I’ve just spent four days in Belize, horrendously sunburned after a brief stint by the lake in Bacalar, Mexico. In and amongst downing Belikins before they got too warm and insipid to drink and powering my way through book after book on my Kindle while ignoring basically all my work emails, I graciously set aside a sliver of brain power to ruminate over why I’d arranged a solo trip to two islands—Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye—despite the fact I absolutely despise sun, sea, and sand.
This was something I mostly thought about as I slapped on mango-scented moisturiser and long sleeves (because, sunburn) before walking towards whichever food vendor was closest, then retreating back into my air-conditioned den and stripping back down to my pants.
The short-ish (and true) answer is: about a month or so ago, when I booked flights to Chetumal and subsequent speedboats bound for Belizean islands which promised fresh lobster dinners, cold beers, and ample opportunity to lounge around in hammocks, everyone I knew was on holiday.
There are few things which will motivate me more successfully than envy and what better reason for doing something than: “um, everyone else was doing it!?”
My Instagram shone with the light of a thousand suns, as captured and filtered by people I went to high school with, family members, and even a handful of people I still see in real life. There they were, glowing, well-rested, drinking cocktails al fresco, and trying new foods every night. I was sold on the sunshine narrative, one that hooks you with the allure of strappy sundresses.
“I could pull that off!” you think, opening up Skyscanner in a new tab, before filtering in ‘cheapest month’ and ‘anywhere’, the hallmarks of a well thought-through decision. Next thing you know, it’s 10am on a Tuesday, and you’re fervently browsing Booking.com. “I’ve got to get myself a slice of that sunshine pie,” you mutter to yourself in a way that’s not at all unsettling and ill-advised!!! And at no point in this envy-fuelled travel planning stage are you dwelling on your pasty skin, intolerance for being sweaty in any way, shape or form, and utter hatred of sand.
[Sidenote] Here’s why I hate sand:
It’s basically just shards of glass we can walk on and that’s so sinister to me.
Once it’s stuck to your thighs, chafing is inevitable.
Sand will live in your vagina for longer than a persistent case of thrush. I think I still have some in there from a trip to Vallarta when I was 20.
It’s just boring glitter?
It’s too late anyway, because you’ve already bought flights and typed up a pre-emptive OOO. The line, you could say, has been drawn in the, ahem, sand. And that line is a back-row seat on a late-afternoon Volaris flight you just know will be delayed. (Reader, it was delayed, because of course it fucking was!)
My bizarre decision to travel to two Caribbean islands in the middle of summer was only hammered home by a quite frankly rude question on the immigration slip I was handed at the Chetumal dock.
I’m paraphrasing, but it went a little something like this: Why are you visiting Belize? What followed were a series of tick boxes with things like ‘beaches’, ‘diving’, ‘nature’, and other options of a similar outdoorsy ilk.
There was no neat tick box for ‘impulse decision based on friends’ Instagram feeds’, nor was there one which simply read ‘lobster and beer’. Like I said, rude!
Belize, in the end, was perfectly pleasant, even though I had to hole up like some sort of obscene sunburned gremlin for most of the time, shuffling out only under the cover of darkness to eat.
On Caye Caulker, I ate lobster in the company of an American couple and watched a kid play giant Jenga with his mum in somebody’s backyard restaurant. I returned the next day, alone, for jerk chicken because I’m nothing if not a creature of habit. I did not drink at the Split, or go snorkelling, or walk the dogs from the animal shelter like I’d planned. But I did read lots of books, drink iced coffees overlooking the beach (at a safe distance from the sand) and skewer mini doughnut after mini doughnut into my gob, as well as starting something resembling a newsletter.
In San Pedro, which I enjoyed far less than Caye Caulker, I was almost mowed down several times by the errant golf carts which whiz around town, I was cat-called incessantly, and I had to suffer through three slices of horrible cardboard pizza topped with cheese falsely advertised as mozzarella on my last night. But I also had a great hazelnut-chocolate iced latte in a quiet café, as well as my first frozen custard experience in a Pennsylvanian couple’s ice cream parlour. I drank beer from the mini fridge in my hotel room and toyed with the idea of getting into the pool.
(In the end I decided I’d probably just wind up even more burnt and passed on the whole pipedream of ever stepping foot in an outdoor body of water again. I can’t say I’m entirely devastated about that decision.)
On the whole, beach holidays for people who hate the beach are, while ill-advised, not the worst thing in the world? Instead of forcing myself to do things I just didn’t want to do (see: snorkelling, socialising with randy, chatty backpackers, and cycling round a sandy island), I drew another metaphorical line in metaphorical sand and just did what I felt like doing. Eating, drinking, reading, writing. Only with much better views.