As I sit in traffic on a Friday night, six lanes in either direction at a standstill, I wonder if our table will still be there for us when we arrive at our dinner destination downtown….
Traffic on front street was at a standstill…..Pedro has found someone in dire need of his considered opinion, and the rest of us can just wait…how important can it be to get to the next bar 2 minutes earlier!
The waiter asks for our drinks order, and I ponder the choice of several “handcrafted” beers, before deciding to wait, as I’m driving
Do I want a Belikin?...What do you think, I can crawl “home” from here!
It was a frustrating day, I got caught up on a conference call, and missed the high on a stock I’ve been waiting to sell, but the options expire soon, so I took the profit and moved on.
I didn’t get around to logging on to the internet today,or yesterday either, come to think about it, but I’m sure things went just fine without me…
We finish out meal, and as we are driving home, we stop at a red light: an SUV pulls up next to us, music blaring..I make eye contact with the guy in the passenger seat…not someone I’d invite over for cocktails…the music is turned up louder, and the stare down continues: I reach down beside my seat to turn off the safety, just in case….…the light changes, and we head back to suburbia…
As I walk down the beach after dark, I see a shape ahead of me…a dreadlocked guy with his machete and a sack of coconuts is on the path ahead…I don’t know his name, but we’ve seen each other around…we smile, I give him a beer and he gives me a couple of coconuts and we move on, just 2 people enjoying paradise....one love
The changes in perception when I get “home” to Belize are so many and varied that they are hard to quantify, but suffice to say that life in Belize is just somehow better….when we “retired” we each wrote down the top 3 places we would like to live…we both had San Pedro #1 and never looked at the rest of the list…we’d been here 3 times on Cruises, and the magic had stayed with us
A nice home and economic security, a beautiful and loving wife and the world’s best dog all are part of my great life in Texas, but could I sit and write about how my heart skips a beat each time I return, or how I count the days until I get back?
Belize is a place where you need to check your Type AA personality at the Airport….there is nothing that you can do to change anything…things will happen eventually, so you may as well just sit back and enjoy the view!
We enjoy the Cab ride to the water taxi, and the hour and a half of just mellowing out and adjusting to becoming “the minority”…the kids who will just come up and talk and smile at us because they know of no other way to behave…
When we arrive at the dock, Genie is there to meet us…He hugs “Miss Jane” and her smile lights up her face…this is where she is the happiest..we walk down the pier, and he jokes to his friends…”This week I eat good…Mummy and Daddy come to visit”
We won’t be at the Venetian or Bellagio this week…it’s a couple of days here and a couple more there…no TVs, no A/C, bed by 9 most nights and up at dawn for a beach walk.
Our Villa @ Reef Village should have been finished by now, but it’s running about a year behind schedule: I could get upset, but really, what would that accomplish……
The diving was good, we caught plenty of fresh fish for lunch, and Eric Donaldson sounds sweet from the blown speaker out on the deck…we just start cleaning and cooking all we have, because somehow, enough people will show up to eat it all, something that still mystifies and amuses me!
We walk around San Pedro, not heading anywhere in particular, but stopping every few minutes to talk to someone we know…we live in a city of 6million strangers, but will see 50 friends of varying degrees in one morning on front street!
Discussions over a Belikin will be about almost anything except the things I argue with people all day about when in the US, and the folks I only get to see every year or so are amongst the purest relationships I have…there is no “upside” or gain in their company, just the pleasure we share from being in our beautiful host country
Yes, there are some things that it would be nice to see change….trash recycling, better sewer and water service, more onus on education and less corruption, but these are all part of the magical mixture that makes Belize the wondrous adventure it is
Belize is not just a place, an attitude, a mindset or even a set of smells and tastes that combine to offer a unique experience.....it’s something different to each and every soul that finds their way there, never to be the same again…and I’m a nicer person in Belize than when I’m anywhere else in the world
_________________________
It's rarely rocket science, it's usually just math: then again if you can't do the math.......
Previous Topic
Index
AmbergrisCaye.com