Gringo men, fat and nasty, skinny and cunning, balding fast with a graying beard, are they an apparent reality in Belize or simply an anomaly? With a guitar or an accordion strung over their shoulder and a social security pension of US$2,000.00 deposited in the bank for the qualified retirement program, they are arriving almost daily. And although what follows is surly not the generic model for every male gringo lurking about in Belize these days, all the same, in a lot of ways, the shoe still fits a lot of feet.

Either way you see it, gringo men, the single middle-aged type that arrive daily into the Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport or by way of the land borders with Mexico or Guatemala, more often than not they are looking to Belize as either the beginning to their end or the end to their beginning. For many, they seemingly care only about the paradise nation country for the benefits they can reap that were not within their reach back in their homeland. Therefore they have arrived from Colorado or Texas or Minnesota or Alberta or the European continent with not always the best of intentions in mind.

Yes there are those percentages of gringo men that come to Belize that genuinely care about the single young Belizean women and their children that they view as simply being less fortunate than those in the land they left behind. They arrive as born again Christian missionaries with a book full of religion behind their intent, or as volunteer healthcare workers with medical relief efforts in mind or as an ideological naturalists offering school book programs to teach the Belizean children what they envision as being best for them.

Indeed it’s not fair to throw a blanket over their efforts and bring into question those amongst the arrivals with genuinely noble intentions. But that said, their needs to be a check and balance into the reasoning why so many single gringo men have chosen places in the Americas like Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador over the years to retire too. Someone needs to focus some attention as to why now, after facing ever increasing scrutiny in those other Central America countries, why now are they turning their eyes towards Belize? Is the Qualified Retirement Program (QRP) that good, is the laidback atmosphere that prevails across the western Caribbean nation so appealing, or is it all the bananas?

I would love to think that it's the white sand beaches of Placencia or the Garifuna kindness of Dangriga or the ‘chicken drop’ competition each Wednesday night in San Pedro that lures them all to paradise. But as a father of two young children I think we all need to simply step back and look beyond the greenery of the swaying palms. We need to keep our eyes open to all the possibilities, because reality dictates the world is not always what it seems to be.

From the Pickled Parrot in Placencia to the Split Bar on Caye Caulker to Fido’s in San Pedro to Eva’s in San Ignacio, the typical single gringo guy hangs out at his favourite watering hole. Having landed on the bar stool the first day they arrive into Belize, they sit there day in and day out smoking cigarettes and pounding down shots of One Barrell rum with Belikin beer backs. After a week or two in-country they have become the all to knowledgeable “local”, dropping un-invited into every conversation that comes up at the bar. They are readily available any time a tourist or potential retiree questions the bartender regarding the spectrum of topics, from snorkelling the reef to the Maya sites to tubing an ancient cave to the customs and duties for the items they plan to bring down once they have met the requirements for the QRP.

Of course, in Belize, you never know just who's sitting next to you there at the bar. You might think that you are having the conversation of a lifetime with an ex union rep from Philly or a divorced school teacher from Topeka or a gay chef from Toronto that rolls sushi made of rice and shrimp into California rolls until the truth comes out.

More times than we might like to admit in the end you find out that the well informed bald-headed single gringo man with a beard that you knew simply as Sonny who was selling real estate for a local agency while in country on a tourist card actually had another tale to tell. For one night along with all the other regulars at your favourite village bar you too are watching the evening news on Channel 5 Belize when you see a Belizean law enforcement agent escorting the same guy you were shooting rum with the day before on to a jetliner for the one way return trip home to the far frozen north. To everyone's surprise and dismay, the broadcaster reports that Sonny was a fugitive from justice being sought for aggravated robbery and theft of services, referred to in Belize as obtaining services by deception. Of course it could have been alot worse, he could have been a child molester.