TCC Territory #8
Part One. December 12-16, 2025
I’m currently (May 2026) in Belize finishing a trip I began back in December. My original Central America itinerary was cut short due to a family emergency. I was able to get back on the original itinerary in Feb and visited El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. I’m now back in Belize to see most of what I missed from my original planned trip.
Here’s Belize part one – Lamanai Mayan Ruins and San Pedro Island.
Belize is an easy vacation for Americans who want a place that accepts USD, primarily speaks English, has great water and cave adventures, and of course has Mayan ruins. As such, I saw many more American tourists than locals during my short time in Belize City and San Pedro. I was surprised by that, but I guess it makes sense given the specific locale. One likely needs to head further inland or south to get out of Tourist Central. A note that prices here are comparable to most USA city prices. Less expensive than New England, though.
Dec 13, Belize City. Didn’t look around the city (I am now, in May) but instead took a day trip to Lamanai, an archeological site of Mayan temples. Accessible only by boat and located along the New River Lagoon, our small group had fun zooming along the water. Our guide stopped now and then to show us riverside creatures (bats along a log, lizards). At one point it poured hard rain and everyone got a free face exfoliation. Glad I wore my bathing suit top.
The Maya lived at Lamanai for about 3,000 years. Lamanai means “submerged crocodile” and is the original, indigenous name for the area. The crocodile represented earth, fertility, and spirituality. One can climb up a couple of the temples, and that felt slightly blasphemous but I did it anyway. Howler monkeys occupy the jungle setting, and a couple of them came to stare at us from high branches.
Dec 14-16, San Pedro. Had planned a week here, but left on the 16th to attend to the aforementioned family emergency.
One needs to rent a golf cart to spend time on San Pedro unless one wants to stay only in the small town center. I enjoyed driving around in the cart. I imagine the island is hazardous sometimes with drunken tourist golf cart drivers everywhere. San Pedro appears to be Gringo Party Central.
Visited the tiny Iguana Eco Sanctuary which is easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. Free of charge, one can observe and feed some of the 200+ protected iguanas that hang out among the trees and water.
Loved my San Pedro lodgings and had planned on doing a snorkeling tour right from my front door, but this is where my December adventures ended. Am back in Belize now but will not return to San Pedro. Instead, I’ll venture south.
May 2-5, 2026. Belize Part Two
May 2-3. I return to Belize and spend some time walking about Belize City. I visit the Museum of Belize which has some nice historical info and some Mayan and colonial artifacts.
May 4-5: Time to head south. I’m the only passenger on the tiny plane to Punta Gorda. It’s lovely to see the jungles, hills, and rivers of coastal Belize from the air. My lodging is walking distance from the one-room local airport, but my host picks me up anyway so I don’t have to carry my backpack in the 100 degree heat. I stay inside my air conditioned room until the next morning, when I walk the few streets of the tiny fishing town, enjoy the local scenery, and secure my May 6 ferry ticket to Guatemala. A currency exchange is in order, and finding people near the immigration office who will exchange USD for Quetzals is easy…but the exchange rates are all the same – horrible. I choose to look at this terrible exchange rate as a way of supporting the locals, so I don’t feel too badly about it. I don’t think I will have to exchange currency at any other point during this six-week trip since everywhere else will take credit cards. Wish I didn’t have to exchange money now, but my first destination in Guatemala is remote and local-cash-only. I do have a debit card, but my card does not work in the ATM machines of certain foreign countries (Guatemala being one of them).
I’m not doing much else in Belize. No beaches or snorkeling for me here as I recently had that in Costa Rica and The Bahamas, and I have more coming up in South America. I am fortunate to have many places on my itinerary, so I don’t feel the need to do “all the things” in every territory. I prefer just one or two scheduled outings a week with the rest of the time spent in casual exploration/walking/local museums and lounging.
For those who want an oversimplified history of Belize:
The Maya inhabited what is now Belize from 1500 BC until the Spanish arrived in 16th century. Diseases brought by the Spanish decimated the indigenous population. The British soon followed, and after a couple hundred years of fighting over who got to steal the area’s logwood, the British settled the area and, in the 1700s and early 1800s, used enslaved Africans to cut and help export mahogany. Some enslaved Africans were able to escape down the coast into present-day Guatemala and Honduras. Slavery finally ended in 1833, though the British prevented former enslaved people from owning land.
A new ethnic group, the Garifuna, arrived in the early 1800s. The Garifuna were descendants of Caribs from the Lesser Antilles and of Africans who had escaped slavery. The Garifuna had rebelled against British colonialism in Saint Vincent, and the Brits subdued the rebels and moved them to an island off the north coast of Honduras. From there, Garifuna migrated to today’s southern Belize and the Caribbean coasts of Guatemala (where there remains a small but thriving population today).
The British pushed further inland in search of more mahogany during the 1800s and ran into resistance from the remaining Maya. The British eventually subdued the Maya and named the area British Honduras.
Belize became its own country in 1981, though Guatemala feels it’s really a province of Guatemala. Border tensions continued into the early 2000s.
Next stop: Guatemala.
