Oso perezoso (lazy bear) is what the Spaniards called the sloths they found in the jungles. WHen I first arrived at the so-named hostel, I thought it referred to the middle-age-girthed Canadian who was sitting at a table near the kitchen. His green checkered short-sleeved button-up contrasted wildly with the fuschia flowers on his board shorts. Over his head, woven palm fronds formed a roof alongside the platform where the hammocks hung. A few scattered tables and chairs stood between pots of potato plants, ferns, a rose bush, and what looked like a maple sprout but couldn't be.
Below the concrete floor of this open-air bar and lounge are guest rooms, but I've opted for the cheaper, less stuffy hammocks. After all, it's the Carribean. On this floor is a shower with three walls, open to the town and the hostel owner bustling about checking on her laundry (this is how we met). A black plastic reservoir perches above, but water pressure is a trickle. The bar of soap has turned to lava soap by virtue of the grit in the cinderblock on which it sits.
The owners' baby plays with trucks on the floor while a puppy and kitten tussle, and Roberto the parrot looks on burbling encouragement. To my right the bay sparkles, opening out on the broad sea. The construction near the beach is invisible past the trees.
In the office, a remarkable collection of books for trade including Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Animal Farm, and many others, a far cry from the usual hostel book exchange selection featuring Agatha Christie and other simpleminded dreck.
It's about quite exactly what you'd expect of a small Caribbean town tasting tourism and loving it. Doubling in size every year or so, its unchecked growth means the loss of whatever quaintness it is that makes them locals. But ask them how they feel about the rapid ingress of foreigners, and they'll beam and say, "Tank you for coming to my country. You welcome here," a gleam of white teeth in bronze skin adding, "Buy a bracelet?" For them, globalisation spells money and infrastructure and eager ever-changing flocks of customers.
On the other side of town my British friends are staying in a different hostel. They've been quite good motivators when I vacillate because of financial reasons. I can't really say 'no' to $75 scuba lessons, can I? And I'm already in debt, aren't I? My parents won't exactly begrudge me a few more quid, will they?
I find myself picking up Britishisms, renewing my old Anglophilic passions. I'll go there someday.
But here I am in the balmy Caribbean eve--and it is balmy: there is no other more accurate word...except sometimes "sultry"--scratching away and wondering, not about anything useful, but instead about whether i'll be able to fill this notebook up to the last page by the time I land in the States. I simply cannot believe I've less than a handful of days left in this arduous and enlightening vacation. Unreal.
I've been enjoying the company of these Limeys a great deal. Their humor is delightfully droll, compounded by their funny accents. They argue about their alma maters, one having gone to Cambridge and one having gone to Oxford. Neil, the long-haired computer guy, is surprisingly a vegetarian, though his gauntish sprawling limbs attest to it. His skin is pale--whether from lack of quality food out here or just out of Britishness is anyone's guess. His narrow face draws into a wry grimace at the thought of...most things. I'm surprised to discover that he's actually pretty good with women, despite his gawky hacker hands. Maybe it's because he's a bit of a tit. A nerd who decided to say "fuck it" and brave the awesome menace of the female human.
He woke up late this morning for SCUBA diving, nursing a headache and complaining of female-friend interference.
"She wanted very much to come back with me, but her friend was very keen on going home."
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