But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 Timothy 3:1

Sunday. Our last day here in Merida. Our last day in the La Ceiba Country Club. Our last day to golf before Spring arrives in Manitoba. Our last.

Sometimes good movies don’t have a happy ending. So it is with our golf story here. Just because there were more bad shots on the last day than on the first (or maybe on ANY other day!) doesn’t mean it was as a bad move here.

We woke up, had coffee, and got our golf shoes on. Dave really wanted to get out on the links early this morning. We had a quick bite to eat, got our frozen water bottles out of the freezer, and hurried out to the golf course. Oh no! A big group of guys and their caddies were lined up at the first tee. Our friendly starter saw the look on our faces and suggested we go to the tenth tee and play the back nine first. Good deal.

I had quite a few balls in my golf bag — not all of them very good balls, but more than I would lose today. So today I didn’t spend a lot of time looking for balls that rolled off the fairway. Still, to have my first THREE shots go into the bush was a bit excessive. Not a very good start to our final game of the winter.

I’d like to say that things got better after that, but that’s not entirely true. I followed that up with some good shots, but even more bad shots.

When we got back to the first tee it looked to be all clear ahead. But we caught up to a FIVESOME on the second hole, and the marshall sitting at between hole 2 and 3 encouraged us to play number three, then stop for breakfast and come back and finish later. We saw all the carts lined up on the next couple of holes and followed his advice.

Back at the house we cooled off a bit. The very high humidity out there this morning was actually more uncomfortable than the hot sun at midday. We watched a bit of Face the Nation on TV. We waited until we were nicely cooled (and dried) off. Then Dave went out to look at what holes four and five looked like. All clear. Let’s get out there.

Most of my drives were quite a bit better after the break, so that was somewhat encouraging. When we got to the ninth hole Dave sent MaryLou a text to come and join us at the clubhouse for lunch.

Lots of golfers sitting around the tables inside the restaurant. We too opted for an inside table today — it was pretty hot out there. I ordered my last order of ceviche from the clubhouse restaurant. I’ll miss our clubhouse lunches.

We took our golf bags home and dropped off our pull-carts at the caddy shack. I showered and through in one last load of laundry. I had just put that load into the dryer when Dave announced that they were out the door, getting an Uber to go see a movie. I hurried down to join them.

We went to the City Centre Mall, not too far from our place. Movie tickets are about four dollars, and the medium coke to go with the ticket was another four. Good deals, but hardly worth it today. The movie Dave had selected, “Cold Pursuit”, a Liam Neesom film that proved all the Liam Neesom stereotypes true, was terrible. But the seats were great, the theatre was air conditioned, and the coke was refreshing.

After the movie we went back to the Querreke restaurant, right there in the mall, for our last Merida supper. Curried chicken pasta for me, and a pizza for the Driedgers. Delicious.

When we got home from the movie I took my laundry out of the dryer and started folding and packing it into my golf bag. I will come home with my backpack and the golf bag. That means my golf bag is dangerously close to being over the weight limit. We’ll see how that goes over at the airport on Tuesday. I also had to write a review for Airbnb in regards to our apartment and our experience here — and I sent a goodbye text message to Mario, our host, and another to Pepe, our friendly neighbour.

MaryLou was also packing, but we all interrupted our preparations to sit down and watch another episode of the second season of Mrs Maisel. Great.

I stayed downstairs for an hour and a half after the Driedgers went up to bed. I wanted to finish up the partial bottle of red wine and maybe watch a rerun of Fareed on CNN. I finally shut everything down and went upstairs to write my journal and then call it a night. Got to get up early tomorrow to get a cab to the bus station for our 9:30 bus ride to Cancun. I’ll see you tomorrow.