Hey Haiawata,
Sorry for the delay. I didn't see your PM/Post until this afternoon when I got off work.
To answer your questions:
I stay with some friends in Placencia, so I'm afraid I'm not much help there. However, there are a ton of places to stay starting with cabanas on the beach all the way up to resorts like Francis Ford Coppola's Turtle Inn. I would think that most of these would be willing to hold your luggage for you while you galavant around the country. If you've got the budget, then I'd recommend Turtle Inn or Chabil Mar, which is right across the street from Splash. If you contact Patty or Ralph at Splash, they can help with accommodations. In fact, they would probably be willing to hold your luggage for you, too. They are super nice people and are always very helpful.
Placencia Car Rental has been my car rental of choice. They have offices both at the BZ Airport and, not surprisingly, in Placencia as well. I find they provide good service with a local flair as compared to Hertz, Avis, etc and are a lot cheaper. I should tell you that rental cars in Belize are not as nice as the ones here in the US. You're likely to get an older model with squeaky brakes, A/C may not work or work well, that sort of thing.
As far as the best way to get to Placencia, you have two choices assuming you don't want to take a bus from BZ City and take it from me you don't want to take a bus from BZ City. You can drive or you can fly. Both have their perks.
If you drive, you'll start off in the lowlands and gradually rise up into the highlands until you reach Belmopan, the country's capitol. From there, you hang a left onto the Hummingbird Highway and slice through the Maya Mountains, which aren't very big compared to the Smokies, the Rockies or the Cascades but nevertheless absolutely beautiful. After you get through the mountains, you turn right on the Southern Highway and then a left at the traffic circle which dead ends in Placencia. It should take about 2.5 hours. Driving in Belize is relatively easy as there aren't many roads so it's hard to get lost.
If you fly, you simply walk out of Customs into Goldson Airport, find the Tropic or Maya counter and then head for your gate. You'll get a birds eye view of Belize from the plane and arrive in Placencia in about a half hour. There's no real difference between the two airlines and both have flights to Placencia all day long.
Sometimes I drive both ways to and from Placencia. Sometimes I fly down and do without a car until I'm ready to hit the countryside, then keep the car the rest of my stay and turn it in at the airport. I don't really like to fly back as I'm always a little sad to leave so I try to stretch it out as much as possible.
I have several places for jumping off into the jungle.
The closest is Cockscomb Basin, the world's first jaguar preserve. If you don't know much about, google it. It's close enough that you can do a day trip from Placencia. Lots of trails. Watch out for jaguars, though. Kidding. They may be watching you, but you'll never know it.
One is Punta Gorda, which is about an hour and a half south of Placencia. There are two places there that I like to stay: Garbutt's Marine And Fishing Lodge and Copal Tree Resort. I stay at Garbutt's when I'm on my own. I stay at Copal Tree when my wife is with me. Dennis Garbutt has a tiny spit of land that juts out into the water. He built two cabanas and a triplex right over the water. Very basic but comfortable. Copal Tree is the complete opposite. It's on a very large parcel of land up in the jungle. You'll likely see Howler Monkeys outside your ridiculously luxurious cabana.
Another good jumping off point is San Ignacio, the main village in the Cayo District, about two and a half hours away. I love to stay at the San Ignacio Resort Hotel, an old British Colonial type hotel, when I'm in town. A couple of places in the jungle are Chaa Creek, very high end, and a little further up the dirt "road" Sweet Songs (formerly Duplooys), not quite so high end. There are actually quite a few high end jungle resorts in the Cayo, including another one by Coppola, Blancaneau.
The most remote of all jungle resorts would be Chan Chich Lodge, located in the far west of the country and part of the huge Barry Bowen estate (once the richest man in Belize until his untimely death in an airplane accident). Most guests fly in. I chose to drive and it was a bit of a hassle. You have to get permits in advance to cross over private property and show the permits at the checkpoints. The 60 mile dirt road to the Lodge is not well marked and wasn't easy to find. However, it was truly a once in a lifetime experience, although I'll probably do it again so come to think of it that will make it a twice in a lifetime experience, lol. Btw, when I drove it, I first went north to Corozal, which is right on the Mexican border, spent the night and left from there. I don't remember exactly but I think was another four or five hours from there. When I left, I went the other way and came out at Spanish Lookout, a Mennonite village that looks just like small town America.
Boy, as you can tell, I can go on and on and on about Belize. It's not Nirvana, but I do love it there and for whatever reason it always feels like I'm returning home when I step off the airplane and smell the hot, humid salt air. It's now been a little over two years, thanks to Covid, and I'm once again feeling the pull of the place. My summer's booked up with family stuff, but I'm thinking I'll go back again in the fall.
Edit: I think all the rental cars from Placencia Car Rental have been automatics.
