I stare into my cup as I slowly swirl the last vestiges of my morning motivation. A fine dusting of grinds infuses the remnants of the most perfect cup of bold Honduran coffee. Sigh. The moment of truth has come.
My gaze drifts out the window to the horizon. The sun is already dancing on the water, sending up bright sparkles of joy to welcome the new day. Surely it is too late and my window of opportunity lost.
I glance at my watch – 7:15 am.
But then again, the rush to the morning ferry is over. Most people will still be sleeping off the excesses of Friday night – perhaps a few too many beers at Beer Pong or a bit too much partying at Tranquila – so the streets should be relatively quiet.
Maybe I should join them in silent camaraderie. This sofa is mighty comfortable, and that sun looks terribly hot. It’s surface is, after all, a sweltering 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s not like I have to venture out. If I get all hot and sweaty at this hour, what does that bode for the rest of the day? I will melt away like the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz.
New Year’s resolutions are meant to be broken. Right?
Being retired and living on a sweltering, muggy tropical island is not conducive to motivation. Excuses present themselves all too easily. Too hot. Too wet. Too congested. And then there is my favorite, the monster excuse of them all: mañana. Why work oneself into a sweaty mess today when there is always tomorrow to tackle whatever needs to be done.
I pad over to the refrigerator and open the vegetable drawer. A desiccated scallion and a small, spongy carrot greet me. Both still usable but not exactly enticing. Here on the island, you make do with what you can get. I’ve become an expert in refreshing wilted offerings.
Glancing out my kitchen window, bright blue skies dominate the heavens. Not a wisp of cottony white in sight. It is going to be a scorcher.
I scrunch my nose. If I do not head out this morning, I will not get there today. Saturday morning is the perfect time to get some nice, fresh veggies. They arrive Friday afternoon by ferry and won’t be too worse for wear. I can not last on tomatoes and cucumbers until the next shipment Tuesday afternoon.
Perhaps it is time to expand my repertoire. Cabbage is always in ample supply and seems to survive the heat remarkably well. Plus, it’s cheap. Let’s not get too hasty. I am not that desperate. Yet.
Our selection of vegetables is sparse and would often be considered seconds in the U.S. They are the antithesis of the instagramable mounds of bright greens, yellows and oranges undulating across massive bins in first-world grocery stores. Every time I return to the States, I want to set up camp in the middle of the vegetable department and revel in the perfectness of it all.
Here, the highlight of one’s day is the discovery of a few tough green beans not too shriveled from the heat, a head of semi-firm broccoli with a preponderance of green poking through the advancing yellow or some gently wilted lettuce (with the exception of iceberg, which is nearly indestructible) that can be brought back to life with some TLC. These are wonderful additions to the ubiquitous offerings of green peppers, chayotes, onions and potatoes but are best snatched within a day of arrival lest they become a spongy mess.
The heat tends to wilt everything from lettuce to the human spirit.
How much time are we talking about? A leisurely eight minute stroll to Caribbean Market, a small store with three short aisles, packed with all the essentials. It often stocks hard to find items like mushrooms, Brussel sprouts, asparagus and the holy grail of vegetables, kale.
All right. I can survive eight minutes in the morning sun if I keep to the shadows as much as possible. Maybe I won’t expire, especially if I keep a comfortable, sun-appropriate pace. Given that, should I bother turning on my walking app? One of my New Year’s resolutions is to do one hour of cardio per week. So far this week I’ve walked once for thirty minutes. Grumble. I need another half hour. Can I bear to see “not met” in my spreadsheet?
I don’t need to decide at this minute. It can wait.
I wash the breakfast dishes, sweep, make my bed, dress, slather on sunscreen and bug spray, check the weather one more time – yup, the sun is still in the sky, blazing away – before I don my backpack and trudge out the door, having run through my standard set of delaying tactics.
Pausing at my gate, I search for a good excuse not to do an exercise walk. I must not have had enough coffee because I couldn’t find any. I press “walk” on my watch and plod off.
My calves are tight and my legs are not in the mood for forward propulsion. I hear a blip notifying me of my initial pace: 17:42. That would be a seventeen minute and forty-two second mile. Pretty dismal. If I keep up that pace, I might as well have not turned on the app. I instruct my recalcitrant legs to speed it up.
The traffic on the narrow, main road through town is thankfully light, and I feel my muscles loosening as my body warms up. I catch glimpses of pale blue ripples in the bay and feel the occasional waft of a faint breeze between the buildings. But that scant relief is eclipsed by the waves of torrid heat pelting down on me each time I emerge from the safety of the shade.
Before long, Caribbean Market emerges ahead on the corner. I check my watch, expecting to see seven or eight minutes had elapsed, but it’s only been five minutes and twenty seconds. That’s annoying: one of the disadvantages of walking for exercise, you get there sooner.
No, that won’t do. I can make it to the next store.
I cruise by, quickly glancing at the small vegetable bins inside the open doors. Nothing stood out. No eggplant or lettuce. Kale would be in a refrigerator in the back, but after two solid weeks of this versatile green, perhaps a break is in order. I got a little overexcited when I discovered kale in stock the other week. Kale is perfect in an avocado, tomato and feta salad topped with Austrian pumpkin seed oil; in a pasta sauce made with andouille sausage and fresh tomatoes; or simply when sautéed with garlic and jalapeños as a tasty side for a smoked pork chop. Why it’s even sublime when featured as the keynote ingredient in a Sunday brunch egg casserole!
Maybe I’ll stop by and check later. Just in case.
A couple golf carts with fair-haired retirees rumble by, followed by a zipping scooter. Traffic is beginning to pick up. I hug the edge of the road, perilously close to the drainage ditch, before I skirt back to the middle to avoid a parked golf-cart. A Tuk Tuk buzzes by me, missing me by mere centimeters. These careening, three-wheeled, doorless taxis are the island’s workhorse of people movement.
I zip by three hardware stores. None are open. It is early and Sabbath (there are a fair number of Adventists on the island). Next is the municipal dock and ferry office across from our only bank.
The sun is radiating down now, and I feel my skin heat up, the telltale sensation of a sweat about to break out. For some reason, I always feel worse right before the sweat takes hold and begins to cool me down.
Before long, I spy my destination ahead on the right – Bush’s, the largest grocery store on the island. Well, large by Utila standards, minuscule by American. It’s about the size of a small mini mart but often carries items you can’t get elsewhere like feta, chia seeds, nuts and quinoa. All at a premium, of course. But when you live on a small island, that’s a wee price to pay for comfort food. Well, maybe not everyone’s idea of comfort food. But as the expression goes, comfort is in the eye of the beholder. Or is that beauty?
All of a sudden, I have an intense craving for eggplant, which I rarely find at Bush’s and nearly always find at a small vegetable stand further down the street. So I breeze by Bush’s at nine minutes, thirty-eight seconds with visions of smooth, aubergine fruit dancing in my head.
A few more steps and I bound past Mermaids, a small, narrow store known for its good prices and overflowing with the usual assortment of household supplies and groceries as well as broccoli and an odd local, furry, stalked spinach tucked in a refrigerated case. But today is Saturday, and Mermaids won’t be open.
By now my skin has broken out into a soft sweat as the sun reaches higher into the sky. I feel my breath quicken and my heart beat stronger with each step, my legs moving fluidly now. I’m in a groove. I barely notice the Tuk Tuks and motorcycles hurtling perilously close past me.
Soon, I see the vegetable stand. Time check: eleven minutes and change. Huh? The math doesn’t add up. The veggie stand is really, really far from my house. So far that I don’t make it every week. Only eleven minutes? That can’t be right. How many times have I found excuses not to go there because I wasn’t up for a marathon?
I did the math in my head. I walk a mile in just under fifteen and a half minutes. Eleven minutes is a tad over two-thirds of that. So the veggie stand must be a bit more than two-thirds of mile from my house. That is not far. Not far at all. Maybe it’s the heat addling my sense of distance.
What’s worse is that with a return trip I will have completed only twenty-two minutes of cardio, still eight minutes shy of my requisite weekly hour. Plus, physics dictates that I keep going. A body in motion stays in motion absent some counteracting force. At this point I’ve left those forces behind in my house.
To the bridge it is! Plus the bridge always offers an exhilarating breeze.
The traffic has died down as I near dive row. This end of the island, near the lagoon that provide a safe-harbor for boats, has a slew of dive shops, one after another. I catch the scent of bacon wafting from Trudy’s, the open bar underneath Underwater Vision. My stomach voices an approving grumble. Perhaps I could nip in for a coffee and tasty treat. It has been a long time since I had my breakfast of oatmeal and yogurt. Wouldn’t it be nice to catch my breath, sit down at a table and peer out into the calm waters? Nope. Not today.
I inhale one long, last, luxurious breath of breakfast on a griddle before soldiering on, tucking temptation into my subconscious as a bead of sweat rolls down my cheek.
A minute later I reach the base of the bridge. My watch buzzes: 1 mile, 15:35. A respectable pace, especially considering my lethargic start. I sprint up the bridge, which straddles the lagoon, anticipating a cool breeze to refresh my body and soul. Instead, barely a whisper of relief crosses my cheek, and I nearly choke on a brick of hot, humid air. Must be walking so fast I missed the breeze.
It is turning into one of those deadly calm, stifling hot days. The breeze cometh, and the breeze goeth.
After bouncing down the other side, I do an about-face and sprint back up to complete the only elevation gain this walk. Walking around the bay at sea level has its disadvantages, no hills to boost the cardio. I feel my heart pick up a beat with the exertion of these paltry few meters.
Before leaving the bridge, my eyes linger on my favorite house, a buttercup yellow confection with bright, white trim surrounded by a white fence with yellow hibiscus peeking through. I imagine myself on its veranda cooling off with an icy mojito, watching the boats go by. Though today, I probably would feel more like an egg frying in the sun on the pavement.
I urge my legs to march faster. Only a few more minutes until I reach my goal – veggie nirvana, a small display of veggies tucked against the white wall of a tiny building, more shack than anything else.
Pressing “pause” on my watch, I take a moment to catch my breath and examine the day’s offerings. No lettuce, but a couple of eggplants, a few bunches of slightly-wilted cilantro and parsley, a small box of jalapeños, oodles of Roma tomatoes and a bin brimming with limes catch my eye. I load up and go inside.
The floors are crammed with boxes of fresh produce, extra inventory being kept cool in the shaded interior. My mouth waters as I absorb the undulating bright green peppers, pale cabbages, yellow and red onions, and dark pebbly avocados.
I place my loot on the small wooden counter and watch the shopkeeper weigh my eggplant and then my tomatoes in a metal scale hanging from the ceiling before totaling up my bounty. He turns his calculator to me: 124, about five dollars. Well worth it.
I pack my goodies in my backpack, hit “resume” and dart down the street. Knowing I have a mere eleven minutes left propels me to fly past Bush’s, past the gentlemen sitting on the low wall near the bank, past the closed hardware stores and past Caribbean Market, kale long forgotten.
My chest is pounding, sweat is stinging my eyes and my thigh and calf muscles are aching, but sanctuary is near. Within minutes, I spot my bright green house and blue roof ahead on the right. I pick up speed as I careen towards the gate, my index finger poised over the stop button. Click. 2.09 miles, 32:41.
Gasping, I open the gate and drag myself into the house, sweat pooling on my face like condensation on an icy beverage without the satisfying coolness.
I throw my backpack on the table, wipe my brow and pour water from my five-gallon jug into a glass. Although room temp, this thirst-quenching elixir of life glides refreshingly down my throat.
Before putting away my spoils, I pull out my iPad and plop down on my sofa. I open my New Year’s resolutions spreadsheet and update line thirteen to “1 hour.” Success.
Now all I need is a shower and a nap.
What a person will do for the love of veggies.
© 2020 Sandra Y. K. Loder
Originally published April 19, 2020
