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.
A few blocks from the water taxi pier, Aunties has a Trip Adviser sticker on the front window.
A little Chinese lady behind the window, in an apron, manages customers, makes change, keeps the kitchen help on track. The menu is simple, cheap, good food any day of the week.
Stewed chicken with rice and beans, potato salad and a drink is $10 Belizean or $ $5.00 U.S. The chicken falls off the bones and rice and beans is tasty. Fruit punch is better in the heat than beer.
I eat lunch at one of the picnic tables out side and watch customers.
Auntie makes me feel at home, even if she is a chicken.
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.
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.
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.
Granite boulders are common along this foothill trail.
They are spread like giant marbles dumped out of a cloth bag onto the school playground at recess. Some of the boulders are clumped together, others stand alone in a patch of cactus or in the shade of a stubborn juniper with gnarled branches.
Along this trail, lichen cling to the granite.
Lichen comes in shades of green and consists of two symbiotic organisms. The fungi part sinks roots into resisting rock, extracts nutrients, holds on for dear life. The algae part piggybacks on fungi and uses photosynthesis and nutrients to make food for both of them.
Winding up the trail on a morning hike, through a planet in transition, all looks stable, but nature is far from stable.
Googling- lichen on granite- brings you life’s variety, delicacy, and will to survive.
Symbiosis describes human relationships, as well as natures.
If it crawls, slides, slips, flips,slithers, climbs, it is not safe.
At “99”, in Albuquerque, there are selections to fit Chinese tastes.
Today, Ruby has a taste for seafood, and, lifting up a black cloth, she goes after blue and white colored crabs that try to escape the small plastic tub that holds them for display. The crabs that run from her the fastest are the ones she grabs in her prongs and puts, with help, into her open plastic bag.
For meat and poultry she likes Sprouts. The meats at “99”, she says in basic English, are old and not good.
I don’t care for tree fungus, but find noodles tolerable. Worms are offensive. The most difficult skill is to eat soup with chopsticks.
Americans eat meat, potatoes, bread, hamburgers, french fries, sugar, salt. Chinese eat seafood, vegetables, fruits, nuts and rice.
The crabs try to hurt us with their scissor hands but they are no match for Ruby’s prongs.
Sitting in this Albuquerque McDonalds feels like sitting inside the Diner in the 1942 Edward Hopper oil painting – ” Nighthawks. ”
Early this morning, Javier is busy cleaning this fast food franchise made of glass, plastic, tile, low voltage lights, lightweight chairs and tables, all under the ubiquitous corporate logo – M.
Javier works diligently, methodically, pulling tools out of his maintenance closet by the soft drink machines where homeless fill up yesterday’s paper cups with today’s free soda. He greets us in Spanish and opens the door at five when we queue for coffee.
Javier soaps his windows,then carefully uses a squeegee to remove the soap from the glass. He cleans his squeegee with a rag he pulls out of his back pocket. He looks for imperfections as he goes and his windows are a work of art.
Big business, some say, is good for America.
Big business, others say, has turned us into a plutocracy..
Edward Hopper’s painting seems comforting this morning, less stark than our present situation.
Clean windows in a dirty world are a thing of beauty.
Golden Pride in Albuquerque sells fried chicken, Bar- B- Que, burritos, red and green enchiladas, and, of course, a world famous cinnamon roll drowning on a plate in butter and icing.
This black vehicle is parked in front of the East Central Route 66 location and comes equipped with literature, philosophy, and Biblical principles.
On the hood, the trunk, door panels, and bumpers is wisdom from the past. Good ideas are good regardless of the century and continent they were penned.
Mark Twain has his own special way with words and ideas. The Bible is clear on its central points – Men are Sinners, Mankind has fallen, Temptation is Satan’s favorite game, Redemption is possible, Death can be conquered, Jesus is the Savior.
Inside Golden Pride, I try to pinpoint the owner of this moving book but it could be most anyone in the restaurant.
New Mexico is odd that way. You can have a millionaire and a bum sitting at the same table and you can’t tell, from outward appearances, which one has the money.
Diving into my cinnamon roll, it is certain that Mark Twain, as much as the Holy Bible, comes up with ideas I wish I had thought of.
Thinking about the kind of person who would write on a car makes my lunch go better than normal.
This cinnamon roll has just the right amount of butter and icing, ordering two would just not be right, so I concentrate on the poetry of ideas..
One thing I wouldn’t write on my car, for sure, is my phone number.
Anonymity has great advantages.
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