Day 2 Exploring San Pedro.

Amanda and I got up at six the next morning to catch the sunrise and look for birds.

We missed the sunrise by a few minutes and I didn't think we saw that many birds until I asked her to name them that evening and she rattled off a respectable list:

palm warbler
mangrove warbler
american redstart
green heron
boat billed heron
osprey
elegant terns
spotted sandpiper
black bellied plover
neotropic comorant
bonaparts gull
great kiskidee
grackles
tree swallows
cinnamon hummingbird
gnat catchers
kingfisher
great and white egrets

We wandered to the west side of the narrow island where the poverty was more evident. The hotels and buildings along the beach wore an expensive facade but were unpainted or rotten in the back. On some buildings they had fresh paint facing the beach, older, faded paint along the sides, and sun bleached wood in the back where weeds grew over broken machinery and piles of building material.

Very few people were out so early in the morning. A few drunks or homeless men sat on the beach looking dazed and a few men pushed wheelbarrows with rakes. They went up and down the beach raking up the seaweed and trash that had washed up overnight and carried it down to a compost heap in a clump of mangroves by the water. They left the sand clean and white. The white sand beaches sold to us in popular culture are not natural. Normally exposed white sand is a problem, it means the island is eroding. Most islands were just a tangled knot of mangrove trees covered in seaweed and debris.

I spotted an iguana on the high graveyard wall but it dropped down when we approached. When we saw another on the rocks by the water I crept up but it jumped down a hole in the concrete. On the west side of the island I spotted a raptor sitting on a building by the sea and we cut through a half finished construction site to get a closer look. We walked out on a concrete sea wall and decided it was a juvenile osprey. A sign by the construction site said it was for a future water taxi dock.

There was a bridge a few blocks north of our hotel that was closed each night and described by our manager as one of the dark areas we should avoid after dark. Just across the water a brightly painted movie theater was showing django unchained for $10BZ. A couple children wearing Sunday clothes and cowboy hats were playing on the front steps.

We watched some grackles calling to each other and saw a few brightly colored birds as they carried nesting material from the bushes by the water into the lush tropical palm grove nearby. We went into a small grocery store and Amanda bought some granola bars from a man watching WWE wrestling dubbed into Spanish. The area north of the bridge was poorer and there was less to see.

When we got back to the hotel Ricky was up and making breakfast. We had eggs with Mexican sweetbread and tortillas. We carried the table out onto the deck to eat.

Afterwards Amanda and I went out for a swim. The water was warm, shallow, and uninteresting, mostly white sand and eelgrass. We ventured out beyond the safety of the dock where I was a little nervous we would be run over by one of the boats racing up and down the beach. Amanda saw a small ray in the sand and we chased a school of small tropical fish. We were only in the water for 20 minutes but my shoulders and back got sunburned.

We went grocery shopping afterwards, going first to a produce market we were warned would be closing at noon (Easter Sunday) and bought $360BZ worth of food including 60 eggs, 2 papayas, a watermelon, 6 boxes of lala milk, 1.5lb of butter, 16 limes, potatoes, apples, raisin bran, a plastic bag filled with red seasoning paste, mayo, and coconut milk. The woman running the store gawked at the amount of food.

We carried everything back and then gathered for lunch at a tourist restaurant on the dock called wet willies. Kids swam in the deeper water off the end and there were bright striped fish visible in the water below. The dark shapes of two huge rays swam by and I regretted not bringing my snorkel gear.

We had pulled pork sandwiches and spiced chicken and watched dark clouds approach on the horizon. As we finished our lunch the clouds reached us and a heavy rain fell for a few seconds, making a loud racket on the tin roof and forcing the dj's on the beach to cover their speakers and stop the relentless dance music for a half hour.

We returned to the roundabout and the Cay Mart to buy yogurt and alcohol.

Back at the thatched gazebo we played dominion and drank painkillers (coconut cream, pineapple juice, and rum). The condensation from our glasses made the cards warp and stick to the table and the stiff ocean breeze threatened to blow everything under the nearby hut. Amanda won the game with 34 points to my 18.

Later that evening we all went walking past the DJ booths and hamburger stands where people stood around waiting for the party to start. We loitered on the bridge breathing diesel fumes from the passing trucks then back downtown for more papusas and chicken burritos. A mixture of beans and rice is a staple of Belizian cooking. We had it as a side for every meal and my chicken burrito was mounded with the stuff.

With all the walking in the heat and high humidity, my thighs and unmentionables grew chafed. I was walking like a cowboy on the last leg back to our hotel.

It was still early but we were all exhausted and we went to bed early that night.

Ricky, Bojana, Brian, and Kim shared the large bungalow. It had a thatched roof, bamboo covered walls, and it was two stories with a wooden spiral staircase.

Amanda and I slept in a more conventional room in a second building at the back of the property. Our building and our room was cast in concrete. The walls of the bathroom, the sink counter, and the raised box for the bed were formed from concrete when they framed the building. It's common to construct buildings like this in Mexico and they always leave rebar sticking out of the roof to allow for future expansion.

The pipes for the sink went out through jagged holes chipped in the wall, the toothbrush holder was glued in place, and the base of our concrete bed box had a hole in one end. Underneath it was dark and full of concrete dust. I set the air conditioner to 23C and we cooled down for the first time all day. The bed was covered with a single thin sheet. Sleeping under anything heavier seemed ridiculous.