At around 5 AM, I woke up to the sound of raindrops on my tent. It started as a light drizzle and gradually built into a torrential downpour. I got out and showered in the rain (which felt amazing after two days of sea water, sand and suntan lotion), but when I went back in to get a bit more sleep, I noticed that the entire tent floor (the gear provided by the tour wasn’t in the best shape) was flooded. I grabbed my gear and hid out in a little gazebo. I tried to sleep a bit on the picnic table, but it wasn’t meant to be.

The rain and subsequent flooding eventually got everyone else up a bit earlier than normal. Captain Patrick seized the opportunity to take any of us that wanted on a guided snorkeling tour of the reef. He was a great guide, not only diving down and pointing out some of the harder fish and coral formations to see, but also surfacing to tell us a bit about them. He showed us a school of tarpon, huge eagle rays, yellow rays, rockfish, and all kinds of other reef life.

We sailed off from Tabacco Caye around 9:30 and continued south. A few hours in, we stopped to snorkel at a section of the reef near a huge ocean dropoff. It was great to swim a bit past the dropoff. To go from being able to see an abundance of life and color at the reef to being able to see nothing but infinite blueness just a few feet away was really exhilirating.

A few more hours at sea passed until we finally reached Placencia. We unloaded the boat and said goodbye to Captain Patrick and Leon, and said hello to solid ground once again.

Placencia is a small beach town at the end of a peninsula towards the southern end of Belize. As is becoming an ongoing theme, the town is much more relaxed and quiet during the low season. Many of the hotels, restaurants and shops aren’t even open now.

I joined up with Chris, Kate and Suzy to offset the costs of accomodations a bit. There were cheaper options, but we ended up finding a place with AC and comfortable beds. Both of which were very welcome. It was definitely worth the few dollars premium we paid.

We kept the evening pretty low key as we were all exhausted from sun exposure, long days of swimming, a lack of sleep, and three days worth of free rum punch. We had a quick dinner, and ended up heading to bed well before 9pm.