As a young man growing up in the cold northern regions of the great American Midwest, I often found myself looking forward to February knowing that a swimsuit magazine filled with beautiful supermodels would arrive. The photos always showed these glamorous women wearing skimpy bathing suits and bikinis while playing and enjoying the beaches and towns in a climate much warmer than mine. Yes, those women were pretty, but I also remember looking at the sunny beaches and palm-lined streets and thinking how cool it would be to swing in a hammock in the tropical sun. Marrying a beautiful woman has erased my need to look at photos of supermodels, but not the desire to visit the tropics during February. Plus, I now know that those great looking models weren’t having the incredible amount of fun shown in those photographs. I want to have the fun in the tropics that supermodels were never allowed to have.
Think about it. Wouldn’t you like to be lying on the beach at some Jamaican resort? Or, do you really enjoy the wind chill at thirty below zero? No, I want to swim out to a pool bar overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and order a fruity drink that everyone in a Midwestern bar would laugh at. Then I can take three hours just talking to the bartender about where the best local cuisine is.
Thinking about food, you know supermodels couldn’t eat all the food in those photos, but we can. Going to the warm beach in South America, maybe lounging at an all-inclusive resort in Brazil and eating whatever you want sounds like a great idea. Those all-inclusive resorts have to have food when I want it; I could eat two breakfasts, one brunch, one lunch, one midday snack, and one dinner with dessert, oh, and a midnight treat. The supermodel can live on eight glasses of water a day, but on a warm beach in the tropics we can eat real food ten times a day.
Well, maybe eating ten times a day is not the best idea, but having a good time, playing some of the beach sports that the supermodels represented, is a great idea. A visit to the warmth of the Caribbean could mean rushing from one of Negril’s resorts to the next. A person could experience the beauty of the tropics, learn some local customs and, like a supermodel, get a great workout.