Caye Caulker to Placencia

Its day 6 of the trip and now we are in Placencia, Belize. The trip from Caye Caulker to Placencia took most of a day and was chock-full of central american experiences. We boarded the water taxi out of Caye Cauylker at 7:30 am bound for Belize City. Our brief (i.e. terrifying) cab ride a few days before had been through the "nice" part of the city and we were in no way prepared for the not nice part of the city. After getting to the water taxi station we crammed into a mini-van with a few other travelers and headed for the bus stop.

The bus stop is located next to a canal in one of the sketchiest parts of one of the sketchier cities you can find yourself in. Running through that part of town was a putrid canal that collected all the trash and waste from the surrounding neighborhoods. When we stopped in front of the bus station, it was apparent that even the taxi driver did not want to be there. All of a sudden we were being rushed (in a country not known for rushing) out of the cab, given our bags, and change for the cab ride in a blur of about 15 seconds. It was like being in a movie with one of the shaky hand-held cameras as we grabbed our stuff and bolted for the (at least perceived) safety of the bus terminal. Once inside though, we calmed down and gathered ourselves a bit and the people were actually very friendly about helping us find a bus. Turns out we had missed the bus to Placencia, and not wanting to wait around for an hour in that particular location, we caught another bus headed to a town where we could make a connection.

The best term to describe buses in Belize is "chicken buses". As you bounce down the road through the country-side, the bus is constantly stopping to let people in and out carrying everything from bikes to buckets to 50 pound sacks of grain. The first half of the ride they were blasting reggae, songs we had already heard about 50 times (when they like a song here they aren't scared to play it several times in a row just to get the point across). Bree has taken to referring to several songs as the soundtrack to Belize.

The second half of the ride was through the stunning mountainous region of central Belize. The hills around the area were blanketed in thick jungle, with all shades of green occassionally interrupted by the reds, blues, and purples of flowering trees and bushes. Along the road, the jungle was beaten back to carve out room for massive citrus groves. As the bus had no A/C, the windows were down, allowing the cool mountain air that smelled of orange blossoms and citrus to cascade through the bus. The bus eventually returned to the coast to the town of Dangriga, where we briefly considered stopping before deciding to move on all the way to Placencia.

A few hours on a bus and another boat ride later, we finally arrived in Placencia. As the boat navigated through the mangroves, we both got the feeling we would like this place. Placencia gets a bad rap in some travel books for being overly commercialized or overly toursity, or overly-whatever, but so far we've found this place to be far more relaxed than Caye Caulker.

Our impression of Placencia is no doubt enhanced by the cabana we have rented on the beach for $45US per night. So far, we've alternated between laying in hammocks in the sun, laying in hammocks in the shade, swimming, and walking up and down main street in Placencia (a 4 foot wide sidewalk about a mile long). As I keep reminding Bree "I really like this island." To which she responds "Its actually a peninsula." Either way, we really like this island.