Hitchhiking in Placencia

I just returned to Blue Creek from a lee vacation out on the Placencia Peninsula. Our Peace Corps men's futbol team, the Mighty Gibnuts, played a challenging match against the much more prepared and feisty Seine Bight team. We didn't win, but that didn't discourage us from celebrating and making the most of good beaches and pleasant weather. Placencia is located on the tip of a very long, narrow, dusty peninsula and is about 5 miles from Seine Bight. The easiest and most reliable form of transportation down this road is hitchhiking. Well, you can also walk along the beach the entire way, which I did on Saturday, passing numerous resorts and wetting my feet in the Caribbean Sea on along the way, but it takes a couple hours.

Anyways, Sunday around noon, a friend and I were making our way from Seine Bight down to Placencia to meet up with the rest of the Peace Corps crew. We didn't make it 100 yards out of the village before a beat-up Dodge Neon comes rolling down the road and stopped to see if we needed a ride. Score, we got to ride inside a car rather than in the back of a dirty pick-up. We settled in and prepared for the standard small talk that comes with getting picked up by another white person. Usually it is along the lines of of what we do in Belize, how long we are here, where are we from, etc. etc. The man who picked us up decided to skip small talk and go straight for the big question. "Do you consider yourself a Christian?" he asked. This is not the first time I have been asked this after hopping in a car with a stranger, but it still throws me off. The trouble with this question is that in my experience, the people who are asking it are less in interested in hearing about your beliefs and more interested in telling you ALL about theirs. I mumbled a generic reply in order to avoid a deep philosophical conversation, but could not avoid his stare when the next question to come out of his mouth was, "So...what would you say is the purpose of human existence?" Good question, but not exactly light road conversation. Ken, my friend in the back seat replied, "to find the purpose of human existence." The driver ignored his response and went on a 10 minute long Bible quoting session that only ended when I asked him what church he worked with. "Do you think that there is more than one Church?" he replied. I breathed deep and responded, "oh look, here is where we need to get out, thanks for the ride."

I recovered from the ride by making a bee-line to the Gelateria (the only one in Belize) and getting a Bailey's Gelato cone and washing that down with an Americano. I then went on to contemplating the meaning of human existence while laying on beach chair under a palm tree with a Belikin in my hand while the crystal clear Caribbean Sea lapped at the powdery sand between my toes. I breathed in the slightly cool air, listened to the reggae beats and decided that at that particular moment, I was living the meaning of human existence.