Leaving Belize City we took a five hour bus journey South to a place called Independence, where we took a water taxi to Placencia, a strip of land connected to the mainland by a small land bridge to the North. The bus journey was hot (no air conditioning), busy and uncomfortable, but luckily the water taxi owner was on the bus, so we got straight to the island. Driving through the country we saw some real poverty, so were glad to reach Placencia which is quite touristy. The water taxi was met by Big Stan, a big lump of a man from LA. He threw Allison's bag on his shoulder and nearly crumpled under the weight! Stan owned some huts about thirty seconds both from the beach and also a path which is in the Guiness Book of World Records for being the longest and narrowest or something - someone, somewhere must care! Placencia is quite a cool town and is defintely more touristy than Belize City, though the young locals were still shouting out comments at us so we never really felt that comfortable. We decided to spend a few days all the same, because from what we'd seen it was by far the safest and nicest part of Belize so far. The downside however was that we did have a few visitors in our room each night. In all we killed about a dozen cockroaches in the three days we were there, and had a gekko living in our bedroom, which we affectionately named Gordon. Gordon didn't bother us though. The island was overrun with loud Americans who all had boats and tall stories about their escapades sailing around Central America, we assumed drug trafficking. We also saw our first English couple for a while, who after a few Belikins (local Belizean beer) got up on the karoake and did a heavy rock tune in a gruff voice, followed by the Monkees but with alternative lyrics "Then I saw her face, and I wished I'd sh@gged her from behind". He got a talking to. Strangely around this time Rich also became the focus of the town drunk called Ed (which we assume is short for 'local p1ssh-ed'), when he started (slurringly) calling him Michael Jackson (before or after the surgery we don't know) and then Mick Jagger. Must be something to do with the Jimi Hendrix Experience hairstyle he's going for! After a few days we decided to leave the palm trees and beaches of Placencia behind and head to the palm trees and beaches of San Pedro on San Ambergris Island instead, which was made famous by the Madonna song La Isla Bonita.