Placencia

Was up early Monday morning and hit the road to Belize. Trip took about 6-7 hours and I stopped in Belize City just long enough to hop on a bus to Dangriga. 3-4 hour chicken bus ride later, arrived in Dangriga. The people of Belize look much, act and speak much differently than what I've grown used to over the last month. Much darker skinned, they speak..a form of english, although I can rarely understand it (even their signs are printed in their crazy dialect with things like, "Don litta mon, use yo hed!") and they all seem extremely friendly and laid back. I ran into Mike (you may remember him from such previous adventures as "The Palenque waterfall tour" and "The night we got really drunk in San Cristobal") after about an hour of being in town, we grabbed a twin room together and spent one night in Dangriga. Not much to do there, so the next morning we headed down south to Placencia. Placencia is essentially a Caye, but with a long sandbar that reaches to the main land, so our little chicken bus could maneouver its way out there. Tiny little town of only 500 people, but a decent amount of travellers, beachside bars and restaurants. We thought we'd catch the Garifuna festival on the 19th here, but unfortunately this town doesnt overly celebrate it. We had plans to do some deep sea fishing tomorrow, but as Mike JUST told me, he looked into it and its $300 USD...so scratch that idea. Maybe we can find some cheaper place. The main activities of the place include, lying on the beach and talking about doing stuff, but not actually doing it. The rum here is extremely cheap and my head is still spinning from last night's festivities. We woke up fairly early and decided to test ourselves by running down to the far point of the bay, then swimming back. The running went fine, but a quarter of the way through the swim I found that I had inadvertantly wandered into a small jellyfish community. They greeted me warmly with their stinging whips across my back and around my right leg and I made a hasty retreat to shore. FYI, pissing on your jelly fish wounds doesn't work...that's the last time I believe something I saw on a sitcom, but when in that amount of pain I was willing to try anything. We'll probably stay here until Saturday or so, giving me lots of time to catch up on my journal and reading, then head down to Punta Gorda and then onto Livingston to meet up with Jas.

Picture! The view from just outside our place, taken at around sundown. Although the ocean looks serene...beneath its crystal blue surfaces lie the dreaded Jelly lords and their evil minions just waiting for stupid Canadian kids to cross their domain.