A beautiful Belize sunrise doesn’t mean you’re going to have a great day

This morning’s sunrise was a nice one, for sure. Is a nice sunrise a harbinger of good stuff to come? Not that I can tell.

Some days, nothing goes right but everything is OK.

Like today.

Let’s say that I no longer look at a gorgeous sunrise as a good omen. There are just too many of them and they seem to hold no sway whatsoever on the day’s events.

Like today.

Ooooh, pretty birds in the mosquito pond that is our front yard. Are they a good omen?Nope just pretty birds, eating the mosquito larvae, I hope.

Beautiful sunrise. Then it was all downhill.

The first thing I did was set out to walk downtown to pick up my golf cart. It was in the same shop for the fourth time since last Friday and each time it came back progressively worse than before.

I dunno. Call me an optimist.

This time, the guys said, it was fixed. They ran it for 10 minutes and it didn’t conk out. Little bells went off in my head (“Ask him if they drove it for 10 minutes, because that’s when it was conking out — like about every 100 yards.”)

I ignored the bells. I so wanted this to be the last time, as they obviously did too. My friend the shop manager smiled and said “No charge. Hope we don’t see you again, well, not for a long time.”

“And for something else very different,” I added.

We laughed, shook hands and I drove off.

This sign reminded me that I need to check out the new location of Coconut Cafe, which is the old location of Melt Cafe at the Exotic Caye Beach Resort. Coconut Cafe is a nice bistro run by nice people who were stuck in a difficult location.

Two blocks later “Old Moncho 59” conked out.

I pointed it south toward a repair shop where I’d always gotten good service and five conking-outs later we pulled into their lot.

It is in their hands now, where it probably should have been a week ago. We’ll see.

To be continued.

As I walked back into town on one of the back streets I came upon Vincent staring at a beautiful snake on the side of the road. It wasn’t moving and their was a small rock atop its body but no damages.

“We don’t have venomous snakes,” said Vincent, with a touch of sadness. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

We removed the stone and decided that perhaps it was just stunned. As we walked on together Vincent told me about his father who harvested chicle for a living. He came from Northern Belize. The father traveled all over the country looking for sapodilla trees from which to extract the sticky white gum. The demand for chicle died and the trees were harvested for their straight hard wood and soon an industry faded away.

“Why did you choose to live in Belize,” asked Vincent. It is a question that I always stumble over, because the answers are so many. I gave him some banal response that I’m sure impressed neither of us.

“You should study the Mayans,” Vincent said blithely as we parted ways. And I am sure he is absolutely right.

In town, I made a beeline to the Smart phone office to replenish minutes on both my phone and Rose’s. Today is a double up day — twice the minutes for your dollars so I expected a long line  inside.

Izzy passes judgment on the new Vitamix blender he’d received this morning from a fan of his smoothies. That’s my Hulk smoothie getting whipped to perfection.

It was empty. Their computer system had crashed.

“Maybe in half an hour,” said the young lady behind the desk brightly.

Fortunately Estel’s Dine by the Sea was around the corner. I could easily kill a half hour over an egg sandwich and Fanta orange soda. Which is exactly what I did.

And sure enough, a half-hour later, the phone company’s computers were up and running. Sporadically. With no waiting line, I was able slip in on one of the system’s “up” times and drop $50 on each of our phones.

One mission accomplished.

A few blocks later I was at my favorite pharmacy replenishing my monthly stock of cholesterol, blood pressure and blood thinner pills.

It was a short walk across the street to Izzy’s Smoothies, Snacks and Juice Bar, a corner stand with a growing reputation for making the finest smoothies on the island. Especially The Hulk, a green concoction of kale, spinach, pineapple, coconut water, ginger and several more kinds of goodness. I needed a Hulk for the long walk home.

Izzy was in a spectacular mood. A visitor to the island, who was crazy about Izzy’s smoothies, special ordered a Vitamix blender and gifted it to Izzy just this morning.

“Man, is it fast,” marveled Izzy. “I can now claim to be the only smoothie shop in Belize with a Vitamix blender,” he added with a bemused smile.

The Hulk? As good as ever.

Up Laguna Drive, a long section of the road was closed today, at one end for street repairs and at this end for the concreting of the roof on one of the new supermarkets opening in the area.

Continuing the walk north I met up with Brendan, who is a bartender at Coco Locos, our neighborhood beachfront bar. We swapped automotive horror stories, he about his motorcycle, me about my golf cart. We both agreed that bicycles are better, though we were both walking.

On the way I stopped at Casa Pan Dulce for bread and the Village Market for laundry detergent and a dozen eggs. Mahammed reached under the counter and handed me a coveted Styrofoam container for the eggs, rather than the usual plastic bag. Believe me, that was special, like I’d entered an exclusive inner consumer circle at the market.

As soon as I got home I fired up a load of laundry and broke open the new box of detergent.

But something was wrong.

The washing machine, kind of like the golf cart, was going through the motions but it wasn’t moving .

We had no water pressure.

I have decided to sit very still this afternoon and do nothing but gaze out on the trash floating in from the Caribbean Sea, until four o’clock when we will join some friends, Jackie and Adam, who are reopening their restaurant Casa Picasso for the new season. Their bartenders are working on a slate of new cocktails for High Season.

Would we, they asked a group of us, help test the drinks?

As our friend Marie said “LOL …pope/catholic … bears/woods …. I’m there for sure!”

Me too.

After this day, I hope to test very very diligently.