Pat’s Wildways: not like our shrimp festival

Bucko and I are back in our happy place in time for the Placencia Lobster Festival just down the beach from our usual hotel in Belize. We were still reeling from the overcrowded, heavily touristed Fernandina Shrimp Fest, a yearly event that has become increasingly onerous for many locals like us who stay away from the crowd, traffic and parking nightmares. I was curious (ever curious) to compare the two festivals.

The Placencia Lobster Festival was organized by the Belize Tourism Industry Association (BTIA) as a fundraiser for the Village of Placencia and local businesses to bring in more visitors to this little town off-season, when the hottest weather usually deters tourists. Sort of like our Shrimp Fest, right? Well, I am happy to report that there were virtually no international tourists there, except for a few repeat regulars like Bucko and me. But wow was it hopping with Belizeans that traveled here from elsewhere in the country to enjoy the happenings. And it couldn’t have been better!

For three days, the air was filled with the sounds of steel drums, reggae performers and live music with a danceable beat that everyone seemed to resonate with. Even from our second-story porch, a six-minute walk away from the event, we were entertained by the throbbing music far beyond 3 a.m. But no complaints here. With our window open, the sounds of the waves hitting the beach below us mingled with the local music, lulling us into pleasant dreams of exotic places. Wonderful.

And the lobster festival itself has something for everyone. For those interested in eating lobster, there were restaurants and nongovernmental organizations grilling lobsters and serving up specialties like lobster mac and cheese, lobster fritters, and lobster nachos. You name it and if you could put lobster in it, you could find it for sale. The annual lobster harvest season just opened before the festival and Belizeans were craving it. If you wanted to spend $40 US for a giant grilled lobster, you could (we didn’t). But if you had a family of kids in tow, there were plenty of treats like inexpensive cotton candy and popcorn to keep them happy too.

Food tents with lobsters on the grill and stalls selling Belizean artisan products like seaweed shampoo and cremes, fresh fruit juices, handmade jewelry, T-shirts and whatnot lined both sides of the single pedestrian path, but it was uncrowded and unhurried, a far cry from the comparable scene in Fernandina. And for oldsters like us, there were plenty of places to sit.

At the end of The Point, a huge tent was manned by volunteers selling Belizean beer and stiff mixed drinks in front of a stage and dance floor where live music blared and people gyrated, in between the watermelon, burger, and beer drinking contests. The land here at the end of Placencia Village has long been used for such celebrations but is under threat of development. “Pint da fu we” is the local rallying cry.

The beach and the water provided the backbone for the festival. People spread blankets on the beach, bobbed in the 85-degree water, and pulled their little boats up on shore. Others crowded the main dock at five o’clock Saturday to watch the fish weighing for the fishing tournament, where a few score of teams competed to bring in the best catch of tuna, tarpon, barracuda and others, where different points were given for each pound of various fish.

Here is a Facebook reel from Belize Hub, showcasing activities from the lobster festival.

It was nothing like our shrimp festival, and that’s a good thing. The whole event seemed like Fernandina may have been in a long-gone era. People strolled and lingered and chatted with their friends. There were plenty of picnic tables in the shade and places to relax. And there was no traffic or parking problem! People got to the festival on foot or by small boats — no cars were allowed anywhere close.

Placencia is a always a pedestrian village — cars are not permitted at any time in much of it and people get from place to place on the sidewalk, which runs parallel to the one road but a couple of blocks closer to the ocean. Our own hotel is on this sidewalk, and for two weeks of our vacation, we never get in a car. We can walk anywhere we want to go — a number of restaurants, shops, tiki bars and such surround us. On calm days I can even “ocean walk” in waist-deep water on the sandy bottom to the Point.

Placencia is a low-key place like Fernandina once was but it is rapidly getting degraded by overdevelopment and illegal sand mining, pier construction, and mangrove destruction to build expensive vacation homes for non-locals. We are happy to experience it now before it too becomes ruined. We are glad we are too old to see what it will no doubt turn into not so long from now.

But now, for local Placencians, life is still good ...

Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. Patandbucko@yahoo.com