SAN PEDRO -- AMBERGRIS CAYE

 

 

On a lark, a decision is made to head to San Pedro on neighboring Ambergris Caye the next morning to start the New Year.  Caulker Caye is too perfect and I wanted a contrasting isle by which to measure my newfound BIF (Best Island Forever). This is the most popular tourist spot in all of Belize.  The boat journey (again by Caye Caulker Water Taxi) costs about $25 Belize dollars round-trip, or half that in American dollars.  It takes 30 minutes for the crossing, which is almost due north.

 

The first thing one notices is the businesses are more formal.  They don’t do receipts by hand.  They have swipe card mechanisms.  Waiters wear formal costumes.  The streets are paved.  There are more cars.  There is more formality, and less revelry.  The only thing in common with Caulker is that the locals are once again, incredibly friendly and superbly helpful.

 

There is much noted about activity available on Ambergris Caye.  It is huge compared to Caulker, and extends up to within yards of a Mexican peninsula to the north.  But the reality is, since the ferry schedule for return to Caulker is so restrictive, what what one can really do is eat and drink.  Or combine the two.

 

I retreat to The Blue Water Grill.  The hostess offers to send running bowl game scores from American gridiron contests taking place much further to the north.  They offer great drink specials.  But, they are busy, and food will take an hour.  Isn’t that what bars are for?  I order a Horny Monkey (some type of coconut elixir) and another Caipirinha and wait out the delay.

 

My Cobb salad and small red snapper sandwich arrive ahead of time. The food is outstanding, along with the service.  I am indifferent to scores.  Though happy to see Stanford beating up on Wisconsin.  Big Ten teams bore the living pee-wodden out of me.  You would think one of these years, they might discover modern passing offenses produce three times as much yardage as running offenses do.  “No, we’re going to wait for the single wing to return,” seems to be their coaching attitude and offensive plan, for the largest part.

 

After exploring the streets of San Pedro for nearly three hours, I am secretly relieved when the ferry – last of the day for some strange reason despite the early hour -- returns to Caye Caulker at 3:30 PM.  It appears time for a nap upon arrival.  Largely due to the unaccustomed sun, the alcohol, and the lack of ambition this combo seduces you.  But no, Caulker is good for surprises.  Our waiter from the previous night, Kevin, meets up with me on the street.  He is shocked that I remember him.  He advises me it is his birthday. “I thought you said last night was your birthday?” I challenge. 

“Oh yes, but my birth began at 11:57 and didn’t finish until 12:07.  I am a New Year’s Baby.  Get to have it both ways, Mon” he explains.  He offers to take our small group shopping.  I want a quick-drying, nylon, Guayabara type jersey that will be much like the locals wear.  We can’t find one in anything other than odor absorbing and slow drying cotton.  But the search is fun in any case.  There are many frivolous items to admire prior to leaving empty handed.

 

From there we advance to the Lazy Lizard once again.  This time for a Bailey’s Colada, a Hemingway lemon Daiquiri without sugar, beers, and a Panty Ripper  (correctly referred to hereafter as a Panty Dropper).   Kevin and I become fast if not particularly deep friends.  We appreciate each other immensely.  I am only here for a couple days.  He doesn’t have e-mail.  It doesn’t matter.  It is a moment we are sharing, the only thing available to us really if one is aware of or working at maintaining presence.

 

I exult in his completely positive outlook, his Rastafarian dreadlocks and scruffy beard, his love for everybody on the street – Kevin is very well known by all -- and his complete enthusiasm for virtually everything.  We sway back and forth to his rhythms from the second floor balcony of the Lazy Lizard.  His agreeability to and for all things is contagious.  But suddenly he makes a grave error.  He starts mistaking me for a sage.

 

“What are the most important things you have learned, Mon?” he asks me.  I am a little stumped by this.  I’ve never been mistaken for a sage, clairvoyant, soothsayer, medicine chief, tribal elder, or wise man before.   I take time to ponder.  Should I have a rapid answer?  Immediate answers can be impressive, but a mile wide and an inch deep.  I contemplate for a moment.

 

“Well, Kevin, I am not a wise man.  The smartest play I am aware of is to not be afraid to make mistakes.  And to hop back up quickly from those you do make.  I try to pass this on to my sons all the time.  Of course, they are both more intelligent than me.  Occasionally even smarter.  But if an answer is really necessary I’d say this:

 

“Be in the moment.  Have a measure of gratitude for all things given you – including the experiences that look ugly at first.  And simply allow.  Don’t try to control your life.  Let things happen.  Go with the flow.  See where it leads you.  Your plan is not as grand as you think it is compared to what is being laid out before you, if only you get out of your own way enough to notice.”

 

We saunter south once again.  Kevin encounters his Home Boys, a reggae band, alongside the dirt path some might call a road.  He starts dancing with me.  For the first time in my life, I start dancing unabashedly, not caring if I’m the first one out or the only one.  Who is watching, or who might be snickering.  It is pulled out of me, and then just slides.  And rolls.  And rocks.  Kevin stands back in admiration.  “You got it going on, Mon,” he beams.  Well, yes, probably.  For  a white man, anyway.

 

Then to dinner, at a place he has picked out called Mama’s Little Kitchen.  A four-story hovel you can’t find without a guide.  They have no advertising signs.  The place is nearly surrounded with dilapidated plywood tenements.  This is where the locals eat.  We are not even sure it is occupied this night, at first.

 

We talk more.  Kevin is like the perfect electrical component.  Warm and conductive as hell, but ice cold as a piece of circuitry.  Which is to say, he offers absolutely no resistance.  He doesn’t disagree with anything.  Current courses through him like shit through a goose.  He is delightfully happy to be alive at 34, absorbs life like a sponge, and wants nothing more than to play his music, grow new friends, learn, and experience more and more.

 

We run into a vacationing family from Georgia.  He is intrigued by the way I engage with them and learn about them, by asking a lot of questions.  Those include being both intensely observational, and making fun of them at the same time.  “I see how you do that, Mon” he plays it back to me.  “You personalize the situation and they let you do anything you want.”

 

Soon (and I have no idea how we got here), Dave & Kelly & Brandon & Breanna and I have turned the tables and are making fun of Kevin.  He takes it all in good naturedly and yet carefully.  He is a wide-eyed novice at this stuff.  Then suddenly we notice he is being left behind.  They only get an 8^th grade mandatory education in Belize.  Kevin doesn’t understand time zone differences, the rotation of the earth, and the possibility of it being 8 pm while in Seattle and yet 7 AM in Moscow.

 

We take turns explaining this to him in great detail.  Just when he begins to get it, we torture him with explanations of Daylight Savings Time.  And to really pile on, we insinuate that “when you smoke the really good stuff, Kevin, it all turns around and reverses immediately.”  I am immune.  American tort laws for libel, slander, intentional acts, and personal injury don’t apply here.

 

Soon, however, it is too much temptation once more.  The astrology lesson ends.  The joking returns.  With Kevin as the butt, then Dave, then Kelly, then Brandon, and finally Breanna.  Only I escape being a target.  I feel left out.  And due to the late hour we have run out of time for addressing the imbalance.  Kevin doesn’t have e-mail or a phone.  Knowing this is the last time I will see him, I feel cheated for the second time this evening.  But we part on perfect terms.