Placencia, Belize
From one idyllic setting to another. I love Belize.
It was a long day of public transport, catching a water taxi, 2nd class bus, regular taxi, and finally another water taxi through beautiful mangrove-lined rivers before we reached the beautiful town of Placencia. Only one main road, one walking path and water on three sides. Our guesthouse was incredible, giving us the sense of staying in someone's house, complete with a clean and homely bathroom. While there were still a few tourists around it was a billion times quieter than Caye Caulker and the visitors were a little more, shall we say, "mature". Sometimes I think we fit in better with the older crowd, compared to the uni students who have livers of steel and no sense of hangovers (or dignity, at times).
Our second water taxi trip.
Fifteen minutes was all it took to see the entire town. Beachside bars check, local restaurants check, street food check. There wasn't much around but it didn't matter - this was heaven as far as we were concerned. After a number of happy hour cocktails (there were over 100 on the menu, so we felt we showed quite a bit of restraint) we headed to a roadside truck for dinner. One gigantic burrito each topped off with a fry jack: deep fried doughy goodness, filled with beans and cheese. Not healthy but pretty tasty.
Placencia seemed like the perfect spot to go for a morning run, with limited people around and limited chances to get lost. How easy is it to follow the one road out of town and follow it back in again? Super easy. So that's what I did, until it became unbearably hot and I needed to head back to prevent hyperthermia.
Our second day was almost the same as the first: lounging around, doing nothing. There was little to do and nowhere to be, which is a feeling I don't experience often. Even on holidays there is usually dozens of places I want to see in each city or town, but that wasn't the case here. The hammock and the sand were my friends for much of the day.
March 17th, St Patrick's Day. We hadn't been keeping track of the date so we had no idea what today was, until the bars along the beach started putting out signs advertising their festivities. Basically this meant loud music and lots of "green" (mostly cocktails and jelly shots). We perched ourselves at the sandy-floored Barefoot Bar and suddenly the population of the entire town seemed to triple as every man, woman and child in the region came down to join in the fun. I'm not usually the life of the party, but get a few drinks in me and suddenly I am Beyoncé (without any semblance of singing or dancing talent). I kept expecting fireworks to light the sky as there was a definite New Year's Eve feel to the night. We had a ball, made even better by the 4 (four!) free cocktails we inadvertently received. I have no idea what time we made it to bed.
The drink on the right: some sort of St Patrick's Day concoction. The drink on the left: Belizean Long Island Iced Tea, made with a whopping 10 different rums (and maybe a tiny bit of coke).
