What have I learned? What haven't I learned yet? I know this year went better than last year. I will have to be honest, living with someone else on a 40 foot boat and being together 24/7 without any break, can be stressful and frankly difficult at times. And neither Mike nor I am particularly easy to live with. There have been times when I have gone so far as to actually make plans to leave him. But thank goodness I have stuck it out, because I really don't want to be anywhere else with anyone else. This is the life I want.
Constant traveling can be wearing - at times I wish we could do it like the Canadians do - half the year sailing, half the year living back in Canada. That is always an option. (But I can feel my relatives reading this and wondering if we are going to descend on them for free room and board for six months of every year! Don't worry, it would not work that way.) But this is something I have always dreamed of doing - just drifting along whenever and where ever I feel like being and going at the time. This trip is a good example. We had planned actually to be done by now. But then we had the opportunity to add some of Mexico to the trip by sailing down with Jason. And of course we could not tear ourselves away. So I figured we will likely be home (back to Magda Jean in El Salvador) by Thanksgiving instead. I doubt we will make that date - here we are after one week in Belize and we are not even close to being ready to leave for Guatemala. So I think we are going to have a Guatemalan Christmas.
You see, we were only supposed to spend a couple of days here in Caye Caulker, then move on. But we stayed a week, just lounging around, watching the sun rise and set, and eating and riding our rented bikes around the island. I read a lot and Mike took lots of naps. (He sleeps more than any non- infant I ever met. But that is another story for another day.) I have never spent this much time doing nothing. But it felt good. Today we catch the boat and head off to Belize City to spend the night and then head off to another part of Belize, the Orange Walk area. There are ruins and rivers and jungles to explore. Mike wants more horses, and I want to swim in the fresh water of the river. It is all there.
I did not know anything much about Belize until we got here, It is a lot poorer than I thought it would be. Much poorer than El Salvador, and definitely giving Honduras a run for its money in that department. I guess in my ethnocentric way, I expected it to be more prosperous here because they speak English and have Queen Elizabeth-s picture on all their money. Not so. Mexico seems more prosperous than Central America, but interestingly enough, you do not have beggars everywhere like you do in Mexico. (We kept our packets full of what we referred to as "beggar money" - small change to hand out as we walked down the street.) I don't understand that. I saw no beggars in Honduras, El Salvador, or here, but Mexico, with its good economy (help wanted signs everywhere) has them everywhere. Maybe the police won't allow it in other places, but neither Belize nor Honduras have a really strong police presence. (El Salvador, on the other hand, is an armed camp with guns and security everywhere.) We will see about Guatemala.
So anyway, I had big plans for this post to be a retrospective of the year just passed,but my Short Attention Span Theatre kicked into gear. It has all in all been a good year, albeit with a rough start. But I think I am learning to live a new way, with a different outlook towards everything and everyone. I just hope I am becoming a better person for it.
"One of the world's most tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island,because people always answer 'a deck of cards' or 'Anna Karenina' when the obvious answer is 'a well equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.'" (Lemony Snicket)
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