Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:43:52 +0000
Reply-To: kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET
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From: Ken Wilford <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Belize Trip Report
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John asked me a few days ago if I was having any fun on this trip or just spending my time trying to repair a cranky Vanagon. Well we have been having lots of fun too and exploring and seeing many cool things.
We are staying at a place called The Placencia resort and residences. We are actually staying in one of the residences which is a large mansion. Here is the website for the resort so you can see some pictures. If you click on residences we are staying in the large house with the boat parked in front of it in the pictures.
http://www.theplacencia.com/
At the resort we have a private beach and the largest swimming pool in Belize (haven't actually taken a swim in it yet though). There is also a very nice restaurant in the hotel and another place to eat at the end of a dock which is where we have been eating several times in the evening. It is buffet style and they have prime rib, shrimp, snapper, chicken, etc. I usually wind up taking one of each. It costs $30 a person but the food is worth it.
From here it is about a 20 minute ride down to the actual village of Placencia. In between there is a small village of Seine Bight which is nothing special. There are also beaches, beaches and more beaches. The whole coast line is one long beach and even though people build houses up to the beach and cordon off a section for themselves technically the beach is all public from the shore to about 60 foot in land. So you can just walk for several miles along the beach if you wish. We found a nice section that hasn't been developed yet and just sat there on the beach for most of a day on Sunday. It was awesome to have our own private beach and not have to worry about other folks and what they were doing.
In Placencia they have what once was the world's narrowest street (Guiness book of world records). Not sure if it still has this record but there is a long stretch of what is just a two person wide sidewalk that runs through the village for a few miles. Along this you have restaurants, small hotels, hostels, bars, tour shops, and souvenir shops. We found this one place at the very end of the side walk that is called "The Shak" to be a great place to eat, very reasonable, and they have the best fruit smoothies I have ever had in my life! They have these boxes of fruit sitting there and when you order a smoothy, the guy just walks out, picks up some fruit from a small box, and walks in the back to turn it into a smoothie. Awesome!
We rented a Suzuki Jimny which Chris correctly stated is basically a Samurai, a little newer than what we have in the states. I have been pretty happy with it on the trip. It has 4wd if we needed it, but so far we have not. Driving in Belize is not that bad. There are only a few main highways. The Nothern Highway, Western Highway, Hummingbird Highway, Manatee Highway, and Southern Highway. Each of these highways are more like secondary roads here in the states. Two lane, with some minor potholes here and there but for the most part in good shape except for the Manatee Highway which is reported to be just dirt and very bad shape. It looks like a short cut from Belize City to where we are, but because it is in bad shape it is best to not use it. We have avoided it. Driving here is like in the states. Speed limit is around 55 mph in places and you drive on the right side like in the states. Gas is about $4 a gallon and our Jimny gets about 30 mpg so it hasn't been too terrible traveling around this way. The only thing that takes getting used to are the speed humps or pedestrian walkways that are at every little village along the Highways. These things are so big that you have to slow down to about 12 mph to creep over them or just will trash your suspension and give yourself whiplash. After you deal with them for a few days you get used to them. You have to be careful because most of the time they are well marked, but occasionally they aren't or they are hard to see because of a shadow on the road, etc. We have driven the width of Belize three time so far and it takes about 2.5 hours each way from the west most point to the eastern shore where we are. Not too bad.
We used our vehicle to check out some of the Mayan ruins here in Belize. We went to Nim Li Punit first and it was not very impressive. I was expecting large pyramids but here there were only some large steele and a few ball courts. Then we went to Lubaantun . That was much more impressive with large structures. Any of these ruins has a small visitor center with information about the site and also a curator. The cost is only $5 a person to visit and they have nice bathrooms so it is worth it just for the bathrooms. The curator at Lubaantun was a great guy who spend a bunch of time with us, explaining the site and talking about the local plants, etc. He was actually a worker on the last scientific study of the site back in the 70s and it was awesome to talk to him. This is the place where the supposed "Crystal Skull" from the latest Indiana Jones movie was discovered back around the turn of the century. We spent some time talking about that as well and of course it if very controversial, with most folks today believing the whole thing to be a hoax. Even the curator was skeptical, although he wished that they would return the skull to the people of Belize.
We took a snorkeling trip yesterday. At the resort they charge $120 a person to take you on a day long snorkeling trip. We ran into a place in Placencia called the Placencia Dive Shop which would take us on the same tour for $63 a person! We took them up on their offer and the tour was great. It was just us and one other couple and our guide. We took a boat ride out to a place called Laughing Bird Caye (pronounced Key). This is a small island made up of coral and shells and a thin layer of sand and some palm trees. It did have bathrooms though, which was cool and some picnic tables. Our guide took time to stop and talk about each fish that we encountered and I got to hold a sea cucumber! It was sweet! The water was pretty clear and we got to see lobsters, fish, and lots of coral. You also got lunch and entrance fee to the park included with the price. It was a great day and on the way back the guide stopped at a small caye so my wife could collect sea shells. You can't do it at the Park because they don't let you take anything away with you but pictures.
So we have been having a lot of fun and relaxation. I even got to work on a Vanagon while I was here but I find relaxing as long as I am not under the gun with a customer breathing down my neck. The guy that was working with me is named Thorsten Kahl. He is a young German guy that came over here a couple of years ago. He seems like a knowledgeable guy and he was nice enough to help me work on the van for a whole day without charging me anything. I am going to try to get him an AC charging kit sent down to him since he doesn't have one as a thank you present.
I guess that is it for the moment. We are taking a rest day today after the busy day of snorkeling yesterday. If I can think of anything else cool that we have done, I will write it later. Hope you are all having a great day!
From Belize,
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
www.vanagain.com
