When my husband and I moved to Belize, I knew we’d found the perfect place for romance. The two of us would embrace on the powdery sand with the sun’s warmth caressing our bodies. After a couple of exotic coconut rum punches, passion would take over, right?

Wrong! A primitive hut on stilts is not the place for a fulfilling love life. There’s a limit to how many coconut rum punches you can knock back while ignoring scorpions, large spiders, sweaty odors and sand flies sharing your bed. Having a mosquito net made no difference; the critters appeared on-time, and uninvited.

We moved from a luxury California king-size mattress to a knobby double mattress in Belize. Duke’s feet stuck out a foot or so, but at least the mattress offered a separation between us and the floor’s ecosystem.

The ceiling fauna was exactly the same, but gravity caused numerous landings of critters and their poop, onto our protective mosquito net. I just prayed that a giant iguana or rat wouldn’t fall out of the palm-fronded, vaulted ceiling and cause the net to collapse over our faces.

Body odor was another distraction during romance. The humidity and lack of air-conditioning caused us to sweat like baboons. I tried everything to get our sheets to smell fresh, but our stinky well water didn’t help matters. I boiled pot after pot of water mixed with bleach on my kitchen stove, and sprinted outside to fill our washing machine located underneath our hut. A colony of dock flies resided next to the washing machine and pounced on my legs, like hungry carnivores. Within an hour, I’d have large welts. I finally gave up and sprayed my precious Chanel perfume onto our sheets, but this was only a three-second fix. Desperate, I sprayed some inside my nostrils, and screamed in pain.

On this special Valentine’s Day, please remember how lucky you are to have a comfortable bed with clean sheets. If you want some tropical romance, check yourself into a nice hotel with air-conditioning.


What about you? Any romantic or fun stories to share?