Placencia Village Things to Do

The belize zoo is well worth visiting. Happy healthy animals, knowledgable staff, easy access and safe.
Kids will love the spider monkeys, howler monkeys, a beautiful jaguar, crazy tapir (the national animal of Belize) and so on.
The zoo pays homage to Belizean culture and national treasures and is wonderful way to spend the day.

3 more images

The Garifuna people are unique to the eastern shore of Central America, less than eight percent of the population are Garifuna. The religous practices are guarded and seem to be a combination of African, Indian with a scattering of Catholicism. Their music, known as punta or punta rock, involves maracas, drums and turtle shells (where the famous Turtle shell band derived it's name). The punta dance is a subtle movement below the hips, the upper body barely moves, it's all in the hips and it a LOT harder than it looks, very sexy.
Garifuna culture performances have sprung up around Placencia, though most of the singers and dancers live in Seine Bight, a small Garifuna village north of Placencia.
Ask with your hotel for information on seeing a performance, many of the north end hotels sometimes offer performances, Turtle Inn, Kitty's Place, Robert's Grove.

A great inland adventure is the river-cave system about an hour away from Placencia. You climb up a mountain, get in to a hole that's maybe 2 feet wide, continue your way as you go deeper into the cave, surrounded by a multitude of bizarre formation of stalactite and stalagmites The you jump into the river inside the cave and float for around 15 minutes until you hit daylight again. Once we floated out of the cave, several Mennonite men and women in their traditional clothes were standing on the rocks above the river, looking at us. It was very surreal.

Visit the Mayan Ruins site of Nim Li Punit. If you have been to Palenque, Tikal, Copan, or Chichen Itza you won't be overly impressed with the ruins of Nim Li Punit but you will enjoy the silence and the absence of the tourist hordes. There are several tour operators in Placencia that offer trips to Nim Li Punit and other sites

Stop in at the Placencia Tourist Information Center if you're looking for someplace to stay or something to do. The people behind the counter are friendly and helped us with our hotel-finding strategy. They're closed for about 90 minutes at lunchtime.

There are several operations in town that will take you out snorkeling or scuba diving. We went diving with Advanced Divers, which has a small shack on the sidewalk. We were scratching our heads about the schedule of the trip. Two tanks would somehow take from 8:00 AM to about 3 or 4:00 PM. Usually 2 tanks only take up half a day.

Anyway, it was a pretty good day. The small boat fits 4 divers, a dive master and a couple of snorkelers. We sped out to the outer barrier reef to Pumpkin Caye (about 45 minutes out). There, we dropped off the snorkelers and took a few minutes to explore the island. Then we went back out in the boat for our first dive. I have to say the diving isn't as good as I was expecting. Visibility was only about 60 to 70 feet. By New England standards, that's fabulous. But having recently spent a week diving in Grand Cayman, we were somewhat underwhelmed. I'd compare the diving to the Bahamas or West Palm Beach, Florida (without the current). Maybe it's because the location we were at was not in a marine reserve, but we just didn't see a lot of diversity of wildlife.

After the first dive, we went back to the island and ate the lunch provided by Advanced, which was chicken, potatoes, corn & beans. We snorkeled around the island for a little bit before heading back out for the second dive. The snorkeling was excellent, although the water was downright hot!

The second dive was a bit more dramatic than the first because we dropped onto the top of a completely vertical wall, which was pretty cool. We saw a bunch of lobsters hanging out in the wall, and the usual bunch of parrotfish, squirrel fish, purple tangs & such.

After the dive, we went back to the island to pick up the snorkelers & headed back to Placencia. It was a very relaxing day, though I wish we could have squeezed a couple more dives in. A 2-tank dive to the barrier reef costs about $80 USD including lunch. I think snorkeling is about half that much.

You can fish, snorkel, or just relax. We went to Ranguana Cay, which was lovely. I'll let this picture speak for itself...

This is a great place to hang out and get out of the rain or the sun! Food is great – see my restaurant tip for more details