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Discover Belize!

Belize fills every adventure fantasy.

Coral atolls recall the South Seas.

A submarine fantasy world thrives along a great barrier reef.

Lush rain forests conceal ancient Mayan temples.

The people come in every color, speak a dozen languages, and number fewer than 200,000.

There are islets dotted with palm trees—and no people. There is deep-sea fishing, and bonefishing in the flats. There are rivers rushing down through granite boulders, into jungles populated by monkeys and jaguars, and insects yet to be named. There are watering holes with characters out of another century, another way of life. There are resorts that recall the days when travel was not for the masses.

Belize is nearby and spectacular . . . and virtually unknown.

Travel in Belize requires more preparation than for many other destinations, for the country is relatively unknown and facilities are few. It's all too easy to miss the nicer resort areas on the cayes, or to stop only in Belize City and consider the country no more than "interesting." And there are con artists and scams and wrong turns, of course. But with some preparation and advice, you will experience only the best.

Consider a few possible travel strategies:

• Fly to Belize City. Take a small plane to one of the offshore cayes, and spend your time sunning, fishing, swimming and diving. Return directly to the airport to catch your flight home.
• Arrange to be met at the airport and taken to the fishing or diving boat, complete with crew, that will be your home for a week or two; or fly to one of the secluded coastal resorts.
• Head for a lobster camp and pitch in with the work. Or grab a boat to a Gilligan's island (there are several, read on!), rent a cabin for a few dollars a day, catch your dinner from the sea, talk to the pelicans and frigate birds, wade out to the reef to snorkel, and paddle over to the next island when you feel like talking to another human.
• Bounce around the interior of the country (literally, if you head south or off the main highways: the roads are jarring, the buses that provide public transport only make things worse, but the scenery and slices of life are seen by few outsiders). Or fly to the small coastal towns. You can see a lot in a short time, for the country is small.
• Retreat into the jungle, but do it your way: live off the land, float down a lazy river, descend into caves, ride a horse to an ancient pyramid, or rejuvenate in luxury, with massage and aroma therapy.

You can do it all in Belize!

My first time in Belize, I stumbled into a wonderland of strange peoples and things. The country was still called British Honduras then—that was in 1967—and I had expected it to be a little bit British and somewhat Honduran. It was not.

The first Belizeans I met were border officials. Tall, slim blacks in starched shirts and shorts, and peaked caps, they were a sharp contrast to the pot-bellied slouches on the Mexican side. To me they spoke English, but what they spoke to each other I could not decipher, though it sounded vaguely African.

My traveling companions on the battered minibus that ran to Belize City were a severe-faced couple with straw hats and straw-colored hair. He in blue coveralls and she in a simple print dress looked as if they belonged to rural Iowa or Nebraska, but their German conversation suggested otherwise. In fact, I shortly learned, they were Mennonites and Belizeans.

Along the road, huts were of the whitewashed, thatched Mayan type. The first town of any size had a Spanish name—Corozal—Spanish-speaking mestizo inhabitants, and clapboard and concrete-block buildings. It looked as if I had boomeranged back to Mexico. At Orange Walk, my Mennonite travelling companions disembarked and were driven away in a horse-drawn cart on dusty streets that were straight out of the old west. Not too many miles, but long hours and numerous wrenching bumps later, I sighted Belize City, a shanty Creole town that might have been offloaded from one of the Caribbean islands. Already there were many Belizes.

Still surprised by the human geography of the country, I soon discovered that the territorial limits of Belize included not only limestone plains covered with scrub vegetation, tropical forest, coastal wetlands and piney mountains, but also a rather generous section of paradise. This was offshore Belize, where a chain of coral-and-sand islands, dotted with palm trees and cooled by sea breezes, nestled along the world's second-longest barrier reef. A few native fishermen made an easy living from the bounty of the shallow waters. Fewer still were the visitors who came to enjoy the sport fishing and diving, or to do nothing but relax and appreciate beauty.

Lesser wonders and curiosities abounded. There were places with names like Gallon Jug, Double Head Cabbage and Monkey River; unfamiliar Australian and British and Dutch products on the store shelves in the smallest settlements; and arcane forms of the English language. To my naive eye, the norm in Belize was out of the ordinary, and I would have been only mildly surprised had the Mad Hatter approached me on the street for directions.

That all I saw was new and surprising is, in retrospect, really no surprise. As Aldous Huxley once observed, "If the world had any ends, British Honduras would certainly be one of them. It is not on the way from anywhere to anywhere else. It has no strategic value. It is all but uninhabited." For most people, mention of Belize calls up no mental image at all, not even a stereotypical tropical scene, but only a blank.

Since Huxley wrote, much about Belize has changed. Once an isolated colony dependent on tenuous maritime links with the outside world for its survival, Belize is now an independent nation with a diversifying economy, easily reached from the United States by frequent air service and good roads. Nevertheless, the country remains unknown. Peaceful and non-meddlesome, blissfully unimportant, Belize rarely merits attention in any foreign newspaper. And the new name of the land sounds even less familiar than British Honduras. Despite the obvious attractions of a warm climate and idyllic islands, little-exploited fishing and spectacular submarine scenery along the barrier reef, the government of Belize has been reluctant to encourage mass tourism, with its potentially clumsy impact and sometimes fickle dollars.

That Belize is little known, little developed, is part of its attraction. For the visitor, the land is unspoiled in ways both charming and inconvenient. Comfortable hotels and good restaurants remain hard to come by, except in a few locations, but some of the hostelries recall an earlier era when travel was not for the masses. The inhabitants do not grasp for the visitor's every cent, but they do not cater to his every whim, either. No charter flights arrive with hundreds of vacationers, no streets are lined end to end with shops selling tourist trinkets, no tours depart on schedule for made-up attractions. But natural wonders abound. Belize is a country that resoundingly does not have something for everyone, but it has plenty for a few. A visit to Belize can still be an adventure, or it can be totally relaxing.

I have written this book about Belize to fill a gap in the available information about the country. While cultural and historical background are included, my emphasis is on places and how to visit them; on where (or whether) you will find a comfortable bed, a decent meal, coral in phantasmagoric shapes and colors, caves of unknown extent to explore, fish of astounding size to catch, and miles of near-empty beaches. In short, I have tried to make this a practical guide. If you find something missing, or discover in your travels something that you want to share with others, please write to me in care of my publisher.

I hope that you enjoy your visit to the intriguing little country of Belize.