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Belize: 90 Days in Belize:
Belize, man, Belize I approach her carefully hairs standing up on the back of my neck such a beautiful creature as I have ever seen here on earth and quite literally so. As I come closer to her, Belize blossoms into reality underfoot and I think and say often the phrase, “feet on the ground” for the first few weeks. It is on my 4th day I think when I swam naked in Progresso Lagoon one late afternoon floating on my back eyes closed thinking now I FEEL like I'm really in Belize!
Getting grounded took a couple months really for me that is what a beautiful woman can do you. Belize knocked me off center. She is exotic and beautiful and alluring but just as in another person, most of her lies beneath the surface beauty. I see bright white sunlight glance off of waters so clear Caribbean blue that I have to wonder if it were real? But under those waters wow what a world you don't see without snorkeling or diving gear just amazing. I had read so many times a phrase that “The most beautiful part of Belize is under the surface of the sea”. And then I saw that. But physical beauty abounds throughout Belize above and below the water, from mountains to beach seems like most anywhere you go - allowing for some bad areas here and there like anywhere else.
And like any beautiful woman, Belize draws in all the attention, you know, always there to take thoughts off of myself. Three months now I can say sincerely that I have barely scratched Her surface. I'm not saying I'm ready to marry Belize, mind you, more like I'm saying we're gonna move in together and see how it goes.
Belize: 90 Days in Belize:
Belize, man, Belize I approach her carefully hairs standing up on the back of my neck such a beautiful creature as I have ever seen here on earth and quite literally so. As I come closer to her, Belize blossoms into reality underfoot and I think and say often the phrase, “feet on the ground” for the first few weeks. It is on my 4th day I think when I swam naked in Progresso Lagoon one late afternoon floating on my back eyes closed thinking now I FEEL like I'm really in Belize!
Getting grounded took a couple months really for me that is what a beautiful woman can do you. Belize knocked me off center. She is exotic and beautiful and alluring but just as in another person, most of her lies beneath the surface beauty. I see bright white sunlight glance off of waters so clear Caribbean blue that I have to wonder if it were real? But under those waters wow what a world you don't see without snorkeling or diving gear just amazing. I had read so many times a phrase that “The most beautiful part of Belize is under the surface of the sea”. And then I saw that. But physical beauty abounds throughout Belize above and below the water, from mountains to beach seems like most anywhere you go - allowing for some bad areas here and there like anywhere else.
And like any beautiful woman, Belize draws in all the attention, you know, always there to take thoughts off of myself. Three months now I can say sincerely that I have barely scratched Her surface. I'm not saying I'm ready to marry Belize, mind you, more like I'm saying we're gonna move in together and see how it goes.
Belize: Placencia:
Weather Report, Placencia Belize
(7/14/2015)
.... You're Trusted Source for up to date Jellyfish reports since June of 2015 smile emoticon ...
Out early this morning just after dawn the sun risen up from the sea. Partly cloudy skies and a few sprinkles. The requisite dozen different bird calls I can hear at once all around as I walk, singing, screeching, screaming filling the air with bird life. The air unusually still and the sea flat calm like God has turned off His enormous fan evidently kept well out to sea where we cannot see it? I notice the effect as it seems much hotter than usual yet the air temperature is about the same.
Negative for Jellyfish! Thank God for little favors, Friends!
Walking as the village comes alive around me with mostly Belizeans punctuated here and there with an early rising Gringo like myself, digging the vibe coming as I do from having been traumatized by life in suburban America, it surely does feel like paradise, alright. Peaceful. Calm. Men and women going about their work days. Construction workers, vendors of all kinds, banker, cooks, plumbers and cops. Just exactly like in AnyWhere Elseville in he world.
The energy of it all is something I think you must feel bodily for yourself especially over at least some length of time this pulse of life Belizean Style, the rhythm of the days here from dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn, which here to me relative to the frenetic pace of life I have lived is relatively speaking more like meditative deep breathing easily yet deeply in and out tasting this amazing sea air. Days, weeks, years spent here under the constant onslaught of paradise I am not surprised to find are healing and strengthening of body, mind and soul.
While the cultural differences are huge I feel and in no way wish to diminish how important that is to acknowledge hopefully so conscious intention to bridge this in some way is focused? But what continuously impresses me is just how alike everyone in the world really is? Most of us throughout the world, the vast majority, we just want to live our lives and raise our families and maybe do a little good while we are here all the while praying that we do no harm? We are much more alike than different, it appears.
Perhaps the most important Gringo Ritual here is the greeting ritual (first time meeting) wherein names are exchanged followed by mutual inquiries about the others home of origin. I find this charming as hell always have I thought of Ernie Pyle the WWII reporter. Famous for his two questions: 1) what's your name, Son? 2) where you from, Son. So I can dig it, no disrespect.
But maybe in the future, I'll say that I'm Dave, a world citizen.
Belize: Life on Caye Caulker, Belize:
Young local woman on Caulker with a family who works near our apartment and we have made friends with was telling me about her life here in Belize in some depth and it really touched me deeply. She grew up on the mainland. When she was about ten, she said, she was playing with another little girl her age when she noticed that the little girl had a silver, heart shaped locket around her neck that looked just the same as her own. She asked the little girl about her locket and the little girl said that her daddy had given it to her a long time ago and that it had a picture of him inside of it and that the only time in her life that she had ever seen her daddy was the day that he had given her this locket. The little girl explained that she looked at it often and wished so badly that her daddy was in her life. My friend here then asked if she could see the picture and when she showed the picture it was the exact same picture that was in her own locket that she wore around her neck.
She didn't tell the little girl that it was the same picture. I asked her how that made her feel and shedding a few tears even now, she said that she cried and cried. “My dad all he does is torture me my whole life and I wanted to tell that little girl that I wish he was with you, too! But I didn't say anything to her. I thought it would hurt her too much.”
Which I thought speaks to her integrity as a person to grasp such a thing at such a young age and care about that other little girls feelings. Never having had a father, I understood all too well. She seems to love her husband very much and he seems to be a good man, too. Mostly it made me think that we all no matter where in the world we are from have more in common in our humanity than we have in distinction through our differing cultures only perhaps our “humanity” is something a little more subtle than our cultural differences which are more easily observed superficially.
Belize: Smells Like Sunshine! Caye Caulker, Belize:
http://monkeysthrowingfeces.blogspot.com/
I had to go to four Chinese Stores on Caulker here before I could find real butter. Thing is, didn't really mind. Picked up my laundry for the week washed and dried for $12 Belize. Bought potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic along with a quart of fresh squeezed papaya juice and I ain't gonna lie a bit of Belizean Rum, Mon. At laundry she doesn't have change for a $50 but I feel a little bit like an asshole for not thinking ahead and offering her a $50 dollar bill so no problem I say, "uno momento por favaor" and traipse a few blocks through paradise so I can buy some small item in the nearest Chinese Store and break the $50, see. I make a mental note to myself not being negative, cutting myself a ton of slack as I always do, "don't be an asshole ever again an offer that woman a fifty, man".
Got it! I agree amongst my self as I offer her $12Belize for my weeks laundry more than a fair deal and smells like sunshine cause of the line drying to boot. Maybe best to think of it here as not counting the hassles, count the little miracles. The latter takes the same energy as for former but I'm a lot happier with how it adds up, hehehe
What a trip, man, what a trip.
The smell of sunshine, I mean, is a real trippy thing for real wink emoticon
Belize: Living in Belize:
If you are looking a few years out then visiting is the best advice - nothing beats feet on the ground. Expats here will mostly be glad to talk to you and answer questions and you can see the living conditions maybe experience them. People talk about getting really cheap rent, for instance, which is possible but they it's a Belizean home which means no AC, no hot water or only in the shower, if you're lucky. One guy I'm talking to paying only a $200US for a two bedroom house discovered that if anything at all breaks, he either fixes it or else it doesn't get fixed. So that's his choice, fix it or move. That being said, for five or six hundred a month, could get a more gringo friendly place. I'd come down and rent a cheaper place just to get the feel LOL - a fan and bleach will be your best friends ;)
Belize: My blog:
Now starting to add my Belize material been here one month as of yesterday and I'll keep adding as I go along heading from Caye Caulker to Dangriga on June 6th to house sit for two weeks then probably to Hopkins but that is far away enough in Belizean Time to not deserve consideration at this point. I may decide to heat down to Nicaragua by then, I don't know?
http://monkeysthrowingfeces.blogspot.com/
Belize: Caye Caulker - Morning Coffee:
The sun rises behind low clouds every morning that hug the horizon so I don't see the suns orb until it's up a half hour from my perch here about 60 feet from the waters edge and twenty feet up. Our two bedroom apartment is over the Braisas del Mar restaurant. Out front the restaurant has seven tables half with umbrellas for diners on the sand below several coconut palm trees whose fronds rattle under the delightful cudgels of a constant sea breeze. I get up early and benefit from the shade provided by the palms until eventually the sun rises high enough to shine directly into my eyes whereupon I retreat having consumed enough coffee by then to ambulate. By about 1:30PM the sun passes through its tropical zenith nearly straight overhead and the eve of the house casts the deck here into a cool, afternoon shade. After walking around the island and returning here, I feel that by luck I have stumbled upon the coolest part of the island here on the windward side facing almost due east into the Caribbean Sea.
I can see the water taxi from here as it makes it's first run of the morning and underneath me on “1st Street” - just a path in the sand mostly trodden barefoot or in sandals with an occasional golf cart – young lovers stroll hand and hand heading toward the Water Taxi each carrying an enormous backpack with snorkeling gear, kite boards and various other paradisiacal paraphernalia.
Belize: Caye Caulker After Dark:
It's after dark I'm in a restaurant alone near the water's edge but cannot see or hear the water only can hear the ubiquitous winds rattling the coconut palm fronds out in the dark. It is a very pleasant sound. The restaurant is almost empty. It's about 8PM. I order the special fried fish with coconut rice and nurse a beer. I look down on the table where there is a tiny flower top barely larger than a grain of rice.
“That is soo beautiful!” I say out loud. So fragile and so tiny. I think to touch it then stop for I would surely destroy it with my big, clumsy fingers. The winds finally roll it gracefully away and I realize that like all flowers, it is transient as it is beautiful.
I am suddenly left thinking of my wife and it feels as if some ninja assassin who had been stalking me all along from the darker shadows just choose this moment to sink his blade into my heart.
Those Ninjas, man - I really hate it when they do that
Belize: Corozal Visit:
Just go to Jam Rocks
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