Jitterbugging for Jesus

Hello, you of the Cult of the Jitterbug.

Your worthy leader is back.

The Road Warrior. Spent my Christmas holiday mostly off the grid, indulging my wanderlust by traveling around northern BZ and neighboring Mexico.

I’m back in San Ignacio where I live in far western Belize, a few miles from Guatemala, from a Christmastime road trip I took via motorcycle to Corozal, a thriving town on gorgeous Chetumal Bay in northern Belize.

My friend Myrna, a saint, washing my clothes.

Corozal, which is sugar cane country, borders the bustling city of Chetumal in the southwest Yucatan in Mexico.

So mine wasn’t your traditional American Christmas. But it was all I wanted for Christmas–an adventurous road trip to beautiful places I’ve not explored much in Belize and Mexico since moving here four years ago.

Except for one overnight stay in a Mexican hostel, I spent the holiday week with my longtime Belizean friends Pops and Myrna, cane farmers who live a simple but good life in a quiet village called Louisville, 15 minutes from Corozal.(See link to Corozal info at bottom.)

Myrna’s husband “Pops” is a 79-year-old cane farmer who has three children with Myrna and had 12 children with his first wife who died. Never met a sweeter and more hospitable couple than Pops and Myrna in my life.

My lodging at their half-acre home wasn’t exactly of the 5-star Belizean resort variety. I spent my first, mostly sleepless night in a hammock in an unfurnished cottage behind their cottage because they forgot to borrow a bed from a villager for me to sleep in my first night there.

Hammocks are good for napping and chilling out, but not so much for a good night’s sleep.

They did come through with a bed the second night.

(Hammocks are great for napping or relaxing, but not so good for sleeping all night unless maybe you’re a kid or a twenty-something camper who can sleep anywhere.)

Give me a bed and a little LED flashlight to read an oldie but goody Michael Connelly whodunnit and I’m good.

So Myrna and Pops and the villagers in Louisville are like most Belizeans in that they don’t have all the comforts and conveniences that the better educated types have. They work hard and more often than not are struggling just to survive.

But like so many Belizeans, they’re a God-loving couple who understand that hospitality is at the core of this Christian faith thing. They read the Bible constantly and pray without ceasing. They and their neighbors take care of each other.

They aren’t rich people.

But then again, they’re richer than many wealthy people.

Myrna and Pops live in the cottage made of bush stick and plaster on the left. Their oldest grown son sleeps in the hammock or on the floor in a sleeping back, and another son and his wife and their newborn live in a small but nice cinder-block hut on the property. Their half acre does have a spacious grass lawn where the village kids hang out and play soccer. It also has lots of fruit trees, so all in all it’s cozy little family compound.

The bath house.

This time of year the weather is cool and sometimes quite chilly so some hot water in the bathing bucket makes the outdoor bath feel pretty good.

And back there is, uh, the plumbing.

For more on Corozal, which AARP ranks as one of the best retirement places outside the U.S., go here.
More on Chetumal in Mexico here.

See you next year and have a good one, my friends.