Lesley & Juan

We had a lovely visit with Lesley and Juan, honeymooners from Texas. Tom picked them up at the airport on a mid-morning flight, so they arrived here in the early afternoon. Not wanting to waste any time in Belize they drove up to Rio On Pools, which they would have missed otherwise since a Caracol trip wasn’t in their plans. The next day they went to ATM, and were impressed as everybody always is. The following day they took a morning Ka’ax Tun tour with lunch at Julio’s house. We had expected them to use the car again to spend some more time in the Mountain Pine Ridge, but since they had seen a good cross section of inland Belize, they decided instead to get a ride to Georgeville so they could catch the bus and head for the cayes and maybe get an extra dive in during their time there.

All of our local friends loved meeting Juan and Lesley, in part because Juan grew up in the Dominican Republic. Spanish is his first language, so our Spanish speaking friends here could converse comfortably with him, and he was truly appreciative of the local meals prepared for him by Belizean women so he could relive some of the tastes of his childhood, such as plantains. When he said what he really wanted to eat while he was here was plantains, I set out to get some for Janet to cook with their lunch on the day they visited Ka’ax Tun. Julio caught me before I set out for the market, and when I told him what I was going to get, he asked if I was planning to buy the green ones or the ripe ones. This shows why I don’t even try to cook the traditional Belizean dishes for our guests – I had no idea it even mattered! I asked Juan, who said he liked them all, and Janet said she could cook either, so when I went to the market I bought a whole bunch of plantains at all stages of ripeness. Juan reported that they were excellent as Janet prepared them – no surprise, since everybody loves Janet’s lunches!