Time Flies!

Thursday, December 02, 2021
Placencia, Stann Creek District, Belize
Time flies.
Now I have really gotten behind and I'm having a tough time remembering what we did in the last few days.  But that's why we take photos.
So, Sunday was a pretty quiet day.  We went for lunch (salbutes) at the Barefoot Bar and after lazing around all afternoon, we wandered over to the lagoon side just after sunset to see some awesome colours in the sky.  Then we headed for dinner to Smoqiz, a new place on the walkway.  When we got there around 6pm, the owner informed us that they really close at 3:00 on Sundays, but that he would serve us from a limited menu.  Another couple finished their meal and left just after we arrived, and 4 more people came in after we had put our orders in.  The poor owner had been trying to close for 3 hours but people kept dribbling in and he kept serving them!  I had some really good ribs--something you don't see much down here. 
Monday morning, rather than our usual toast, we decided to go back over to Smoqiz for breakfast (they have a very extensive menu).  I finally got some "fry jacks" as part of my "Belizean breakfast".  You can really only get fry jacks in the morning and we hadn't been out for breakfast much. We decided to do this and skip lunch, since we were going on a walking food tour of the village at 4pm and thought we needed to have an appetite for that--and we were right.
The tour, again with Taste Belize, started off with some wonderful chocolate at their office, some from the Ixcacao farm that we had visited and some from the owner, Lyra's family farm.  Then some street food, sampling a hot tamale, bone-in, served from a cooler on a bench along the main road.  Then some wonderful bakery treats at a little shop that we had never even noticed before.  Next on to Brewed Awakenings, a coffee shop that also specializes in seaweed shakes, which were awesome.  Then down to the beach to Barefoot Bar for a shot of the local bitters and some fried breadfruit and some fish dip.  All along the way Lyra was filling us in with stories about the village and some of the history of the foods.  Next stop was the Little Wine Bar for some wine with cheese and meats--a really interesting place.  And finally over to the Galley Restaurant, behind the soccer field, where Dawn, who used to have her own eponymous place has moved back to her family's restaurant to continue cooking some of the best seafood around.  We sampled some conch fritters, curried lobster and creole snapper and all were great.  By this time we were thoroughly stuffed, so fortunately this was the last stop.
Next day, Tuesday, we had booked a catamaran sail & snorkel trip with Daytripper Charters.  We didn't have to get up too early as it left at 9:30.  There were a total of 10 of us on the trip and it was a very casual, relaxing trip, with lots of rum and beer, motoring out in the very calm wind and waters, but sailing back later in the day when the wind picked up a bit.  Jeff and Deion took good care of us.  We went to the nearby Bugle Cayes and the snorkeling was actually very good.  The water was dead calm and crystal clear and the reef still had a lot more colour than when we went to the barrier reef in Caye Caulker.  Not a lot of big fish--a couple of sleepy rays hiding on the bottom--but lots of small ones.   Then we moved over to another beachy spot for lunch and a swim before sailing home.  We stopped in for a quick bite at Buba Wuba's, next door to the Daytripper dock, and then the beer, rum and sun caught up with me and I had to go home for bed.
Wednesday was very quiet, with pizza for lunch at Cha Chi's but then, for Carol's belated birthday dinner we had a wonderful meal at Rumfish y Vino of 2 very different treatments of snook, a very good fish that is quite common here.  (It was her birthday the day before but we had rightly thought that we would not want to go out for a nice meal after the day on the boat.)  Only a couple of days left!

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2025-02-10

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