Barbara here. I am writing this high over the coastal plain of Belize, with its patchwork of farmland and forests visible through the fluffy white clouds. I am flying home to the frozen north after ten blissfully warm days exploring the country and hanging out by the ocean. To my delight, I missed much of the recent deep freeze in the northern states and eastern Canada, but we’d had plenty before I left and much more to come. I will be flying into a snowstorm in Montreal and Ottawa. From +23 to -20! Welcome to Canada!
I was with a G Adventures tour for the first week, which took me to Mayan castles and underwater caves and then out to Caye Caulker, an island off Belize in the Caribbean Sea, where we spent a day snorkelling and another one cycling around the village, which has a very laidback, Caribbean feel. Belizeans are a very friendly, easygoing people always eager to help. The motto off Caye Caulker is "Go slow". I had some amazing experiences, and during the snorkelling I saw sea turtles, manatees, sting rays, and even a hammerhead shark who swam by right underneath me. Luckily he didn’t stop for a snack.
I tacked three days onto the end of the tour in order to lay low and get some writing done. Life has been so hectic and fraught with political stress that I have not been able to make much headway on my current WIP. But at the quiet resort, I took my manuscript to the pool every morning, settled in a lounge chair, and got three solid hours of writing done every morning before the pool got at all busy. Birds twittered, wind rustled the palm trees, and in the background I could just hear the faint rhythm of reggae. The afternoon was spent at the beach or taking the little ferry down to the village to wander, window shop, or sit in a Muskoka chair on the beach and drink a local beer and eat. My favourite snack or light lunch was shrimp ceviche, packed with lime and cilantro flavour. I ate mostly seafood – lobster, shrimp, conch, and red snapper and discovered some delicious recipes.
I would love to share some of my photos but Blogger says Google won't let me, so you will just have to use your imagination. A big green sea turtle swimming by me, me lying on a lounge on the beach, the peaceful poolside where I wrote.
I have managed to kickstart my creative muse and look forward to capitalizing on the momentum I’ve built up. I think there is nothing better than a change of routine and a defined “writer’s retreat” to get over the lethargy that tends to grip us at the two-thirds point in our book, when we still don’t know how to get to the end and how to catch all the balls we have thrown up in the air.
Stay tuned to find out if I can keep the creative muse around! She’s been very fickle.
