Placencia

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I'm finally getting to a point in school, where it's so busy I'm overwhelmed. What happened to that vacation I was enjoying!? I will never figure out why professors seem to coincide their most demanding work to be due on the same day/week. By these standards I must procrastinate and update my blog. In other sad news, there will also be no pictures for a while, until I replace my flash drive. Ahhh, technology.
Anywho, we are returning from a lovely weekend in Placencia, on the Southern(ish) coast, and the only nice beach on the mainland, so I'm told. All of us had unfathomable amounts of work to do, but put if off to attend an arts festival. "Festival," was used in the broadest sense of the word. To be fair, artistic ventures aren't popular in Belize, except among tourists, as a lot of people don't have tons of expendable income for art. An unfortunate thing (I thought) about it was that many of the vendors were ex-pats from the states. Many of us went looking to see Belizean arts and crafts, however, found little. Though, imported Guatemalan goods filled the gift shops, and Maya women were at every turn spilling the contents of their bags filled with handmade goods.

The weather gave us a break and was sunny the majority of the time we spent there, and the rain gave us more opportunity to poke around the town, and check out vendors. Upon arrival, I discovered I had left all of my money back home, so I commenced a trek from one end of town to the other under the burning sun, while the rest of the group hit the beach. After obtaining sufficient funds I too, did the same.
We spent many hours on the bus, any many more on the beach. Placencia is one of my favorite beach spots thus far. It doesn't quite have the same touristy feel as San Pedro, which seemed to have lost a lot of its Belizean qualities.

Placencia was also a birthday celebration for 2 members of the group. We had a difficult time finding a place that would seat all 20 of us on such late notice, for dinner, but lucked out. Pretty fabulous way to spend your birthday if you ask me. While basking on the beachn we were fortunate enough to see a Portuguese Man O'War float ashore (amazing colors).
Photos (of Placencia) to come later.

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Photos

Jon the Bakerman
We followed the signs to the bakery, and this is what we found...