Placencia

Before the Europeans came, the Maya lived on the peninsula, and archaeological evidence suggests they made salt here and traded it along the coast. Spanish sailors on the southern coast named the point Punta Placentia, "Pleasant Point". In the 17th century English Puritans, originally from Nova Scotia and Providence Island, settled here, but their community died out in the 1820s during the Spanish American wars of independence.

Several families resettled the peninsula in the late 1800s, and Placencia grew into a village that lived from the sea. Further up the peninsula, the early settlers of Seine Bight, now a mainly Garifuna village, named it after seine fishing and the bend of the shore. For much of the 20th century Placencia earned its living from fishing, and the narrow footpath that served as its main street became its best-known feature.

From the late 20th century tourism took over. On 8 October 2001 Hurricane Iris struck southern Belize with winds of 145 mph and damaged nearly 95 per cent of the buildings in Placencia. Developers bought up land as values fell, and in the years since the peninsula has been steadily built up with resorts, holiday homes and new businesses, while property prices have kept rising.

Placencia is a mixed village. At the 2010 census the largest groups were Creole and Mestizo, with smaller numbers of people of mixed descent, white residents, Mopan and Q'eqchi' Maya, Garifuna and East Indians. Seine Bight, a few miles north, is a historic Garifuna settlement.

The village still carries the identity of a fishing settlement, and fishing guides, sailors and boatmen are central to its life; two of the largest sailing charter fleets in Belize are based here. Saltwater fly fishing for permit, tarpon and bonefish is a draw, and whale-shark trips to Gladden Spit run around the full moons from April to July.

Placencia hosts a lobster festival and the Placencia Peninsula Arts Festival, and Easter Week, likened to a spring break in Florida. Maya Beach, up the peninsula, has an art gallery. The pace is slow and informal, with beach bars, live bands and the Sidewalk at the centre of social life.

The 2010 census counted about 1,500 permanent residents in Placencia village and about 3,500 on the whole peninsula, citizens and expatriates together. Visitors add to these numbers, above all in the high season.

The economy, once built on fishing, now depends on tourism: guesthouses and resorts, dive shops, sailing charters, fishing guides, restaurants and bars, along with construction and property sales. Across the lagoon, the larger village of Independence and Mango Creek, with about 4,000 people in 2010, has schools and a college used by families from around the area.

Life in the village centres on the Sidewalk and the main road. Drinking water is piped in from an artesian well on the mainland, and the airstrip crosses the peninsula from east to west. Small planes to Belize City, buses to Belmopan and a water taxi across the lagoon to Independence link the village with the rest of the country. Development on the peninsula has kept growing since 2001, and property values have kept rising with it.

Seafood is the heart of Placencia's food. Snapper, grouper and other fish come straight off the boats, and lobster and conch are eaten in their open seasons. Fish tacos, shrimp cocktails, burritos and smoked fish and chicken are standard beach-bar fare.

Everyday Belizean cooking is close at hand too: rice and beans cooked in coconut milk with stew chicken, fried plantain and potato salad at lunchtime, and garnaches, salbutes and burritos at small cafés near the bus stop. Garifuna cooking, the tradition of nearby Seine Bight, brings hudut, fish in a coconut broth served with mashed plantain, and ereba, a cassava bread made from grated cassava.

To drink there is Belikin beer, including a stout, One Barrel rum and local coconut rum, often taken at a beach bar at sunset, as well as fresh fruit juices. Italian restaurants, a gelato shop and a Belgian café add variety, and the resorts on the peninsula have their own restaurants.