have enough luck to take care of all of us.
Two popular pastimes in San Pedro Town are Karaoke and Drinking.
Since bars open early and close late, there is always a lot of drinking going on. Likewise, when karaoke starts and participants pick up a microphone, the singing, good, bad, and ugly, picks up like an afternoon squall.
There is an undercurrent here where what you think you hear is not always what you hear, what you see is not always as you see it, what you assume is often erroneous, what you plan goes astray. Poker cards in the hole are held closely and opportunities to leap without looking are always at hand. There are Spanish gold doubloons in a shipwreck out on the reef and all it takes to get them is a hundred thousand of your money.
Wade, owner of Road Kill Bar, is painting this morning and his orange Karaoke sign advertises fun.
Karaoke is a sign of our times where audience participation is the real star of the show.
Make Believe is definitely more fun than not.
The difference between coming to Belize with money, and living here without money, is substantial.
Belize has staggering statistics.
It has the highest incidence of HIV in Central America. It has twenty to thirty percent unemployment. The doctor per patient ratio is among the worst in the world. 30-40% of the population lives in poverty and is dependent on agriculture and fishing for subsistence. Crime is familiar. Infrastructure is minimal. A high birth rate is matched by a high infant mortality rate. Housing and public utilities sputter.
Still, people from worse economies in Guatemala and Nicaragua come to San Pedro Town to look for work.
San Pedro Town has the barrier reef, tourist accommodations, things to do, an influx of money. Ambergris Caye, economically, supports the rest of Belize on its long narrow shoulders.
As a tourist, good overcomes bad. As a resident, bad is what bites at your heels.
Visiting and staying here are different as dogs and cats.
Sunday is FunDay at Crazy Canuck’s.
Three to seven, the Cover Ups hammer out reggae, Santana, Jimmy Buffett and pop songs from last year and yesteryear. As the band powers up, an investment conference concludes with a drum roll and attendees shut notebooks on establishing money havens, protecting capital, and growing nest eggs.
Reggae is a music of choice in the Caribbean.
When the song is over the lead singer reminds me that singing is spiritual and takes him to a different realm and sometimes he goes into a trance. During a band break he chats up a stunning black girl at the end of the bar and he isn’t looking at her with spiritual eyes.
Reggae has its own sound. It takes a while to understand the words, but that will come.
Places move at their own speed, and, San Pedro Town isn’t going to speed up, just for me.
Reggae and waves compliment each other.
You don’t have to understand what they are saying to enjoy their melody.
“She likes details,” Bruce Cooper says of his wife.
Their gallery, in a rented shop on main street in Caye Caulker, presents her art. She paints and he runs the business end of their collaboration.
“We sell original art, prints, and small stocking stuffers, ” Bruce tells me as we talk about New Orleans, the proliferation of guest houses on this island, the fact that his business is for sale due to aggressive web marketing by competing worldwide tourist destinations.
“We are losing 3% of our visitors a year,” he tells me. “I have been working since I was seven years old. I want to retire and go fishing.”
Bruce walks with a swollen foot brought on by diabetes.
I slip my purchase into my cargo pants as he makes a sale to a lady that has already bought two prints earlier in the day.
Selling art in a wood shack in the Caribbean sea, with a breeze rustling simple curtains hung on shuttered windows, seems better than cooking your brains out on a boat in bumpy water with a plastic bag full of stinking cut bait waiting to go on your hooks.
Art and business can co-exist.
It looks to me like Bruce’s work is as close to fishing as he is going to get in this lifetime.
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