Hummingbird Highway to Placencia, Furniture Tour and Sink Hole Swimming

Today we left Belize City to travel to Placencia, a beach peninsula in the Stann Creek District, the whale sharks are here breeding in April and May during the full moon. 

With this research trip, we stopped by a local furniture maker to get a feel of the price and selection available to us. We ended up getting a personal tour of  how they make their bamboo and rattan furniture.  This is high end beautiful stuff, hand crafted here in Belize.  Everyone here is unbelievably accomodating in every situation.

We traveled via the Hummingbird Highway which is Belize’s most picturesque highway.  You wind through beautiful jungle hills, villages, pines, orange groves, a few amazing parks, and more orange groves.  In this area is where many tourists come for cave tubing, cave exploring or to take a refreshing (about 72 degrees) dip in a natural sink hole of spring water called the “Blue Hole”.  There is another more famous “Blue Hole” which divers visit off the coast of Belize; made famous by Jaques Cousteau.

We visited the inland Blue Hole and St. Hermans Cave for the cost of $4 USD each.  During this trip, the scene was straight out of Indiana Jones movies, and the bird sounds were straight out of Disney’s Jungle Cruise.  When we entered the mouth of the cave, a fine cool mist arose from the entrance just like expected special effects of any jungle themed movie.  2 miles down the road of the cave, we swam in a natural sink hole filled with spring water which turns into a jungle stream.  In this sinkhole, are a few yellow cichlids (fish), with exotic birds flying overhead.  One would swear you have found the lost “Eden”.

On the way to Placencia, we saw many orange groves and banana plantations.  I remember watching a documentary about the Belizean banana pickers.  They wrap the heavy hanging banana pods which contain about 70 bananas each in blue shipping bags...we have pics on our facebook pages.  Picking bananas can be very hazardous to the pickers because of the black scorpions known to hide in the banana pods.  They won’t kill em, but it is very painful.

Placencia is a peninsula in the southern part of Belize.  There are many high end houses and condos and currently many more under development.  It’s a beautiful beach town and would be a great place for a vacation, especially now during whale shark season.  We opted to wait on snorkeling with the whale sharks for now.  It’s a 50% chance of seeing one, and we are told to expect 3-4 foot sea waves...with a still healing knee, and our son being still a bit young to handle such, we have decided to wait for another time...we know we will be back to vacation here.