Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Marty, Janice, Penny & Wentworth

We did a quick room flip after Evida and Diana’s departure to get the cabin ready for our next guests. Marty owns a hotel up in Corozol, and she was spending a few weeks traveling through Belize from top to bottom and back again with some friends from California, Janice and Penny and Wentworth. Marty was the first one to book on line with us way back in the beginning of October, and after postponing their visit once due to a medical emergency in one of their families, we finally got to meet them. We initially weren’t sure what we were going to do with this group because while most of our guests so far have been young to middle aged (although middle aged admittedly gets older and older every year), this group had, as Wentworth told us, a combined age of 300 years and we weren’t sure they’d be up to the usual adventures. But all four of them are in great shape, and the problem wasn’t finding activities they could do, but choosing from the many things they were able and willing to do. They were here for two days and three nights, and they spent one day touring with Selwyn visiting Barton Creek Cave and the Mennonite community. The next day they toured San Ignacio on their own, shopping and visiting archeological sites.
Their visit was incredibly enlightening for Tom and me. First, Marty has lots of good first hand experience running a hotel in Belize, and was happy to share her knowledge. She not only answered our many questions, but offered lots of good advice and insight based on her observations. Second, since my mother trained me to be a good hostess and since this group was my mother’s age, I was more conscious than usual of doing things “right” – not putting the butter and jelly containers right on the table, using the proper serving dishes, and that sort of thing. I’ve found that my generation tends not to care so much, so I’m a little sloppy about it sometimes, but I put on the polish for this group and they noticed! I was thinking a lot about my mother that weekend anyway since it was the anniversary of her failed surgery, and all the thoughts were good ones as at every meal somebody would tell me that something was served in the perfect bowl, and I said “Thanks, my mother gave me that” I don’t even know how many times. It’s a little thing in the grand scheme, but that connection made me enjoy the time they were here even more than I would have otherwise. After photos under the blooming heliconia, they took off heading for San Pedro for the last leg of their trip.

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