Belize international airport

I am back at Jets Bar in the airport, staffed with only a short Tattoo-voiced 68-year old man named Jet. My flight to Dallas is hours away and I sit here finishing "Life of Pi" (it is excellent) and enjoying my last tastes of Belikin.

The TV in the bar catches me up on Headline News and curiously breaks into commercials to show low-budget scrolling obituaries with a passport photo in the corner while "Nobody does it Better" (instrumental) plays. (Note: Thom Yorke once declared onstage that this song was the sexiest ever written. The justaposition makes me uneasy.)

Jet serves up one type of beer, rum punch, margaritas, and hot dogs which can be complimented only with obsessively arranged cans of Pringles. The bar, practically, has terrible selection but is buoyed by the owner and his love of flirting with girls on vacation and general good-naturedness. Everyone who sets foot in here calls him by his first name and those who don't find it comfortable almost immediately.

A note on who comes through here: largely, only a few classes exist, aside from Belizians (which leaves Americans and British). First are the young hippies, here for the ruins, diving, or "experiencing the third world". Ironically, these people are the least friendly. Second are the wealthy. They travel in couples who seem recently retired or are going on some exorbitant vacation package, or in groups of men with the calculating gaze of investors looking for an angle. In talking to these people, you notice they are evaluating you and pitching real estate in the shadiest possible way. Finally, there are the honeymooners, who are the most friendly, possibly due to the hangover of mixing matrimony and a big-ass party. I think it stands true still that travelling abroad gives you an excellent view back at your own countrymen.

After a few beers I meet a boozy former-cocktail waitress / current-tractor seller Belizian woman who sells me the story of her life as is only appropriately told on a bar stool.