Too Long in One Paradise

In the Placencia airport, preparing to leave this Paradise for a brief stopover in another to finish the last leg of research for both Lonely Planet Belize Five and the Belize Chapter of Central America on a Shoestring, after which, my work here done, I will be returning to the place where my traveling life began, the city in which one day 19 years ago a woman in a Taiwanese restaurant called Golden Pond Dim Sum advised me not to go to Japan but instead to set my sights on Taiwan.

I like circles. So did Darby Crash. Hooray for us both.

I leave Placencia after six weeks, six weeks of write-up following seven weeks of in country research. So if you want to know what goes into updating a guidebook for a moderately small country like Belize, that's pretty typical. I like to be thorough.

Honey, the Burmese cat who I've been taking care of in her master's absence, gave me a going away present in the middle of the night. She took a crap on the bed I was sleeping in. I have cared for many pets in my illustrious gypsy career, and they always know when I am leaving.  If they don't shit or piss on something sometime in the 24 hours before I take off I take it as a sign that they didn't like me. So Goodbye, Honey. You are a good cat. Psychotic, but fun.

Placencia is a beautiful town for beaches, slackers and dreamers. For sober people, not so much. This town rewards sobriety like the crew of a pirate ship does good grammar. As a collective entity, Placencia is an Enemy of Bill. 

I did not smoke the reefer I found in the kitchen drawer, but it did call to me more than once. In the end, I think that Honey must have eaten it.

Onto other subjects, the Pope has thrown in the towel. I am not a fan of Pope's in general, but this one even less. My alter-ego Yahuda Bangs had him pegged all along - perhaps you'll enjoy his fine reportage from way back in 2005. It's called Seig Heil Mary.

Anyway,   the 12-seat plane to Belize City has just landed, so this small and fairly meaningless blog post comes to a close. The secret to a long life is knowing when it's time to go, eh?

More from down the road...