It’s amazing what an easy border crossing, a great first camp-site and a fabulous restaurant meal can do for your first impressions of a country. All of this, plus the fact that everything here is in English so (I don’t have to translate everything for Marcus 😊) puts our initial view of Belize, high-up on the official list of ‘Tucks’ Truck’s Nice Places’.  It rained on our first afternoon here, it’s hot, stiflingly humid and we fail in our several attempts to extract spondoolies from the ATMs. Nevertheless, first impressions are favourable. Here’s our cruise through Belize Cayo …

The highest… or is it? Belize Cayo  

San Ignacio is just 12km from the Guatemala border and it’s a bit of a tourist centre for the inland region of Belize Cayo. There are lots of activity attractions in the area like jungle hikes to waterfalls, caves and stuff like that. The Rio Frio cave is particularly impressive where the river emerges to form a small indoor beach within the cave, decorated with stalactites hanging above the sands.

Another Cayo attraction is what Belize claims to be the highest waterfall in Central America. Hmmm… Puzzling. Those who followed our trip over the last few weeks will know that we recently did a short but very steep and exceedingly muddy hike to what Guatemala claims is…. you’ve guessed it… the highest waterfall in Central America! Goddammit, all this Fake News! You just don’t know who or what to believe any more 😊. Now we don’t want to spark an international sibling squabble here, so for balance – having seen them both – we’d say that they look about the same to us!

Mini-dinosaurs: to see or to eat?

An interesting visit in San Ignacio is to the iguana rescue centre. Here a team take in iguanas that are either unwanted pets or found injured in the wild. The aim where possible is to rehabilitate them into the wild and they have a high success rate with this.

The other aim of the centre is to educate locals about iguana conservation. Iguanas are still considered a delicacy amongst the indigenous population here. Hunting them for food is severely affecting the numbers of iguanas remaining in the wild. “They taste nice… like chicken…” the indigenous say. “So why not just eat chicken then?” the conservationists say. I’d say that was a good point and well presented.

If hunting continues at the current rate, iguanas will soon feature high on the endangered species list. The iguana carers give talks to school children, pointing out the choice their generation faces: they can either eat an iguana today, or have an iguana for their children and grandchildren to see in future years. They can’t have both. The audience is young, so it’s difficult to tell whether the programme is working yet. But it’s certainly worth a try to save these fascinating mini-dinosaurs.

Mayan’d Out, without an Escort

In our last blog we explained how, in an attempt to avoid a condition known as ‘Mayan’d Out’, we’re limiting the exposure we have to ancient Mayan ruins.  There’s so much of the stuff that the enthusiast could spend weeks, if not months, exploring this part of Central America. We, however, find it a challenge to generate huge enthusiasm for piles of ancient stones. We are therefore only visiting the most impressive Mayan site that each country has to offer. In Belize they say, the best is Caracol.

Caracol is set in a remote part of the jungle, down a long dirt-road (those ancient Mayans were pretty good at infrastructure, but they didn’t build decent highways to their cities 😉). Having visited Tikal in Guatemala just a few days before, we wondered whether it would be worth the slog down 80km of dirt road through the jungle. What the hell… we’re in no hurry… we decided to give it a chance to prove itself!

The Belize tourist board advertises the ‘road’ to Caracol to be ‘do-able’ by any 4×4 vehicle. However, the track runs close to what has been a lawless section of the Guatemalan border. Guatemala and Belize don’t have a history of harmonious agreement over this territory and there’s been a bit of argy-bargy over the years. The area is heavily patrolled by the Belizean Army and British military are frequently in the area for jungle warfare training. Lone tourists were held-up at gunpoint on the trail a few years ago, so now all vehicles heading to Caracol have to stop half-way to register at a military check-point. From here, at 09:00 hrs each morning there is a military convoy to escort visitors to/from the ruins.

Following instructions of the tourist board, we duly arrive at the checkpoint and are greeted by a cheerful soldier. “Yeah man… there’s no convoy today. You’ll have to go on your own. Just sign-in here, then come back to sign-out when you return. If you haven’t signed-out by the end of the day, we’ll come to look for you”. Okay… sounds like a plan. Apparently, the risk is pretty small these days. There haven’t been any attacks for a while, but they’re not taking down the warning signs or completely abandoning the convoy system yet. Just in case…

So was Caracol worth the 80km schlepp from San Ignacio? Well, if you’re doing a Belize beachy holiday around the Cayes, then it’s probably not worth a trip up from the coast. But if you’re driving to/from Guatemala, then even for those (like us) with a limited enthusiasm for piles of ancient stones, Caracol is definitely worth the detour off the main road… with or without a military escort.

Cruising to the Caribbean 

So we cruise on down to the Caribbean… no, not a boat cruise, a Cuthbert-cruise. Through Belize Cayo, from the inland attractions down to the coast. First stop is a little shop at the side of the main highway to buy some treats! The British Store is a little treasure cave for us. Any Brits abroad will appreciate our excitement at finding Branston Pickle, Sarsons Malt Vinegar, Yorkshire Tea, HP Sauce, Robertsons Mincemeat, Christmas Pudding, Paxo Sage and Onion Stuffing, Garibaldi Biscuits… Watch and drool, expats 😊!

Next stop is the curious community of Spanish Lookout. This is a Mennonite farming community whose people live a very different lifestyle to most of Belize. Their farms look meticulously ordered and they are said to be highly efficient, but their lifestyle and attire hails from Little House on the Prairie. We came across similar communities a couple of years ago down in Paraguay. They don’t adopt modern technology and have the pony ‘n trap as their sole means of transport. We could probably all learn a thing or two from their eco-friendly lifestyle!

Further down the road we reach the capital city of Belize, Belmopan. Now… we’ve seen quite a few capital cities in our time. Some we’ve liked – Buenos Aires and Cayenne for example, can stand up and take a bow here. Some we’ve not-so-liked – Kampala and La Paz – stay seated! Belmopan stands out as the smallest, quietest, most laid-back capital city we’ve yet to find. It’s a curious place, just a handful of low-rise Embassies and Government buildings with scattering of small shops and homes around them. Streets are wide and open, there’s minimal traffic and you can park anywhere.

This is because it’s one of those purpose-built capitals (like Brasilia). In 1961 the then capital, Belize City, was destroyed by a hurricane. To reduce the risk of the country ever losing its administrative capital in the same way again, they built Belmopan well inland from the coast.  So as capital cities go, it’s a strange sort of place, but in case you’re wondering, the bakery sells the squidgiest, wholemeal garlic breadrolls… ever!

Got that t-shirt                

Leaving Belmopan towards the south coast is the scenic ‘Hummingbird Highway’. It’s a lovely drive winding through hilly jungle. If you have the inclination, there are several opportunities to stop and do stuff on the way. Visiting caves, jungle hikes to waterfalls blah, blah, blah…  We’ve done quite a lot of the jungle-hikes-caves-waterfalls kind of stuff on our way through The Americas. We very much doubt that what’s on offer here is significantly better than the similar things we’ve already seen. Other long-term overlanders reading this might recognise that we’re going through one of those ‘been there, done that, got the t-shirt, eaten the stew…’ phases at the moment.

In our defence, we’d like to say that it’s hurricane season. Not that we’re being battered by the elements or anything… but it is quite stormy. It’s hot, it rains a lot and always extremely humid. We’re acclimatising slowly, but it doesn’t mean we have any inclination to linger. In these conditions we move on more quickly than we otherwise would in more pleasant climates. We go where we want to go, see what grabs our attention, then move on. It’s simply not pleasant to just sit around.

Anyway… nowhere is far in tiny Belize. We’ve done Belize Cayo and it doesn’t take us long to cruise to the Caribbean coast – jumping-off point for the idyllic Cayes and the world’s second largest reef. Outstanding diving, snorkelling, sealife and kayaking… this is what Belize is famous for. Let’s see if it’s worth lingering there 😊