Another day in Placencia

In Placencia there is a little sidewalk located half way between the main [only] street and the beach. From that sidewalk you have access to a lot of restaurants, beaches, and stores. We ate some divine fish and chips, fish burgers, and a papaya banana smoothie at this beach restaurant. When we were finishing up, a man walked up from the shore to the side of our table. He pointed to our food and said, "can I have some of that, just kidding." We had actually just been talking about the large portion sizes and that we ought to give the rest to some kids or something. We said, "actually, you can if you want, we were just talking about how we had too much food." He asked us to grab him a napkin, he opened it and than asked us to load the food into it. He told us he was in a drum band that was playing that night at the "Purple Monkey" (a bar and grill) and that we ought to come see him. He then headed over to a mid-20s girl laying on the beach and started chatting it up with her. It took maybe 30 seconds before the girl's boyfriend/husband came ripping out of the water to break up the conversation. Hahaha. That night,we did end up walking by the Purple Monkey and listened to the band for a few minutes.

 Here's the sidewalk. See all the signs pointing to different stores and restaurants? We stopped at some of the stores to look for souvenirs. It seemed that the majority of them were being run by kids, sometimes as young as maybe six. They were darling!!! and so friendly.

There is a lot of damage in Belize from the hurricanes that occurred not all that long ago. In the picture below you can see the footings of a dock that was destroyed.

 These parrots were outside of the bank. There was a sign on the bank that said something about beware of guard dogs. I wondered if these were their "guard dogs". Seemed pretty friendly to Eric.

 We bought some guava and mango jams (and probably some Maria's cookies, since I seemed to need a new package every time we stopped at a grocery store) while we were out, so we walked around searching for a bakery to get bread to eat it with for breakfast. We were pointed to John the Bakerman's place. It was awesome! The bakery was connected to their house (as are many of the stores, etc) and had really cool old black stoves.

 

 

 The highways have "Speed Humps" everywhere. You'll be cruising at a pretty good speed and have to slow way down for these humps, since they are rather large. Many of them serve as a crosswalk as well.

The people are beautiful. Especially the darling children. It's such a different world down there, things are so minimal, yet everyone seems so happy and, for the most part, carefree.

 North of Placencia is SO different. There are gigantic mansions being built in a Venice-like area, where you access the houses via canals.

 We got a kick out of their very secure scaffolding {cough cough} and the sticks they use for support.