Hanging Out and Eating Out

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We are spending most of our time either relaxing and reading or meandering around the village and eating our way through town at the various restaurants. So far we have eaten out for every meal except breakfast - this is such a treat since it's something we can't ever do at home. We'd run out of places to go in Balfour after a single day.

The restaurants have been really wonderful, cheap in comparison to home or the States. Belizian money is $2 to every $1 US. Portion sizes are reasonable unlike the States where the meals tend to be massive. We've been living on mostly fish and chicken, in fact, I have only seen steak on one menu so far and it was seriously expensive in comparison to other items. The side dishes are mostly coconut rice or mashed potatoes, salad or cooked veg. A couple of local delicacies Ian has tried are conch (a crustian) and snook (fish) which has a rubbery texture something like squid. It's always interesting to try new foods on a trip but I'm not sure we would order either one of these again.

Some restaurants are just barbeque shacks like Brenda's on the beach. Others are conventional sit down in-door with air conditioning and decks. There's lots of creole influence in the area, I always thought that Creole meant spicy, but it turns out to be more flavourful that hot - really good and diferent. Something I'll have to look into more when I get home since I'm always on the hunt for new types of foods to cook. Overall, the restaurant food has been delicious, not a bad meal so far, but with a full kitchen in our condo we can't be that lazy for the whole month, so we plan to start shopping for groceries tomorrow and start cooking more of our own meals.

Everyone here seems to just live day to day and we're getting the hang of this style ourselves. No one seems like they are in much of a hurry, except maybe the construction workers and there are sure lots of those. We are told they are brought in by the busload from places like Nicarauga since there's more needs in the area than the local labour market can supply.

Placencia village is in the midst of a major change, there is hardly a place you can go without hearing the sounds of buildings going up. The price of real estate is already reflected in this future transformation. You can still buy a shack in town for around $80 K but in the more upscale areas like where we are staying, you are looking at around $350 K - $450K. We can certainly see why people want to invest in this beautiful and relaxing area. It's going to be a very different place in only a few years, likely pricing the locals right out of the market.

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