"First sanitize your hands, and then you can sanitize your insides." Upon arriving at the Belize airport, Jessie and I entered the airport store with free rum samples. Covid restrictions are strict here, so they required us to sanitize our hands upon entering the store. Once our hands were ready, the store worker invited us to sanitize our insides.

I thought about this phrase the following morning as I saw the village of San Pedro, Belize for the first time. Elyssa, Jessie, and I rode bicycles from our abode on the water to the opposite side of the island. Our destination was Secret Beach, and the journey was about one and a half hours each way. While biking, I thought about travel as is a necessity to me. I cannot go too long without it because I begin to feel stifled. Traveling, venturing even slightly outside that which is comfortable, sanitizes my insides of complacency.

Biking through the town, all of my senses were heightened. By all means, San Pedro is not a large city, yet it boasted the frenetic style of a non-American morning. Cars are minimal. The primary mode of transportation is golf cart and bicycle. We weaved carefully in and out of the chaos as troves of meat were transferred from cars to tiny markets. Splashes of sea blue and rose pink were on every building. It was instantly clear that friendliness is a national currency here. The tiny babes to the toothless elders wave and say hello as they zoom by on golf carts. Once we rode through the town, we came across lush jungle brush for the remainder of the ride to Secret Beach.The smells are not always pleasant, but it is soon forgotten. Every exists on the water and the odor of dead sea creatures is rampant.  If you are planning to look like a million bucks in Belize, forget it. Your hair will never work out and you will always be covered in a thick inch of sweat. I felt alive and comfortably uncomfortable as we soared through that first morning. Just as the man at the airport said, our insides need sanitation too. For me, that means sanitizing of comfort and getting into a place that offers something new.