Belize: A Story in a Story

Those of you who really know me know that some day I’d like to write a novel.  I’d like to write a novel based off a dream I’ve had several times and for no fame-chasing purpose, just the desire to share the love of adventure.  If we’ve spoken of my plot, you know why.  I will refrain from sharing it here because I know there are some of you scoundrels out there looking to steal stuff.  If you steal what is to follow, know that I have proof I wrote it first.  It is now published on the net. 

I often wonder why I drop the ball on scheduling activities when I travel.  It’s not that I don’t know where to go or don’t have enough money.  I spend hours researching advertised fun for the cheapest prices and can always cover it, but when it comes time to make a reservation, I pause.  I know the locals will know better than myself with a computer, and so I tell myself I will ask them when I get there.  When I arrive it always seems like the worst choice.  This trip was no exception. 

I said farewell to my group at the Belizean airport and took a taxi to my hotel, only to be told that fun stuff would be hard to find in Belize City, as everything shuts down on Sundays and Monday is a holiday.  This day was Saturday.  Well shit.  I spent the next thirty minutes or so with the young man Germaine at the front counter running through options and dialing numbers.  No luck.  Somehow, the fact that I was in the industry of international education got to the hotel manager’s ears and, on hearing my activity flexibility, invited me to the family’s 200+ acre property with built up lodgings for students and researchers, just so that I could see it.  And it would be free for me.  There was no question in my mind about it.  Count me in! 

It’s a beautiful property.  Not five stars by anyone’s standards, but still perfect in its rustic island charm.  We took a twenty minute boat ride from the back of the hotel, as it lies along a canal that leads to the sea, to a long cabana-styled pier on a large off-shore island.  Two beautiful and tail-wagging dogs come happily barking and whining down the planks to greet us.  Opal and Princess.  They trot around me as I follow the walkway from the pier lined with tropical bushes to the main building built of concrete and adorned with shingles.  The lower level boasts a sprawling patio, cedar-lined dining room with a full bar that doubles as storage for three large sea canoes, and a massively empty kitchen.  The second story has numerous dorm-styled bedrooms that each are accessed by their own door on the wrap-around porch.  The view from there looks out over the property, only about four acres of which have been developed into garden space, beachfront, and workshop.  White sand lies far below me with three sitting cabanas built up on them to provide solitude for those that want to enjoy the breeze coming off the endless blue waters.  There is no internet here and electricity is provided by a generator that comes on very infrequently.  The little solar power they have may provide you with enough to turn on a light bulb. 

My day consists of a quick tour of the property, eating a gold plum off one of the garden’s trees, experiencing one of the most perfect sun-bathing days I can think of, as there’s no overheating with the wondrous breeze coming off the ocean, enjoying a quick snorkel, and talking for hours with the great company.  And with the company is where things get interesting.  With the company is where I can’t help but think about my book and how, though it wasn’t quite an outwardly eventful day, this day was spectacular in the internal and unseen, the descriptors that make life interesting, worthwhile. 

Sydney is the hotel’s manager.  When he greeted me upon arrival and began to work out my room situation, I couldn’t quite figure him out.  He looked tired and talked slow, but I got the sense he was sharp as a whip and would eye me with thoughts that I may be ignorant.  These looks became more frequent as he led me to my room and I began to ask questions about activities only to be told that little occurred on Sundays, and even less on the Monday holiday.  I thanked him for carrying my bag as the door across the hallway opened and a wretched looking woman got his attention.  I excused myself and closed the door on their conversation.

The next time I met Sydney, he was offering me a trip to the family’s property, on the condition that it was okay with Mom.  I thought to myself:  “Who is Mom and why isn’t she here?” but happily and eagerly accepted the invitation on those terms.  He reported that Mom was happy with it but would meet me in the morning, as she had already removed her shoes for the day. 

Shortly after that, two women emerged into the front hall.  One was the wretched thing I glimpsed earlier in the door across from mine, and the other was a soft-spoken elderly hippie.  They both look to be in their sixties.  The wretched thing had pink smear across her lips with a shade darker of an uneven lining.  Gobs of mascara hung from her eyelashes.  Her skin was pale and sun-spotted.  Her skin wrinkled around her mouth after years of pursing her lips in distaste at lesser people, leaving her to look like a chain smoker herself.  Something strange must’ve happened to her right ear, as some nude cloth covered what looked to be blue spots on her skin.  Tattoo removal?  Moles be-gone? 

The next day I was less than pleased to be finding out that she would be joining us.  She wore overly bright pastel colors, a pink shawl and a see-through yellow skirt hung around her skeletal figure.  She had her graying dull hair pulled tight into a bun on top of her head and demanded the other woman take pictures of her on the dock in the morning. Not only was she wretched to look upon but her personality made me cringe.  Everything was about her.  She’d interrupt anyone mid-sentence with her loud obnoxious tone, the kind that is not dissimilar to what I imagine a cat wail mixed with toad croak would sound like, to tell a story that had the words “me” and “I” far too many times for socially appropriate.  And while she told these stories, her incompetent, dull, and selfish eyes would flick to my criticizing ones frequently as if searching for sly approval. 

She tried to come off as something, but to me was worse than nothing.  I think and hope that she could feel that, for she is selfish and uncompromising and deserves to be beat into the hole from which she came.  She latched on to the other woman she was traveling with, Cindy, only to demand that they spend their entire week on Caye Caulker, a very touristy island, to lie on the beach all day every day.  I wished her skin would fry off her bones. 

Cindy, on the other hand, deserved compromise, deserved to have a great trip, deserved to embrace her adventurist spirit.  She is a lovely woman, has been a river guide, had traveled much when she was younger, fell in love with herbal medicine in Indonesia, and opened her own herbal healing practice in no other place than EVERGREEN! for eighteen years.  She recently moved on to being a flight attendant after being burnt out on doing that for so long.  And that is how she met the wretched thing.  They flew once or twice together and Cindy invited the wretched thing out of the goodness of her heart because its other plans had fallen through. 

Cindy’s quiet sweet voice and open honest energy was not noticed by just myself.  Cindy also resonated strongly with Mom, the owner of the Belcove in Belize City and numerous other enterprises throughout New York City.  This woman is Sydney’s mother.  She is strong and stead fast in her dealings with her son and employees.  She demands perfection and rightly so.  She has seen much.  She moved to New York after marrying her husband, a very quiet man who sits contentedly with us women as we jabber away like parrots, raised two of her own children and adopted a cousin and a grandchild.  She has a parrott that is exemplary of the intelligence parrots may display under the right encouragement, and she sees spirits.  Her husband sees spirits too, but he does not speak of htem.  She sees spirits.  In butterflies and birds.  Energies attract to her and she feels other’s energies.  She adores Cindy.  She likes me.  She laughs at the wretched thing, yet her open heart and caring hand are not cruel.  She laughs in a way that is kind, as the only other way to deal with the wretched thing, my way, is to glare at her, without her knowing, behind my mirrored sunglasses.

Sydney exemplifies many of his mother’s qualities.  He is giving to those that do not ask for it and harsh with those that do.  When I inquire in the morning about breakfast, he adamantly takes me to the station for all of the biscuits I could want and then to the street-corner taco stand to give me the real taste of Belize.  He pays for it all and hands off a couple of gold coins to a man decked out in basketball garb that’s pestering him.  On the way back he tells me he hates the cycle of the nuisance.  Men travel to the US and Canada, they get in trouble, are deported back to Belize, and return with their bad alcohol and drug habits, find it easier to ask for money than work for it, and teach that cycle to the next generation.  It’s a terrible cycle, and I ask him if he’s not contributing to it by handing off a coin?  He confides that it is, but many days, he just can’t fight them off.  He’s fascinating.  He’s unmovable and calm, talks about enjoying working all week because it keeps him occupied and in control, but he slips.  It’s apparent when he’s talking to his employees, much like his mother.  He doesn’t stand for laziness, incompleteness, or imperfection.

He adamantly admonishes Junior, Sydney’s apparent cousin (though I get the feeling everyone is related in this city), and apparently the paid labor for the day.  He is moving most stuff about.  And his body screams of hard work.  I have no idea how old he is.  His hair is still thick and black, however cut short, but he is missing all of is front top teeth except for two on his right side.  I’ve never seen a body quite like his.  His skin nearly as dark as his ebony curls stretches taught over muscles looked to be carved from stone.  Every move he makes is a display of the human muscular physiology.  I see ones I never knew of before in his arms and back.  He is not bulky by any means, but has the wiry lean build that comes from a lifetime of manual labor with little amounts of calorie-dense food.  His fingers are thick and round.  His feet splay outwards, as if his big toe and heel are of the same large boundary of a circle, working their way around to meet on the other side.  I’ve never seen clubbed feet like that.  He won’t make eye contact with me.  He gets frustrated when Sydney talks down on him.  He gets frustrated when the fish he is after along the pier during the day get away.  The rest of our company finds great humor in this.

The final member of our strange array is Christian, the boat captain.  He is large.  He is quiet around me but not unfriendly.  When he laughs, his whole body shakes in a jovial manner.  He wears a captain’s polarized shades, the kind all captains around here wear.  It wasn’t until we were leaving that he appeared without them on and I was shocked to see his eyes.  They are beautiful.  The color of the ocean he works on- blues and greens, but also interspersed with bits of gold like the silt on the ocean floor stirred by snorkel fins suspended too close to the bottom.  All of a sudden what I thought a man with little personality became a man with much of it, just saved for those worth sharing it with.

And that was our group.  Random and odd.  Sydney, the philosophical smoker, the wretched thing, the lovely hippie, Mom, her quiet husband, Junior, Christian, and a 22-year-old gypsy.  We make for quite a story of characters, some of which I am happily looking forward to using some day, and are the gifts in disguise of this day, and that is not all. 

We made it off that beach in the knick of time.  One storm cloud had blown around us and another was headed our way.  Two minutes after we pushed off, we looked back to see the gray had enveloped the dock and a solid line of white, where rain hit ocean, marked the storm’s boundary.  It was chasing us and we were fleeing.  As we continuously remained 100 yards or so full speed ahead of it, we realized another storm front rode our outer flank.  The two would merge to make a monstrous storm center.  At this point we were fleeing not from the rain that would sting our faces like bees if it caught us, but the lightning storm that would surely ensue when the two storms collided.  The individuals of our group either sat silent or hooted and hollered at the enemy close on our toes.  In the end we beat it back to the hotel literally by seconds, but not without me fantasizing about putting such a scene in a book, especially with all the boats heading for the same dock space, chased by thunderheads towards Belize City lit up through the clouds by the sun.

Junior