There are Christmas lights already being hung in Parque Calderon.
On balconies, in store front windows and living rooms, trees are dressed with lights, nativity scenes, tinsel, peppermint sticks and brightly colored Christmas ornaments.
This little parade, of two vehicles, is driving down a Cuenca thoroughfare and Santa, with his pink dressed assistant, is tossing candy to kids, adults, and spectators. Two elves take pictures with their cell phones and a cynic would swear that Christmas gets earlier and earlier each year and boys and girls are never nice enough to deserve treats.
Still, the Grinch is no where to be seen, busy plotting mischief for the more inopportune times.
This may be, after all, just a moving advertisement, but all enjoy the spectacle.
Watching a man with a white beard wearing a red suit and a red cap with a snowball on its end is infinitely more fun than filling orders, breaking out concrete or cooking soup for the lunch trade.
Tis the season to be jolly.
Leaving one place and moving to another is more difficult when you have enjoyed your stay. Then you have one place tugging at one arm and another place tugging at the other.
The Caribbean is worn, tattered, frayed, chipped, pieced together, bright colors, strange language, intense sun, stifling humidity, rain, mosquitoes, stewed chicken, rum punch, hesitation to do today what should have been done yesterday. The weather, people, traditions conspire to wring compulsions out of you like twisting a wet towel and snapping it in the air. Nature is everywhere; a lizard climbing up the front porch wall, a trail of ants along a fallen vine, fish in a bucket on a pier, a bird standing motionless in the sea until it sees its opportunity and comes up with a jitterbugging silver fish. The music is Latin, African, American rock and roll, Cuban and reggae. Rasta men stay to strict diets and a young crowd wears bling and attitudes more big city than island, more pretend than real.
The Caribbean is a worn pair of house shoes that you favor because they give you support but don’t constrict you. In the Caribbean, you find boundaries erased and a tolerance for eccentricity. You feel your mind slip and inhibitions drift away from their pier.
The vista changes as we fly. It starts with blue green turquoise water, small green clusters of mangrove islands, sand bars, and just above the water line, land. Then, sea and land is obscured by clouds. Breezing across the Caribbean we cut over Panama and Columbia down to Ecuador, over the Andes Mountains. Ecuador sprawls, the color of a leprecaun’s green patched jacket.
Over Cuenca, tonight, you see man-made lights that look like burning matches in a dark room. In San Pedro Town, you see what there is too see in a month. In a city the size of Cuenca, you can only see your small part of the reef, the little hump of coral around which you live, sleep, do your shopping, cultivate friends and neighbors.
We are going to be good friends, this city and I.
Not finding things to do here would take a monumental effort.
The San Pedro Town Catholic Church fronts the Caribbean Sea, just like every other bar, restaurant, and lodging in town..
As you walk the length of the beach you can look over a fence that separates church grounds from the beach and see cement seats and a statue of Virgin Mary.
Entering the church, in the front, is an inscription from Matthew , a Confessional, a Donation Box, and a clear view of a simple Sancristy. You enter and leave the church through Market Square that is filled with vendors selling trinkets, drunks sleeping off night’s excesses, tourists taking pictures, hangers on with no work and no prospects.
This is a quiet place to collect thoughts, remember those gone, rest weary feet .There is no one here to tell you you can’t be here, and, it doesn’t cost anything.
Along the top of the wall at the back of the church is wire left exposed with jagged edges.
The only way to come into this church is by the front door.
Thanksgiving dinner falls into my lap.
In the middle of a Walkaholics ramble, our group is invited by the owner of the Sandbar to a free annual Thanksgiving dinner at her bar and grill. It is something she likes cooking for and an appreciation to loyal customers.
This is a full blown extravaganza with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, dressing, salad. bread and desserts. The company is cordial and the mood is celebratory.
Last year my Thanksgiving was celebrated in Uruguay with a slice of pizza and a beer. It is hard at this moment to know where Thanksgiving will find me next year.
This week turkey’s have been in hiding.
Surviving dinner when you are the main course is a gift from God.
The last rainbow gracing these postings was in San Jose, Costa Rica near the Hotel Aranjuez.
This masterpiece is between Belize City and Ambergris Caye on the boat ride back from a tour of Lamanai, Mayan ruins in Orange Walk, Belize.
Mother Nature sends us a parting bouquet of flowers, a little good by kiss, a temporary light show, a reminder of who is behind all that we have been observing.
It is the end of another day on Planet Earth , November 23, 2015.
What I should have done was read about the ruins before I got here.
Lamanai, which means submerged crocodile, is a Mayan city in the Orange District of Belize. It dates to the sixteenth century B.C. and was occupied into the seventeen hundreds A.D. It was a city of forty thousand and combined farming and fishing and large trade networks for success.
The three main structures, excavated in the 1970’s by David Pendergast, are the Jaguar temple, the Mask, the High Temple. The Mask Temple is the tombs of successive rulers who built their burial place atop that of their predecessor. The High Temple is in a natural amphitheater and was the site of public spectacles, religious ceremonies, and political grandstanding.
Standing in this hot humid jungle looking at tourists climbing to the top of huge stone structures, I weigh the manpower and skills needed to build them and the spiritual and political reasons for completing them.
Longevity speaks of doing things right for a long time in the time and place you find yourself.
What would they have thought of our world if they could have imagined it?
Would they choose, if they had the choice, our world over theirs?
People are part of a trip. Places are another part.
Places are where people go for fun, for business, to restock, to rest, to meet, to connect, to share news.
These places in San Pedro Town are like little trinkets on a charm bracelet women wear on their ankles.
When I revisit this trip, without going back, these photos will be my next best vacation.
The grills are fired up and chickens are the topic of conversation.
A local Hispanic church is doing a fundraiser selling food, used clothes and donated items outside their little church in San Pedro town.
” Jesus es la Repuestra ” the marquee says and they are doing brisk business this Sunday at lunchtime.
I have barbecued chicken and rice with slaw, sit on a bench as a cluster of volunteers praise Christ, pack orders to go, and celebrate.
A boombox, on the wall next to me, plays Cuban salsa.
It feels like home to be hearing Spanish and even though New Mexico just got snow, which I know because I checked with the weather lady on the internet, I’m not ready to run back home just yet.
There are rubber bands tied to my ankles that want to snap me back to the Land of Enchantment when I have pulled them to their maximum stretch. The rubber bands are extended, right now, almost to their maximum length.
Jesus motions for us to follow, but some insist on putting toes in the water before their feet go in.
Humming ” Amazing Grace “, sitting on a rock wall, the water is already up to my knees.
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.
Dog lovers often bring their dogs on vacation with them.
This little guy runs down the beach and his owners tell us, as we pass them, that he will swim out to get birds all the way to the end of the pier.
Down the beach, only moments ago, Rabbit and I met a local woman with a pooper scooper who said she was watching for the dog that poops on her yard each morning. She also tells us, matter of factly, that she has a loaded shotgun and would love to make her day and shoot the dogs owner first.
You Tube is where aliens can go to get a good read on our planet.
This little dog needs to be careful about his business.
Shotguns can take you all the way out of this life even if the human who pulls the trigger is half blind and drunk as a skunk.
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