The weather looks a little better today. We spent a little time walking around town this morning, to the bakery and to the fry jack shop. A fry jack is basically a triangular shaped homemade tortilla that is deep fried, it puffs up and becomes hollow and they stuff it with all kinds of things. The menu board actually had 26 different options and all were very inexpensive. We ordered a couple to take back with us. We then stopped by the bakery. We were there at opening time and there were actually several people waiting at the front door, about the closest thing to a crowd as we’ve seen on Caye Caulker. The bakery had lots of wonderful things. We chose a few that looked good and took them with us as well. On the way back we happened to see the islands large 6-seater taxi golf cart that we would need to get us and our bags to the airport. We stopped him and told him when and where we would need him. He introduced himself and said he would be there to get us. As we walked back I took a minute to appreciate the beauty of this island, on the street by our hotel you can see the Caribbean at both ends of the street at the same time. The island is well under a mile wide and only a few miles long. Back at our room we still had some fresh pineapple and the bottles of freshly squeezed orang and pineapple juice we bought yesterday. I could get used to having all these fresh things for breakfast. We finished packing up and then walked down the beach and took a few pictures. The girls were soaking up as much warm weather as they could because it would probably be below freezing when they got back to Brandon at 8:00. We have been amazed at how few Mosquitos we have seen since we’ve been here. We asked John about it at dinner the other night. He said the government actually sprays regularly and keeps them well under control, he also said that he has never seen a rodent on the island. The only animals here are lizards, crocodiles, and boa constrictors. I kinda though at first that maybe that was a joke, but apparently not. The one thing they have here that everyone “gets” to experience are the sand fleas. You hardly ever see them as you walk around, and they are a little more like gnats that are so small to be barely visible, Christian, Mallory and I haven’t had much trouble with them. A little bug spray and we only got maybe a couple of bites. Olivia, however, seems to be allergic to them. She has large red welts all over her legs. She keeps hemp oil on them (the local remedy that actually seems to help). She tried to count the welts on her legs but stopped when she got to 50. Peter picked us up on his extended red golf cart, even arriving 10 minutes early which is unusual in Belize. After a 10 minute ride to the airport, we left our luggage on the front porch of the terminal and checked in. The entire airport building is probably not even 800 square feet with one long strip of concrete outside for take off and landing. We waited in the “lounge” which would accommodate 6 people max. When it was time to board a lady basically stuck her in and told us it was time to board. We walked about 50 yards to the plane and climbed the short rolling staircase into the 12 passenger plane. The view from the air was spectacular. We seemed to be only a couple thousand feet in the air. The water was so blue is was hard to tell where the water ended and the sky began in the distance. From the time our wheels lifted off the ground until the time they touched down in Belize City was NINE MINUTES! It took longer to get to the airport in the taxi! We got into the airport and got the girls checked in. We had lunch at the Sungarden restaurant in the airport. We dined on local cuisine of stewed chicken with rice and beans and conch soup for Christian and I. It was fabulous. Belizeans seem to only know how to cook fresh, I guess there are no such things as frozen or canned food options for theses dishes anyway. After lunch the girls went through international security and we checked in and saw them once again in the terminal to wait at our gates. Although our departure times were almost the same, they boarded quickly but our flight boarded only 5 minutes before flight time. A tropic air employee led us out across the Tarmac a long way until we finally got to our plane. The man in charge of the steps was sitting on one of the landing wheels of the plane reading a newspaper. He hopped up when he saw our little line coming. The plane was pretty full with only 1 seat still available (of
course that meant there were 11 passengers). We wasted no time taking off. We had both land and sea views this time and it was no less spectacular. 20 minutes later we touched down in Dangriga to let all but 5 of us off. From the moment our wheels touched down to the time we lifted off again was less than 5 minutes! I saw the passengers get off and I saw the crew get their luggage out from underneath, but I still don’t know how they did it so fast. After 10 more minutes in the air we approached Placencia. Because Placencia is a peninsula, there was water at each end of the small airstrip. Of course the pilot does this constantly, but for us sitting right behind him it seemed we would either touch down too soon in the water or fall off the other end into the water. Obviously we did neither. Luggage claim was much like the water taxi, a large rolling cart with 5 bags, we identified ours and they matched the claim ticket. Our landlord for the week, Kay, had asked a local driver to pick us up. Sam loaded our backpacks into his van and we were off. We rode through town toward the cottage we had rented. This town was a little different from the others we had seen. First of all there were cars clogging the street. The businesses were spaced apart a little and each had their own building, unlike the islands. We stopped a few miles later and Sam handed us our backpacks and pointed down a long sidewalk. He said Kay was waiting for us, and we would know the cottage by the white picket fence. We walked into a partially residential, partially small commercial area for maybe quarter of a mile. When we reached the ocean we saw the white picket fence to our right and knew we had made it. Through the small gate we found 2 small picturesque cottages. Kay emerged from one (she lives in one and rents the other) and showed us around. Our cottage has steps leading to a small front porch (where the hammocks go) into a one room space. There is a section portioned off for the bathroom with thin walls, 2 double beds, and a small kitchen. The floors, doors, furniture, and exterior walls are all made of mahogany, simply because this seems to be the most common and readily available wood here. The small front yard has a white picket fence, several Palm trees and lounge chairs, beyond the front fence the beach is about 50 feet wide to the carribean sea. Kay gave us instructions on how to work various things and gave us a map of the area. We went out exploring and found that between the main road and that quarter mile to our beach there was a network of sidewalks (for pedestrian traffic only) that wove in between various shops, restaurants, small guest houses, and a few private bungalows. We eventually found our way to a market and stocked up on a few things for our cottage so we would no longer have to eat out every meal. After depositing our buys in the kitchen we set out along the beach and found a small open air restaurant to have dinner. We just lingered there for a long time. Well after dark we walked back and fell into bed exhausted. So far Placencia is proving to be a great place. So many things to explore and so different from where we have been before this.