The end of the dirt road.

This web page comes to you from the Purple Space Monkey, restaurant, bar, and free Internet Cafe in the splendidly laid-back town of Placencia (The "First Internet Cafe in Belize", the "Best Breakfast and Burgers in Belize" - Cosmopolitan 2003, and the "First Espresso Machine in Belize").

Placencia is our last Caribbean beach stop in Belize. We are parked right in the middle of town (N 16.514622 W 88.366023 ) next to the "worlds narrowest main street" only one metre wide, more a footpath than a street.

Since leaving Orange Walk we have visited a "baboon" reserve at Bermudian Landing where we parked outside the visitor centre (N 17.555600 W 88.534768).

Although always referred to as "baboons" in Belize they are in fact black howler monkeys.

The highlight of our tour was when our guide (and founder of the reserve) Fallet Young, called the local troop of howler monkeys who performed acrobatics for us.

They did not however, howl, as we were no threat to their territory.

For a video of the performance download this file.

Our anticipated parking spot in Belize City turned out not to know that RVs could park there, and declined the privilege of having us clog up their car park. However a nearby tourist policeman said we could park on South Park St. (near the Radison Hotel) at N 17.494385 W 88.182172.

Even though we were parked there on the night of a hotly contested local election it was one of the quietest places we have stayed for a long time.

The main business of Belize City, indeed the biggest business of Belize is tour ships. There are aparently three or four in town every day!

The main attraction for the tour ships (other than the fairly tacky shopping malls) are the Cayes (islands) off shore from Belize City. We took the 45 minute speed boat trip to Caye Caulker. Once again we were subjected to crystal clear water, palms, white sand and cheap(ish) restaurants.

En-route to our next wildlife conservation project we had our first taste of Belizian dirt roads, complete with corrugations and very soft sand at the edges.

At one point K-Nine strayed too near the soft sand and had to be pushed out by Ann and Bruce (with a little pull from Mog).

The Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary was established in 1986 and protects about 60 jaguars.

Questions about when a visitor last saw a jaguar were not answered. We were referred to photographs of jaguars "taken within a few kilometres" of the visitor centre. However they were taken, at night, by automatic cameras. In spite of our scepticism we were rewarded with one fine sighting of a jaguar at rest.