WELL, we made our trip to Placencia, upon our return we review this post and found that it had degraded to a shouting match. Make us sorry we posted in the first place.
Anyway, we did get to Placencia and based on the limited we received (Mr. Sluder and another travel agent (barbara ??) who are supposed to be "in the know" about Belize we decided to go ahead with our plans for staying at Soul Shine Lodge.....BIG MISTAKE
Without a reservation we made our way to the Lodge vai taxi ?. We stood at the edge of the canal for about 5 minutes before we noticed a buzzer which we should push to get someone to come across the canal and pick us up...we pushed the buzzer, and pushed, and waited and pushed, and pushed and waited and then resorted to yelling.....FINALLY a girl jumped into a small boat and came across to get us.
We asked if they had a vacancy and sure enough they did. We asked for a rate and was quoted 110.00 per night double...we thought this was high since this is supposed to be the off season but.....
Since we were there and it was getting late (5:30 pm) we decided to stay as we figured that by the time we got back across the canal, into the village to another motel/hotel ??? that it would be too late and it was hot.
We were given a cabana w/thatch roof/ ceiling, small refer, coffee pot, micro, etc. and the cabana had AC...sounded pretty good....MISTAKE #2
Bugs appeared about sundown...lots and lots of bugs...the girl said to use skin so soft which of course we did not have.
The AC was barly functional..it seemed to just blow barly cool humid air. OH well....dinner time...no place to eat but the lodge so...MISTAKE #3 They had fish tasted like it was last swimming in a lemon ????? We were afraid to eat the salad because we did not think that the greens had been cleaned properly and was wilted.
We forked through the food, scattering it around the plate, had a few beers and retired to the cabana....we finally showered and prepared for bed and !!!!!! motor boats kept running up and down the canal zooom...zooooom
Sleep finally came and then we woke !!!!!!all kinds of noise in the thatch, we thought perhaps there were bats, BIG bugs or lord know what...this racket started about 4:30 AM and continued until we finally got up...we wished for a mosquito net to keep the bugs off.
MORNING...Thank God....we had coffee and breakfast
in the restaurant and asked that our bill be prepared as we would be leaving around noon.
We went to the village and made arrangement for a room at another motel and got a taxi to take us back and pick up out luggage.
We crossed the canal again, went to the bar and asked for our bill....SURPRISE....it was astronomical compared to what we received...1 double room, 4 beers (2 ea.), 2 dinners ?, 2 breakfast 175.00 ?????
Oh well, good lesson learned.
We did manage to salvage our trip and had a great time diving and snorkeling at some of the cayes and enjoyed good food and lots of friendly folks in the village....we look forward to returning to Belize bearing in mind the lessons we learned.