Living Here AND Being a Tourist

As I mentioned before, this weekend was the Placencia Sidewalk Art and  Music Festival.  So although I like to think of myself as almost a resident (not sure how long you really have to live somewhere before you kind of belong), I felt like this weekend would be more like I was a tourist.

But there were a few other things to do as well, like figuring out the whole, how do I do my laundry, and I guess I actually do need to order butane for the stove to work if I'm going to cook for myself (what, you mean peanut butter and jelly sandwiches don't constitute dinner?).

As long as I didn't have butane though and couldn't cook, I did have breakfast at this lovely little place called Dawn's Grill and Go, right on the main street. All the tables are in a screened in deck. I heard about this place from a woman I met who does not live here but comes here quite often. She said that Dawn started out with just a little cart on the side of the road and has grown into what is one of the more popular little local restaurants in town. I had a breakfast burrito of eggs and bacon, coffee and a huge orange juice, all for about $8 US. I later had a late lunch/early dinner at the Barefoot Bar where i had some soft chicken tacos, also great. They come five to an order for about $6 US. Add in a couple Belikin Beers at $2.50 ea. US and I got away for $11 US before tip. You can find reasonably cheap food here but eating out every meal becomes cost prohibitive, I mean there are times you just don't want to leave the house and walk into town just for food.

Breakfast Burrito

Lunch: Grilled chicken tacos

Friday I made arrangements to have Butane delivered, the property management company called the gas company and requested they come by. They said they would be by on Saturday. This is not like Comcast or your electric or phone company, you don't get a window when they'll be there. I resigned myself to having to wait around for however long it took them to show up on Saturday. The guy at the property management company said if I wanted to leave and they had not delivered yet to come by their office, they would get the money from me and then tell the gas company to stop by there first to pick up payment so they could deliver. Not bad.

While I was there I thought I'd mention, I don't have any hot water in either of my sinks (the kitchen or bathroom), but it isn't like the water just doesn't get hot, there is no water coming out of the spigot when you turn the handle for the hot water. Oh, turns out that is a caribbean kind of thing, no hot water except in the shower. Yep, you wash your dishes in cold water, and anything else you're thinking of washing in the sink. Hmmm, good to know.

Between my cabana and town is  a house with a sign outside that says Ther's Laundromat. A family lives upstairs but downstairs on the bottom floor they have a room with about 3 or 4 washers and 3 or 4 dryers. The young woman said I could drop my laundry off Saturday morning, she would be open at 7 a.m. Cost is $7 US a load. May sound like a lot but I realized if I took my laundry to a laundromat in the states it costs about $1.50 per wash load and probably takes about $2-$3 to dry. Electricity is expensive here so $7 a load is not outrageous. Better than me hand washing in cold water in my tiny sink then trying to figure out where to hang them to dry.

By Friday night you could feel the vibe in town changing, it started getting busy. Lots more vehicle traffic on the main road and since it was also Valentines Day many of the restaurants were pretty crowded. The weekend also signaled the end of Lobster season so any restaurants that still had Lobsters were making some specials with them. It seems that once Lobster season ends, the restaurants can't even serve it anymore. Some of the bars and restaurants down on the Sidewalk at the ocean were having some type of welcome happy hour for the artists who would have booths at the festival and as it turns out the bars were staying open late. Some until 4 a.m.

Friday night I had a drink at the Purple Space Monkey while I watched a bit of the olympics coverage. While there I met the self proclaimed "Poet of Placencia" who was kind enough to recite me a poem for Valentines day. 70 year old guy has been in Placencia since the 70's. He would be "performing" at the Festival this weekend. (Someone else told me later that when they first met him  many years ago they had asked where he had come from before moving to Belize and he had a one word answer ... "prison". Apparently it was a relatively long stay there too).

Saturday morning I rose early, (you saw my sunrise pictures on Facebook?), if not, here is one:

An absolutely stunning morning. I read while I waited. Heard a truck on the road outside a couple times, went outside to check make sure I wasn't missing anything, but alas, no gas delivery. Finally I just decided to not wait any longer I'd go to town, stop by the property management office then go check out the Art and Music Festival. As I was leaving I ran into a neighbor who when I told her I had been waiting for a gas delivery, she told me I had just missed them. She said, "Did you hear that siren noise? That was them." We chatted for a minute how it might have been nice had they told me to listen for the siren noise then go outside to get them to deliver your gas. She was off on her bike towards town, she said if she caught up to them she would tell them to come back.

I waited another 30 minutes or so then headed into town. The property management guy took my money, got a gas can from the gas company and delivered it himself later in the afternoon.

I spent the rest of he day wandering the Art and Music Festival. I had lunch at another little restaurant. It is basically a very small wooden building, about the size of a garden shed with some wooden tables and chairs outside. It's called Pirate Grill. It was also pretty good, fairly cheap. They didn't have alcohol there but one of the guys working there ran down the sidewalk and brought me back a beer.

The art festival had several booths of jewelry, many of  paintings, there were quite  a few that had the woven bags, blankets, baskets etc., a bunch that had bake sale type items, some just selling sodas and water, a few that were raising money for one thing or another including the local humane society, the school and a few others. Several wood carvers. A few of the booths were run by businesses that already have shops or galleries along the sidewalk and some were people who obviously came from out of town. Most of the paintings were similar in style, usually brightly colored tropical scenes and animals. There was also one booth selling Noni Juice which from my limited research is a pretty foul tasting juice derived from the fruit of the Morinda Citrifolia tree, indigenous to the carribbean and Southeast Asia and Austraila. It is touted as a cure for all kinds of human ailments ranging from constipation to age related diseases and cancer. (Well not in the US mind you).

So heres a tiny snapshot of the day:

I came home Saturday afternoon after a stop at the grocery, the fruit stand and to pick up my laundry. My intention was to maybe go back for whatever the evening festivities were. By evening I could hear the music from town, actually quite clearly. I felt old. I was thinking I didn't really want to go listen to extremely loud music with a whole lot of  20 and 30 year old tourists (or people who wanted to relive their 20's and 30's) who were at the bars drinking way too much. I've already witnessed a couple of cringe-worthy moments with too-drunk Americans saying rather rude things to Belizeans, I can't apologize for them but I'd rather not be witness to it either. By 8:30 or so I was comfortable at home and fine with listening to the music from here and not being the tourist. The music down towards this end of town quieted down by about midnight, I'm pretty sure at the other end of the sidewalk they would be going til well into the wee hours.

Next post: Information about the dive scene.