‘Travel | Placencia’ Posts

Our second major excursion in Belize was up the Monkey River, which is one of the larger rivers in southern Belize. We took a boat up the river and saw all sorts of wildlife (Howler Monkeys, Egrets, Ospreys, Crocodiles, ect.) and had lunch in Monkey River Town on the way back through.

back at the turtle inn, after making our way through the vast majority of the happy hour special list, we finally asked the bartender what the locals drink when they don’t want bad fruity resort drinks.

he introduced us to the rum and coke, with belize’s own one barrel rum.

the rum is made with sugar cane, which gives it a bit of a vanilla taste — which makes it a lot less like drinking alcohol, and a lot more like drinking vanilla cokes.

mmmmm.

Today was our first day of rain in Belize (and it would ultimate turn out to be our last), but as we were planning on spending the day at the resort, it didn’t turn out to slow us down a bit. We realized today that we haven’t taken a single picture of our accommodations, so we spent part of the day wandering around snapping pictures of where we stayed.

we spent the bulk of the afternoon at the pool bar, which just so happened had happy hour specials that made the drinks actually mostly affordable.

Our first major outing was to Laughing Bird Caye, a National Park in Belize (where, coincidentally, The Nature Conservancy has a few marine projects). Belize is home to the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, and we spent the day snorkeling through the western fringes of it.

We spent our first full day in Belize doing what all honeymooners should, lounging around the resort … which we referred to more elegantly as “getting our bearings.” After dinner, we went out and took some pictures of the resort at night.

it turns out pretty much everyone here is on their honeymoon — which would have been funnier if it we hadn’t had the “oh my god, we got married on saturday too! what a coincidence” conversation twelve times before we figured it out.

honeymoon! we flew out of Washington’s National Airport at early, early in the morning, and arrived in Belize CIty by mid-morning.

Once in-country, we hoped on a little puddle-jumper of a plane for the trip down to Placencia. WIthin minutes of landing, we were at the Turtle Inn, a Balinese-style report put together by Francis Ford Coppola after Placencia was ravaged by Hurricane Iris in 2001.

We spent the afternoon biking into the villiage, and hanging around the pool. Beautiful.