Or how to get a sunburn before lunch…

We slept for 10.5 hours, something I would claim hasn’t been done since I was a teen, but as my husband and dad will attest, I still have no problem doing; unless I’m traveling or have somewhere to be, such as work, school, or breakfast. But in this case, we were told yesterday not to check-in until late and with sunrise at 5:18am, we weren’t worried about sleeping too much. We bring my pink and his yellow water bottles to be filled in the lobby and then I’ll sit down to a smaller version of the welcome drink with the pink and yellow still separated.

the oft-mentioned pool

I take a sip and realize that when we plan a mostly dive vacation we spend more time at meals in restaurants than we do when driving and shoving food in our faces from behind the wheel or while on the trail. Caleb eats at this pace regardless of location or activity, but is more likely to relax at a shaded table with a breeze on a lovely morning when the place isn’t crowded and watch me eat the other half of my meal while the server has already cleared his dishes. Caleb, on the other hand, is wondering about the loud black bird which could either be a Great-tailed Grackle or a Melodious Blackbird.

I choose a traditional Belizean breakfast, a fry jack stuffed with eggs and beans with a pizza wedge of a watermelon slice on the side. The fry jack is like the best flour tortilla but with an added crispy layer of goodness. I’m only able to eat half and then we walk to the pier where the boat launches for a private beach for hotel guests. Posted here, a double entendre, about how people swimming feeds the crocodiles, so please don’t do either. We walk back to the room and the phone ringing interrupts our conversation.

It’s the tour shop letting us know that our morning dives are canceled and that we can try again at 1:30, depending on the wind speed in the afternoon. A bit of upset washes over both of us, and that’s to be expected. We drop off our medical history and liability waivers at the shop, passing an iguana, one of many we have seen since landing yesterday. We spot a Tropical mockingbird in a little courtyard on our way to Rum+Bean for some coffee to cheer us up and to think about how we’ll fill the morning without being too far away if we get the go ahead.

I’ll get an Oreo Frappuccino (didn’t realize the f word was trademarked by the s place), complete with a cookie in the cream, and Caleb gets his second breakfast with a week’s worth of sugar in it with a partial Snickers on top. As if that wasn’t enough, Caleb went full vacation mode and ordered a peanut butter cookie too. I would’ve shared more of it with him, but I was in a softer foods mood and not trying to crunch through a dog biscuit. There’s an interesting variety of books to peruse while we wait our turn in the drink order line.

One has pictures of unique bookshelves; another has geek baby names (Lady Jessica from the 1965 novel Dune); and the last will inform us of animal facts about the fiddler crab keeping cool, the sperm whale being loud, and the mantis shrimp that causes light and 8,000 °F temperatures with its punch. We sip our drinks in the cool air before passing a garden and construction in progress, some of the workers passing us on bicycles. We find a covered dock with a bench, but we will sit lower so we can just dip our toes in the water.

We walk the half mile to Toast where there’s a bar, snorkel gear shop, and swings that are in high tide so we can swim to them later. The woman at the shop says that today is good for snorkeling Shark Ray Alley because when the winds die down the visibility will be bad, but we’ve been diving in worse. Note: don’t go diving when the seas stir up sand and fish terds and you can’t see past your own arm. It’s better to wait until you can see a hundred feet, which I know isn’t all dive sites and that sharks can still sneak up on you, but they’re so graceful.

We walk back to the room to cool down a bit, as coming from San Diego to San Pedro in mid June will increase the temperature by 20 degrees. We grab our books and water bottles with the plan of passing two hours by the side of the 72,000 gallon saltwater pool. The personal playlist booming from the big- booty, thong-wearing, women might change our plans though depending on how long they plan on getting jiggy with it on a float and lounger. The water is cool but the ambiance is not, so Caleb is soon ready to move our party elsewhere.

We walk to Meliza’s Art & Soul gift shop that might’ve lacked stickers, but has carved turtles, mini knives, fish paintings, gem masks, weaved bags, shiny hats, etc. We look around and don’t see anything that we want to bother getting home safely just to not find a place to display it since we still haven’t put up our tiny shelves for setting out the trinkets we do have (and possibly plan to get rid of) depending on whether we live out of a van and boat, a tent and bicycle, a cabin and golf cart or some other amazing adventure filled option when Caleb is finally done with his government obligation.

To better understand the poolside mood of earlier, realize that we’re trying to stay out of the sun and be sober for diving, while everyone else is here to drink up vitamin D and Belizean rum. We relax in reclining chairs, with our feet up, for our next reading session on the hotel lobby porch until I get hungry enough to finish the other half of my breakfast, in the 17°C sunroom, with a nice breeze which also helps keep the exposed room cool. We are less surprised when Caleb gets a text that the afternoon has also been canceled.

We’ll return to the poolside but will switch sides to take advantage of the shade the canopies provide in relation to the sun’s location. We’re sitting in our swimsuits and I’m still feeling a bit warmer than usual, so I take a picture of my back and shoulders that have been exposed all morning, with just a dab of sunscreen on top for good measure (because the sun only shines straight down). What I couldn’t see then was the white patches where SPF 30 had been applied and the light pink skin that would continue to cook itself, following Newton’s first law of motion, of course.

So we lay the chairs all the way back to stretch out, though this helps Caleb’s spine and puts a strain on mine. We watch the couple’s in the pool, especially when they swim up near our chairs, and if another dive gets canceled that might be us. Is snorkeling with crocodiles considered swimming? I’m ok spending the day relaxing, but next time we can rent carts from the resort with rates at $25/2hr or $200/3 days. There’s a chart of more options, but we would rather rent bikes in town since it’s no longer an option here, even though it’s still advertised everywhere.

Caleb starts to get hungry, since he didn’t have a second half of breakfast to eat for lunch. As he’s looking at nearby menus, the bar brings him a blue rose (whiskey, rosemary, and blueberries) to sip on, but also hoping to entice him to buy a bottle like the other swimmers or to come to the bar to try their other flavors. This helps a bit, but by 2pm Caleb is ready to go. We return to the room for more sunscreen and I change into Caleb’s clothes for more skin coverage than only the skimpy dresses he talked me into bringing, even though we both know the most common injuries we’ve seen while diving is sunburns, seasickness, and scraping (when the tide forces you to share a t-shirt with coral until you’re blood buddies), but maybe that’s just Caleb’s shore diving experiences.

I peel the old tegaderm film off my palm and it takes the dried blood away. I was convinced this morning that it was still healing, but looking at the open wound with skin as white as the bed sheets I’m not so sure. I hope that the inner layer of dermis has formed and I’m only seeing the discarded hand meat that has yet to be replaced in the life cycle that takes 2 weeks to 6 months depending on if you’re 20 or 60 years old. I’m on Day 17 post-op and as I age, my body slows down the renewing process, leaving my hand open to infection for longer. It’s these things of youth that go unnoticed the most that are definitely missed when brought to our attention.

The Dirty Martini isn’t open yet so we go to JYOTO, the Japanese restaurant, next door. We choose to sit outside and move tables when ours becomes exposed to the sun. Feeling inspired by Caleb’s drink earlier, I’ll order something with blueberries in it while we wait on our sushi and soup to arrive. Since I didn’t take a picture of what we ordered from the menu, all I can tell you is one roll is crunchy, another has shrimp, and the third roll (with 6pc instead of 8pc) is called the Happy Cow. I got the vegetarian habanero-lime ramen, with surprise.

I notice a piece of blue plastic in my bowl and Caleb was quick to dismiss the first piece. I might not have thought much of the second piece either, but as Caleb picked it up, I found a third. Inside, I find out that it wasn’t an overzealous cut of a wrapped vegetable but parts of their dish sponge. Mine is biodegradable at home and I wouldn’t want to eat it. The host agrees that the right thing to do is make me another bowl, this one to-go, as there shouldn’t be sponge in my food. I now wonder how much more I ate, but at the rate of plastic consumption in the world, I’m doing better than the birds and the straw snorting turtle.

The staff apologizes again for the mishap but I’m grateful for another meal. Meanwhile, Caleb is surprised that I didn’t finish the first bowl. We take it to the room and look up things to do just in case: dive, eat, and relax. Well, we’ve accomplished two out of three today. There is an iguana sanctuary and an archeological site on the island, if we get the chance. We walk to LevelUp Barcade and have fun exploring the 80s memorabilia with the employee. We probably could have played some games, kept the conversation going, and had a drink but the guy said we could see crocodiles behind the bar so off we went as his co-worker showed up with their dinner.

We sat in the two chairs at the end of the dock and as the sun was setting I started to watch my legs for flying vampires more than the rippling water for signs of eyes and a snout. We begin to retreat from the water’s edge and notice the balls in the pool, just white earlier, now have different color lights inside that give the swimming area a cool nighttime vibe. It’s almost enough to make us linger, but the mosquito attacks increase and send us running to our room to escape the onslaught. There are a few inside as well but now I see more bumps on my face, neck, and legs than I do bugs.

My light pink skin from earlier is now a bright red sunburn covering my shoulders, between my tits and pits, and the front of my legs. I didn’t think we’d be in the sun that much and should’ve worn my dive skin or brought one of my many long-sleeved white shirts just for these vacation situations. I’m grateful that Caleb brought a spare outfit for this scenario, but I’d much rather avoid it. We wash the sweat off so Caleb can put lotion on my clean but tender skin. I climb under the safety of the blankets as a lone mosquito patrols the area. This also allows Caleb to turn the air down while we read.