Once again we were up early to prepare to go to the dive shop. After another wonderful breakfast at our hotel, we headed out in the golf cart to the dive shop. The wind was already gusting and today there were dark clouds and intermittent rain showers. Adolfo (the dive instructor) seemed pretty determined today to get their skills check off done so they could do their first certification dive tomorrow. I was skeptical, but he took them to go over equipment and practice setting up the tank, bc, and regulator. By the time it actually came to getting in the water, the wind was howling and the rain was coming in sheets. He decided to break until after lunch and try again. That gave us several hours to find lunch and play around in the golf cart. My watch strap broke the first day we got to San Pedro so we set off to find a repairman. Adolfo had told us about a gift shop where they may be able to fix it. We found the sea turtle gift shop after a little searching and sure enough, they had the pin I needed and he quickly fixed the watch. When I asked how much I owed, he said “let’s say 2 dollars Belizean”. That’s ONE DOLLAR in US money. How could I pay anyone only 1 dollar to do anything? So I handed him a $5 bill (Belizean) and I still felt like I was cheating him. Next we headed north to see if a large bakery we had seen the day before was open for lunch (it had been closed on Sunday). Pandulce bakery was indeed open for business. When we entered I was handed a metal tray (actually a pizza pan I think) and some tongs. We were then to go through the store and place anything we wanted off the open racks of baked goods on our tray. After many questions for the helpful girl working in the store, we chose 3 ham and cheese rolls (basically ham and cheese baked inside an enormous crescent roll), 1 ham and cheese “pizza” (which was not pizza at all, but ham and cheese baked inside a pastry with sugar on top), various pastries for desert and a couple of drinks. It was all only $8 in US money. Wow! We are finding if we do things like locals (I.e. the bakery) it is really inexpensive. But the restaurants that cater to tourists have prices very similar to US prices. The biggest obstacle is that many of the local places to eat are little more than someone’s front room of their home or sometimes a card table with a large plastic box filled with prepared food set up on the side of the street. We have found this food is sometimes the tastiest, but we don’t want to waste time on an upset stomach from eating unfamiliar food, so we have to find a balance. Our lunch was piled up in a plastic bag when we left, we stopped by a grocery store to get napkins (we have found many places don’t provide napkins, we haven’t figured out why except for cost I guess) and we made our way to the arts marketplace by the beach. It has quickly become a favorite spot to hang out by the beach and also to people watch. Our lunch was pretty good, maybe this is Belize’s version of fast food. It was better than McDonald’s cheaper too. We fed out leftover bread to the birds and headed back to Ramon’s (the dive shop). The weather was looking a lot better and the girls were able to get in the water with Adolfo to start working on skills for their certification. Christian and I had a little time to kill so we found a shady spot near the beach to relax. We had a long, fascinating conversation with a man from Sydney, Australia. I love hearing about how other people live and the things they do. We went back to the dive shop’s pier early only to find the girls already through for the day. The practice in the pool had paid off and they had mastered the necessary skills quickly. The next step will be open water dives in the morning which we will also be able to go on. We took the golf cart to get frozen yogurt and then back to the hotel. Mallory and Olivia were ready for a shower after the hours in salt water. Christian and I relaxed on the pool deck. WiFi only (with no cell service) is a happy medium. We can only check social media and email when we are near the WiFi and there is no need to look at our phones any other time. For dinner we found a beachfront restaurant called Fido’s (pronounced feedow’s) and Monday night is Taco night and has live music! After a dinner of the best shrimp tacos I’ve ever had, we wandered the gift shops and bought a few t-shirts. We drove around town in the golf cart and saw the town at night. I’ve enjoyed looking into the lives of the people of San Pedro and what I’ve seen is a very small community where the children are dismissed for lunch from the town’s school and for about an hour there are young children running all through the town- most without adult supervision. This just wouldn’t happen in the US. At least not now; that sounds like a story from a small town in the 1960’s. The people here live simply. We can see into many houses and apartments as we drive around since most people don’t have A/C, and the impression I get is one of people who are working hard but are happy and family oriented. Not to sound naive, of course there are problems everywhere. But I find myself wondering if less “stuff” may actually be more?