As it was no longer new years day the buses were actually running from Belize City. The journey started promisingly with the local reggae station but after half an hour much to our dismay the driver put on his Celine Dion CD (a highly negative impact of the globalisation trend). It took about 3 hours to go from Belize City to Dangriga via Belmopan which is on the way to Guatemala and took us through some nice hilly jungle. Then we did a swift bus change at Dangriga where our driver waved down the bus we needed to change to in the middle of the road as it had already left as our bus was running late. On the bus we met an unlikely looking conservationist called Adrian who had been visiting his dad in hospital after a family outing to the beach had ended with his Dad getting a rattlesnake bite
On the way into Placencia which is at the end of a spit Adrian explained his work trying to protect and restore the mangroves as this is what's happening to them (see very natural looking habitat and channel above- once mangrove). What's crazy is the number of half built and now abandoned developments which have destroyed the mangrove and not even for any use now.
Adrian was kind enought to help us find a good place to stay and then invited us to his for dinner.
It turns out Adrian is an amazing chef and is opening his own restaurant. The food was delicious (it doesn't look very impressive in this picture as sadly we took it before most of the food came out)
This sausage dog, one of many in the family, went from being highly suspicious to very soppy
Adrian and Baby (flash made it look evil but it wasn't). Adrian's family came in from church later that night, they were lovely but it was a bit hectic as they were all shouting in Creole.
An attempt to see manatees. The weather kept preventing us from going out manatee watching. One last chance, we spent a couple of hours scanning the sea but with no luck. We could see churned up mud patches on the water where manatee were feeding on seagrass roots underneath the boat but they can stay under for an hour and we didn't see them surface.
The view from a random american couples rooftop balcony - We were looking for somewhere to watch the sunset from and they invited us up for a beer. They were showing someone the land in the plot next to there house and Ralph ended up in massive political debate with the potential new home owner as he was a Tea Party type.
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