To British Honduras

For a fee of 35 cents, we took a taxi to the Fort George Hotel on Marine Parade overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Within twenty minutes of landing we walked up two comfortable flights of hardwood stairs and along an outside walled walkway to our accommodations on the third floor.

The Fort George Hotel was a three-story concrete building, painted cream and trimmed with terracotta tones. The long bedroom wing, lined with balconies, faced the Caribbean. A large veranda curved in a gentle arc across the dining room and past the bar. Doors on the wall of the bar folded aside, opening the room to the veranda, the lawn, and the sea. The Fort George was built by the Colonial Development Corporation (CDC), a British government agency set up to pour money and economic stimulus into the Colonies and, with luck, to realize returns on its investments.

Our identical adjoining rooms were simple but pleasant, with mahogany twin bedsteads and bureaus. Across the entire seaside wall of each room were wooden-louvered windows and louvered doors opening onto private verandas. We gave the exhausted children a quick lunch in the empty dining room, then tucked them into bed in the room next to ours for badly needed naps.

By the time the young ones awoke, excited at realizing where they were, the hotel manager had helped us to hire Sonia, a quiet young nursemaid. She was waiting to dress them and take them to the nearby park. In that short walk Alex and Carli moved from the freedom of life on the Sarasota sands to the more structured British Colonial world of nursemaids who gathered promptly at Four at Memorial Park to chatter together while their charges romped on the grass with friends whose mothers were at home hosting Afternoon Tea.

Sonia brought our two happily dirty children back to the hotel late in the afternoon. Trying to help, I turned on the water in the tub while Sonia undressed them. The tub was a gem, at least a foot longer than a U.S. tub, half-a-foot deeper, and narrow enough to suggest that the obese might be in trouble if they tried to immerse themselves. I studied it with delight while the water gushed.

Hearing the noise, Sonia rushed in to close the tap in a panic.

“No, Mum! No, Mum! Not so much water,” she gasped, staring in horror at the three inches of water already in the tub.

This was my introduction to the perennial water shortage that was a part of life in Belize City. Sonia explained that the country’s only water supply was rain collected on rooftops and held in vats. Every drop was to be cherished.

I ordered dinner for the children from Room Service and within a short while a smiling young woman was at the door with their trays. Sonia settled them at the table on their veranda and they ate unfamiliar food enthusiastically as they watched the activity on the sea beyond the railing.

A short while later, after Sonia had settled the children in their beds, Bucher and I went in to kiss them goodnight. When the children were asleep with Sonia quietly watching them, Bucher and I went down to the Dining Room for our own dinners.

Afterwards, we sat in the light, warm tropical breeze on the hotel veranda with a liqueur, toasting each other and our surroundings, and watching a full moon paint the waves silver. Small clouds drifted across the sky, teasing the moonlight, as southern winds sped small sailboats on their way past on the rumpled water.

It was Valentine’s Day, 1954.