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| Queen Cays |
Sunrise announces itself as a burst of molten yellow. In an hour it will be too hot to not be under shade, but for now the birth of this new day is all about peace and
calm. Nothing is said, nothing needs to
be said. The only movement will come
when one of us feels the urge to make coffee.
Kathy blinks first, and the smell of druggie ground
coffee coming up from the galley easily wins out against my well-intentioned instant decaf,
purchased as the only decaf possibility in the coffee growing country of
Guatemala. I accept my fate and succumb
to the drug.
Otra Vida is anchored at Queen Cays, Belize, three tiny
white-sand-and-palm-tree islands each looking like something ordered up from
central casting for a shipwreck movie or an advertising shoot. We are 20 miles offshore and the water here
is a few metres deep … a mile to the east of us, outside the barrier reef, it
is 1.6km deep.
Belize is sometimes referred to as “The Land of No
Mondays”. The calendar says it is
Monday. What does the calendar know?
There´s nothing to “do” on these islands, no one lives here,
nothing to buy, nothing to trade. Think
or Swim … Write or Paint … Listen or Cook … that´s about the sum of it. Well, at least until cocktail hour, following
which the list of options is shorter.
I decide to paint (badly) for a few hours. Kathy decides to read. Later in the day we go ashore with the dinghy.
Walking the circumference of the middle cay takes perhaps a minute, and only
that long because of stepping over a couple of palm trees brought down by hurricanes past. We snorkel over coral
gardens, entranced by delicate purple fronds and brightly coloured tropical
fish, try to frame the perfect photograph of the cay, take a rest from this
exhausting day in the shade of a coconut palm, and then tidy up some of the
floating plastic trash that has washed ashore on the island.
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| Full moon over Queen Cays |
Back on board Otra Vida later in the afternoon simple Peruvian Sopa
de Quinoa heats on the stove. We resume
our positions in the hammocks, reading, readying ourselves for sunset. As the sun gets lower in the sky I make
cocktails and we toast the end of daylight, giving silent thanks for a day of
life lived in the present tense. The air
cools, the stars come out, we chat, and time stops.
Really, what does the calendar know?
“Those moments of love, freedom, serenity,
play – what power
has made us believe
these are but respites from real life?”
– Charles
Eisenstein
