Placencia boasts the longest continuous sidewalk in Belize. We enjoyed a walk on the sidewalk, followed by lunch at De Tatch, an open air restaurant overlooking the beach. The views from the sidewalk are beautiful! (see below) The temperature has been steadily increasing these last couple weeks and we kept moving from shady spot to shady spot on our walk. In Oregon it's 48 degrees today, the inverse of the temperature here, 84. After lunch we hurried home and took naps with the air conditioner blasting.
The following day we took a tour of Monkey River. The town of Monkey River became a town officially in 1891 with a population of 2,500. It thrived on the banana and lumber trades but was reclassified as a village in 1981 after a banana blight stopped banana production and the lumber trade faltered. Then in 1981, Hurricane Ivy hit the town and completely destroyed it. Now it has a population of around 200 and it's primary income source is tourism. Our tour guide lives in Monkey River and after our tour we ate a traditional lunch in the village.
On our tour we saw many different kinds of birds, turtles, bats, lizards and even a larger troup of Black Howler Monkeys up in the trees. We saw fresh (two hour old) jaguar tracks in the mud. We drank water from a tree that stores water in its trunk that is good to drink and tastes fresh. We also rekindled a relationship with our old friends the fire ants. We hadn't realized that the boat trip would involve a jungle trek and were wearing sandals and shorts. It kept us hopping for a bit. We highly recommend that you wear long pants, socks and full shoes in the jungle.
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