When you are “on the run” so to speak, relaxing is not an alternative. Action is required. Food has to be brought home which meant JR’s taxi was enlisted and we were off to the town of San Pedro. It’s tiny with little narrow streets and it’s busy, very busy, as busy as Phoenix. I would venture it has more golf carts than people. Everywhere there are golf carts lining the streets and golf cart rental shops and everyone drives their golf cart with a sort of gay abandon. No gears. Just stop and go. Drivers wave each other on.
JR’s beaten up six -seater taxi seems out of place while my head bounces up off the roof. Finally Super Buy market. JR fusses behind us as we go around, and he collects our purchases. There’s wine! Whoops – $20 US a bottle on average. Stacks of cans of Off Spray. Thank the Lord (this is The original Mosquito Coast )! We can survive and blessed be the Visa Card for it worketh even here in the developing world. And blessed be the telecom lady who fitteth the SIM card so that we can phone locally. The adventures are beginning. We don’t feel quite so lost.
JR continues to drive us round. There’s an artisan market and a statue to the founder of Tropic Air and a colorful statue of San Pedro outside the church. Every third shop is a restaurant. Cheap lodgings on every block. Swish looking hotels up back streets. Boats spring to life by the docks and race out to sea. Scuba diving. Snorkeling, Trips to the Rain Forest all advertised. Golf carts rattle over the cobbles. Blue skies, Sunshine. Backpackers with Icelandic beards and large loads, thread their way seriously through the traffic. And we have our groceries. All we need now is fruit. Thanks for JR a fruit stall magically appears on the way home. Ripened papaya, and pineapple ooze sweet juices, melons glow orange and red and OMG the yellow mangoes – the soft orange flesh dripping with sugar. … We have arrived. Welcome to the Tropics.
Welcome to San Pedro.
Back at the ranch, we make our peace with the smell of decaying sargassum and decide to make the best of it. Temperatures in Phoenix are hitting a hundred and we are in the eighties. Frigate birds glide the air waves high above us. I spot the bright crimson flash of a Yucatan woodpecker and small white rumped swifts weave their patterned flights over the seaweed catching flies. They have young to feed. A flock of American ibises stalk nervously through the piles of seaweed on the shoreline using their long beaks to prod for food. In the far distance out to sea, white lines of waves crash on the reef as boats of all shapes and sizes whizz back and forth. We are surviving.
Marney Here…
When I got up the next morning after a good night’s sleep, I was excited to go to San Pedro and check it out. We had stopped on our way from the airport to get some basics at the local tiendita (think primitive Quickstop but with homemade banana bread made by the owner’s mother) but going to a proper grocery store was a necessity.
San Pedro is a small colorful tropical village and as Alan said, packed with tourists – mostly young, some retirees and occasionally well dressed prosperous foreigners. There are 3 main streets (appropriately called front, middle and back) lined with restaurants, bars and shops – like every other beach town I’ve ever been to. JR knew his way around so after a bit of sightseeing, we got groceries, I found a French bakery and we stopped to get a SIM card for my phone. Walking around the town isn’t for me with my somewhat limited mobility so we discussed getting a golf cart (the only way to get to/from and around the village except by taxi ) but after seeing how limited the parking was (not to mention the bumper car mentality) we decided to wait and think about it and the answer was… No, we didn’t need the stress. Personally, all I could think of was my excursions to perform shows in Sun City trying to avoid the carts on the busy streets and my fear of hitting some poor golfer.
We drove around a bit and then went into the church (see photo above), which was small with a view of the Caribbean sea from the front, left of the statue. It felt peaceful and you could tell it was well attended and cared for by the locals. It was said the original church was built by villagers in the early 1900’s. Then it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1942 and rebuilt in 1949. Next to it was a small market with local goods and people milling about.
When we got back to our condo Alan cooked a very good fish stew Italian style and we had a glass (or two) of wine and relaxed. More on restaurants, the influence of the British (I will leave that to Alan) and the priest I met next time…