15 April Placencia check in

It's Monday and Customs and Immigration are open in the nearby town of Big Creek. Placencia is a protected anchorage between the mainland spit and an island. It's also a vacation spot with a village of guests houses and restaurants along the beach on one side and a street of restaurants and supermarkets on the other side.

Yolis and the anchorage

We left our dinghy at Yolis, a yachties and locals hang out bar, and walked up main street to the hokey pokey dock. Hokey pokey is the name of the water taxi service which takes you from Placencia to Big Creek via a mangrove lined big creek. It takes twenty minutes and costs U$3 each.

Hokey Pokey at Big Creek

When we arrived at the terminal we were looking for Pape Denas, a recommended taxi driver who would take us to each of the offices we needed to visit and drop us back at the Hokey Pokey.

Pape found us. He's lovely, a slim man of about 50, a Rasta by the cut of his dreads, who drives a battered maroon minivan, who knows the system, the people and is smiling and helpful.

On the way to the Health department he handed out Immigration forms. At Health we completed forms, passed muster and came out to find Pape waiting. Five minutes away is Immigration which was particularly busy with people applying for visa extensions. Visas are issued for 30 days, but you can buy extensions.

It took a while filling in more forms, paying U$45 for two. By the time we our passports were processed and returned it was getting close to midday and lunch break so we hurried out and across the road to Port Authority office where we filled in more forms and handed the lady our passports with the Immigration stamp. Or so we thought. There wasn't a stamp – they'd not stamped our passports in and not given us a receipt and in our hurry I'd overlooked checking as I usually would.

Even closer to midday it was a quick jog back to Immigration to point out the omission. Our passports were taken in to the back office, stamped (this time we checked) and returned with a smile but with no apology.

Back to Port Authority which has the convenience of a credit card machine to pay your dues of U$45 plus U$2.50 per day cruising permit. Our final stop at Customs completed all the paperwork (no charge here) and we walked out to find Pape waiting in the car park. We'd missed the last morning departure of the hokey pokey. The next one was at 2.30pm so time to stop at a bar and have a cold beer and a bite to eat; stewed pork, rice beans and plantain for U$4. Pape came back at 2pm, dropped us at the ferry terminal and charged us U$5 each for his service.

Total cost to check, 15 days visit, ferry and taxi was B$290 / U$150.