I spent the first three weeks of February in Belize, staying in the mountain town of San Ignacio with my friend Alex Greene, who is studying traditional healers.
We had no television and no foreign newspapers in San Ignacio - a nice break from following every twist and turn of the news in my day job - and few modern appliances. Given the heat, that made for a lot of hand laundry in a washtub, followed by sprints to get everything off the clothesline before the daily rainstorms.
Basically, we had nothing but time, and I got a heck of a lot of writing done - several draft episodes of the Five George Washingtons and a new episode of Joel Fauré, the Melancholy Male Model. Since they were composed largely on the Mayan ruins by Alex's house, they come with the very highest pedigree.
I also got a lot of reading done. Hating everything I'd brought along, I ended up reading bits and pieces I found in hotels and secondhand bookshops: James Fennimore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans" (very high body count!); Judith Guest's excellent "Ordinary People;" and Somerset Maugham's soapy, loopy "Painted Veil." (Belize is the former British Honduras, and I was craving some of Maugham's colonial Brits).
Aldous Huxley, to drop one more name, once said that if there is such a thing as ends of the Earth, Belize is surely one of them. He's right, but it was also a great place to get stuff done.