Placencia is a 16-mile peninsula in Belize. Seine Bight, which is where I am originally from, is 3 miles down at the end of the peninsula. Placencia was, from what I understand, basically a pirate community at one point. Afterwards, they then had people from Mango Creek and Monkey River, which are across a lagoon, who were the first ones to inhabit Seine Bite after the pirates left.
The area, Seine Bight got its name from what the geography looks like when viewed from the ocean (a “bight” or curve in the shoreline) and the local word for net, with is seine. The fishermen used to hang seines (nets) that they use to catch fish, on the bight.
Pirate communities were the first inhabitants of Seine Bight. They were using it as a hiding place. When the pirates left, the people from across the lagoon came over and it became a little, sleepy fishing community. This was not so long ago; I can still remember it as a child.
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The Garifuna only came in Belize in 1832 and we started spreading over the country. All of these happened over an extended period of time.
The Garifuna were the descendants of African slaves that had a shipwreck near St. Vincent islands. When they had this shipwreck, those who swam and survived got mixed with the Arawaks and the Caribs who were already living on the island of St. Vincent. These different groups of people got mixed and are now known as the Garifuna people. Our language has a certain background from Africa and a certain background from the Arawak and the Carib people of the Caribbean islands. Our language and the name of our people is Garifuna, which also loosely translates to “cassava-eating people.” The people from Africa were into planting food.
The leader of the Garifuna people was Joseph Shatillier, who led the Garifuna people to travel this way towards Belize. They had another shipwreck near Honduras. They were looking for land and the closest was Honduras, so the Garifunas first landed on the coasts of Honduras. Garifuna as a people like to venture and try new things and new places.
Some Garifunas landed here in Belize, first in Punta Gorda, which is nearer to Honduras,
and then they started spreading. There are Garifuna people in Punta Gorda, in Georgetown, in Seine Bight, in Hopkins, in Dangriga, and in Belize City. We also have a little community in Corazal as well. The Garifuna spread and we have settlements in different parts of the country of Belize.
We have many different cultures here now, but in Placencia, the people are known as Creole. In Seine Bight we are known as Garifuna people. In Maya Beach, it is more of a white community. People always find new places to inhabit. For a long period of time, the only Garifuna settlements were in the town of Placencia and Seine Bight. As a matter of fact, we did not have roads to start with. Everyone did everything by boat.
The culture of Los Cabos and La Paz has changed tremendously in the last 15 years. Unfortunately, unlike in Michoacán, where I live part of the year (on the mainland of Mexico), the Spaniards and disease killed so many of the Indian population in the Baja Peninsula that we don’t have the heritage and cultural history that you would have, for example, in the state of Michoacán, where the Purepecha Indians are still walking down the streets in their native costumes...._wm.jpg)
We often take guests to snorkel or dive in Portobelo, where you get on a boat and go to a nearly private beach to snorkel or out on a boat to scuba. We combine the day with a bit of siteseeing. 
In the US, the options to be able to stretch your dollars are somewhat more limited than when you go abroad. One of the best reasons to move abroad is that you can live for a fraction of the price it costs to live in the US. You can get a lot more domestic help.
Your neighbors in the Algarve would be a mix depending on where you live. If you live in a town they would more likely be Portuguese. The bigger the town the more likely it would be to have Portuguese neighbors. Further out it is more likely there would be a mixed bag of people. There are certainly municipalities where six or seven nationalities could surround you, a little bit like Florida. 
January 2014, I arrived in the early afternoon in Managua airport via United Airlines. After the huge and tedious Houston Airport, the small Nicaraguan airport was a relief. Customs stamped my passport and I paid the $10 fee. 
