Lodgers left and leave the only key where Jack can’t find it.
” I only have one key, ” Jack explains, as he takes a hammer and knocks apart the dead bolt. ” I don’t want to be accused of taking any ones stuff. ”
It only takes a few seconds of hammering to knock the dead bolt apart and open the door. The door handle has already been picked.
The only difference between breaking and entering, and getting a place ready to rent, is intent.
Growing up in the landlord business, with a dad who had more than one property, this is just a small irritation. With a new deadbolt, lock set, and key, the new renters will never know the difference.
They will get their only key and everyone will sleep like babies.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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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