Page 179 - OVATION Magazine (Issue 1)

300 yards out, we came upon the manatees—seven of them, feeding on the bottom and rising to the surface, where we floated alongside the bulbously beautiful creatures for a blissful quarter hour.
“You have to send me
that video,” Dorin said as we boarded the boat back to Turtle Inn in Placencia. He had grabbed my GoPro and filmed the encounter, which was indeed a movie-worthy moment. It was complete with suspense, action, and ultimately a happy ending, all of which is just the way Turtle Inn’s owner would have it.
Set on a sliver of sandy pen- insula on Belize’s far south- ern coast,Turtle Inn is one of
three resorts in the country operated by Francis Ford Coppola’s Family Coppola Hideaways. Coppola, who first visited Belize back in 1981, built his legacy and fortune as the director of Apocalypse Now (see page 212), the Godfather series, and other classic films. And while he’s not the type
of celebrity who’s mobbed on the street for selfies, he’s visible enough to appreciate the pros- pect of true privacy, of going to a place far from the public eye where you can let your guard down, be yourself, and, perhaps most of all, think.
“The moment came after the conclusion of shooting Apocalypse Now,” Coppola recalls of his first trip to Belize. “Like many directors who are on location for a long time,
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