We stopped at a small banana plantation town, with a gas pump and an inn, with a restaurant. The restaurant hangs on a beach over the blue Caribbean. We are served by Diane. I asked her about her accent. "I am Dutch. I was down in Belize a year ago, and I got really sick," she said. "And then Frank rescued me and nursed me to health. It's a Caribbean love story, because I decided to come back and start this Inn with Frank. We've been open five weeks."
We
hang out here for some time. Isamelda, the bartender, was from Guatemala.
"There's a huge dead scorpion in the women's bathroom," Vance
says.
"I know, I killed it this morning," she says.
"How?"
"With my feet."
"You have no shoes!"
"It's easy, just get the tail with your heel and mash. At least
I am good for something," she says.
"We just opened. There
are just four of us. Its Frank and Dian, me, and Pablo. Pablo doesn't
like to come indoors. He is always outside." We look outside. Pablo
is there. We wave. He waves back. We drink some beer, Belikin, the beer
of Belize. It is good.
Placencia,
the southernmost town on the Peninsula, is known to have Belize's best
beach, which isn't saying much, considering most of Belize's shoreline
is mangrove and dirty brown sand. We cross a marshland of egrets, herons
and vultures, and vine cactus' strangling the marsh trees. In Placencia,
we walk the beach, which is filled with Creoles - families and drinkers
by the thousands. Everybody is gathered on the beach. Some sort of festival
had just started. Soca is blasting from the bar. A woman's beer drinking
contest had just begun. By the time the small women had finished their
first beer, one extra-large one had downed three. They were stumbling.
An announcer blared in Creole that it was time for arm-wrestling.
Old Highways of Peten From Belize into the jungles of Northern Guatemala, we travel with redheaded triplets who insist our theories about the Mayan past are all wrong.
The Howling Coast From the isolated Pacific Coast of Nicaragua to its bustling center.
Granada Libre Nicaragua from its tourism mecca, and the choices it faces as it enters a brave new world.
Jungle in the Sky A walk in the Nicaraguan volcanic cloud forest of Mombacho with an odd cast of characters.
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