Anyone Been To Belize

Getting married is a good thing

I don't know anything about traveling to Belize, though.

Yes.

I stayed on the island of Ambergris Caye (San Pedro Town). You hop a prop plane out of Belize City and fly out to the San Pedro airport on the island. You can walk to the hotels from the island airport it's so close.

San Pedro has the typical characters who try to sell you stuff on the beach and little shops with Lebanese drug dealers, and I wouldn't walk the town streets alone too late at night, but it's really pretty tame and very touristy. You rent a golf cart to get around. We bought food from local stores and cooked it ourselves when we got tired of eating out, so you can figure it all out pretty easily.

The best part is that it is low on big resorts. I'm not a resort or cruise ship guy. Just too "Disney" for me. When I go on beach vacations I like staying at small individual hotels and eating at different restaurants along the beach or in town. So Ambergris Caye was great for me.

The beaches aren't that wide or fantastic and the surf does not break on them because all of Belize is behind a massive coral reef. So if you are looking for Rivera Maya type beaches and crashing surf, this isn't the place. The water is very pretty though and the absence of surf makes beach-side and pier bars possible and they are all over the place.

There are all sorts of charters out to the Blue Hole for diving or snorkeling if that's your thing. It is very dive & snorkle friendly due to the reef.

It's definitely a weird little slice of the world. The Queen of Belize is Elizabeth II of England. They're a Commonwealth Nation. She's on the money. They speak English with a heavy creole accent.

One afternoon I was driving my golf cart in town and saw a guy in an Aggie shirt with a ring on and we exchanged Gig 'Ems.

quote:

---

Can't help you. Just do a shite ton of research. Trip advisor is your friend.

---

Agree with this. My wife and I planned a trip to Italy/Germany/Austria for my 10th anniversary, and we had a blast. Found a lot of good deals, and we were able to focus on doing the things we wanted to do, as opposed to taking a prefab package.

quote:

---

If you are on your honeymoon go stay in Southern Belize at a place called Hamanisi. Stay in a treehouse.

---

That sounds awesome.

Basically, what the guys above said. Depends on what you want to do besides lounge and eat (if anything).

I stayed in San Pedro twice for diving. The first time was around 2009 (Xmas and NY time) and I really enjoyed it. The second time was maybe 2013 in April. I didn't enjoy it as much that time. It seemed a bit busier. It also went from a few golf carts to tons of golf carts so the roads were super annoying to me. Maybe it was a timing thing.

Unless you are really big in diving, I think you will have fun there. I have never heard of the place you are looking at, but that doesn't mean anything. We are hard core divers and look for places that cater to that.

Don't watch the Amazon tv show "mad dogs"

Nope but used to move a lot of product from there

I went last August and stayed in San Pedro off the coast. It was a decent trip, but there are definitely better places you could go. My main issue was all the seaweed. It was a bad year for seaweed and they don't have a good way to get rid of it all. The beach is very small compared to Texas beaches. Hotels are built 10-100 ft from the water. The seaweed smelled terrible. Had to plug my nose in some areas.

Personally I would recommend playa del Carmen or tulum in Mexico. They are close enough to Cancun to get a shuttle. I've heard Roatan is really nice. My next island trip will hopefully be to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. I've heard great things about it. I work for American, so I travel a lot and hear a lot of stories from coworkers. A friend went to Belize a month or two after I did, and I think he stayed on a different island that was more shielded from the seaweed.