Just returned from a great trip to Placencia!

[mm2613]

Hey all,

I just wanted to let everyone know I spent the last week diving out of Placencia with Splash divers and had a great experience.

I saw whale sharks on 4 out of the 5 dives we went on (dates 4/19, 4/20, 4/21)- and did some relaxing reef diving at silk caye, half moon caye, and a few other sites. One of the dives at Gladden was action-packed with two large bull sharks, 3 or 4 whale sharks, three dolphins, nice school of jacks, and plenty of snapper - of course.

In addition to the diving I found Placencia to be a charming walkable town with wonderful people, decent beaches, and great food. Also a great variety of land based tours available.

 

[Ralph Capeling]

Hey all,

I just wanted to let everyone know I spent the last week diving out of Placencia with Splash divers and had a great experience.

I saw whale sharks on 4 out of the 5 dives we went on (dates 4/19, 4/20, 4/21)- and did some relaxing reef diving at silk caye, half moon caye, and a few other sites. One of the dives at Gladden was action-packed with two large bull sharks, 3 or 4 whale sharks, three dolphins, nice school of jacks, and plenty of snapper - of course.

In addition to the diving I found Placencia to be a charming walkable town with wonderful people, decent beaches, and great food. Also a great variety of land based tours available.

Thank you very much for a very nice review of Splash and for complementing life in our village.
Regards
Ralph

 

[Downing]

Thanks for the report. Did you do any of the land based tours and if so could you review those as well?

 

[mm2613]

I did the monkey river tour for several reasons - the most important one being that I wanted a relaxing trip after a somewhat rough day out at see for whale sharks (the weather really wasn't that bad though). It involved less travel than the other tours and therefore didn't take up an entire day - which I liked. Also - I'd prefer nature-viewing to Ruins any day.

And relaxing it was - a single prop on a 9 foot boat or so was just what I needed after braving the "swells" at gladden spit.

The tour was very relaxing - the guide highly knowledgeable having grown up in the monkey river town and had no problem answering all of our questions. We saw some cool stuff including a couple of crocs, mangrove finch, heron, some beautiful Ciba (sp?) trees, giant bamboo, some small bats, and a nice big Blue Morpho butterfly. The sound of the howler monkeys is unexpected and pretty cool - they got very close to us - about 10 feet above us in the trees. No big cats unfortunately.

On the way back we stopped to look for manatees- we saw about 5 surface - but all you see is their snouts - a little less exciting of a stop than I was expecting.

the other trip I was considering was Cockscomb - where there is a chance you see big cats (although one couple I talked to said based on the log book sightings were approx every other week). This is more of a hiking / trail based trip - with fun options like zip line or river tubing available.

From what I could gather there is something to see on all the land tours... its more what you're into that will help u choose.

 

[Hank49]

You don't have to go to Cockscomb to see big cats. Just tie a dog outside your house. Cougars (or tigers, as they're called here) and jaguars love to eat dogs.

 

[Downing]

That explains why "dog" is pronouced "katfude" in Creole.