Bros

San Pedro, Belize

I had heard that Caye Caulker was the Belizean Island all the backpackers went to and that San Pedro was more obnoxious and touristy. But I opted for San Pedro anyway, because I found a hostel with A/C and good Wifi.

The hostel was called the Sandbar. The owner was a 40ish American guy and ardent fan of the Dallas Cowboys. I spent a good chunk of my stay in his bar watching American football.

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On Sunday while watching football I met a Valery from the USA. She was half-black and half-Mexican and had been unemployed in San Pedro for 2 years.

Valery's story was that she had made hundreds of thousands of dollars as a private chef for an obscenely wealthy man. She also told me that as a child she had been offered the role of Nala in Broadway's production of The Lion King but that her mother hadn't allowed her to take it, because she would have had to leave school for it.

Valery had been drinking all day and fell in love with my eyes in no time at all. She kept returning to how beautiful my eyes were, as if it were a new thought every time. Probably she was forgetting thoughts as fast as they occurred to her. She was pretty touchy-feely with me and told me that she was in an open marriage.

But... her friends showed up after a while and she told me that if they thought she was trying to hook up with me they'd drag her away. Her friends were all loud cursing Americans. They called eachother fuckers and teased eachother by for instance holding their friend's bag just out of reach.

Valery invited me to join her ex-pat crew on a journey to another bar, but I declined in favor of pizza and more football.

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During Monday Night Football I played a dice game called 3s with the hostel owner and a bunch of his ex-pat friends. 3s I enjoy, but his friends I did not.

One of the ex-pats was apparently a professional sports better and claimed to have won $20,000 betting the under on the Monday Night Football game. He confided in me that he had crunched the numbers and was 63% to win the bet, whatever the fuck that means.

At one point the sports better complimented Eduardo, the only native Belizean who was playing the game, on a dice decision he had made. "You're the first Belizean I've seen do that. That's what I would do." Implying that he's smarter than all Belizeans of course.

The same sports better left me with this bizarre pronouncement on his way out of the bar: "There's just so many asshole things I want to say right now, but I'm not going to." I didn't ask what they were.

After 3s, one of the ex-pats explained to Eduardo and myself that the big winner of 3s was a guy they hung out with because he always had women with him that weren't with him, and that one of them had real nice titties. When Eduardo didn't understand, he repeated TIT-TIES louder and slower, using hand gestures for emphasis.

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Up in the dorm room I hit it off really well with a Caroline from France and a Miriam from Italy. They were polite, intelligent, healthy traveler types. Basically the opposite of all the ex-pats I had met in San Pedro. I tried defining the word "bro" to them. My explanation was basically this blog.