Belize For My Birthday

For my birthday this year, I decided to treat myself and go to a place I've been dreaming of since high school -- Ambergris Caye, Belize. 

As with most dreams, things didn't always live up to the imagination, but I have to say that visiting Belize was definitely worth the money.

Obligatory photo of the San Pedro sign, actually taken on my 3rd day.

Let's talk numbers first (some of my readers like this stuff cuz it helps them plan their own trips): 

Shuttle Panajachel to Guate City, return -- Q200 ($36 Cdn)
Guatefriends Hostal, 1 night -- Q328 ($57 Cdn)
*Flight TAG Airlines Guate City to Belize City, return -- $577 Cdn 
Shared shuttle airport to docks -- $16 USD ($22 Cdn)
Water Taxi to San Pedro, return -- $118 BZ ($59 USD, $80 Cdn)
Taxi to Hotel -- $10 USD ($14 Cdn)
*Hotel Corona Del Mar, 5 nights -- $609 Cdn
2 snorkeling trips -- $125 USD ($170 Cdn)

Taxi from docks to airport -- $30 USD
GRAND TOTAL -- $1,640 Cdn

You can see that the majority of my expenses were the flight and hotel. I actually found out later it is cheaper to fly from Toronto to Belize than it is from Guate City, even though my flight was only an hour long.

I stayed at Corona del Mar hotel, one of the least expensive hotels on the island. Most of the hotels that I walked past on the beach were at least $300 a night!

My nice room at Corona del Mar. Included a microwave, mini fridge, and coffee maker.

View from my balcony at Corona del Mar.

What I haven't included is the cost of food. OMG, everything was soooo expensive compared to Guatemala. Restaurant prices were through the roof! Some American tourists that I chatted with actually said they thought the prices were reasonable... so probably I'm just out of touch with first-world expenses.

I'm a frugal person, so I saved some money on food by going to a grocery store to buy bagels & cream cheese that I had for breakfast every morning, plus I stopped at a fruit stand for bananas. Even then, prices in the grocery store were significantly higher than Guatemala. 

NOTE: Belize accepts U.S. dollars pretty much everywhere at a 2:1 exchange. So $10 Belizean dollars is $5 U.S. dollars.  I converted a lot of my expenses into Canadian though, cuz I'm Canadian. 😀 Belize also has sales tax, so watch your bill for a bit extra to be added.

On to the photos of Ambergris Caye! I apologize that they're kinda crappy. I don't have a camera and was using my lame phone to take pictures. Also, I really wanted to experience my vacation with my own eyes, and not be peering through a lens. 

Looking at the ocean from my hotel pool.

Most of the shoreline had a cement sea wall, but you could hop down
or take stairs to get in the water, if you wanted.

My hotel, Corona del Mar, was a little ways south of San Pedro town.

Looking south on the sea wall

I walked north on the beach to get into the town center.

It was really nice to walk along the beach to get into the center of town where most of the restaurants and shops were. I walked out on some of the wooden piers, peered into the sea from the wall, and dug my toes in the super-soft white sand.

Stairs into the water, bit wavy this day.

See that bright pink thing? I think it was a Man O' War jellyfish washed up on the sargassum seaweed.
But there was no way I was gonna go down to find out! Their stings are deadly!

Bad photo, but I was trying to show how many freaking golf carts there were.

There aren't many cars on the island -- almost everyone drives golf carts, locals and tourists alike. You can rent them very easily, if you have a driver's license, which I don't. So I hoofed it everywhere. It was kind of annoying actually that there were sooooo many golf carts always driving, but I suppose it was cleaner and quieter than cars. 

Have you ever seen butter in a can? Must be an island thing.

A very large selection of canned meats too. Interesting.

Iguana in a park. Smaller than some of the ones I saw in Costa Rica, and very shy.
A taxi driver told me they eat them, so I would be shy too!

Flowers in the hotel garden.

Relaxing on the beach.

Shade kindly provided by this coconut palm tree.

Saturday night, I went out for a purposefully fancy-ish dinner for my birthday. I choose a restaurant called ZZ's Beach Grill. While delicious, I was reminded that I am not a fancy person, and I am definitely not a rich person! It was certainly a treat.

I'm not sure why fancy restaurants think that one piece of broccoli, one piece of cauliflower, two baby corn, one slice of zucchini (cut in half so it's kinda two?), and a bit of carrot can be considered a "side of vegetables". 
This dish cost $52 Belize dollars, or $35 Cdn.

Bailey's Creme Brule. It was HEAVENLY. Honestly, one of the most delicious desserts I've ever had in my life. It cost $28 BZ, or almost $19 Cdn.
I was tempted to lick the chocolate art of the plate to show how low class I am, but I restrained myself. 😄

I was supposed to go snorkeling Sunday morning, but it was raining and windy, so I canceled. After it cleared up a bit, I went for a loooong walk around the island. Got a bit lost, got very tired, but made it home safe before dark.

Toes and the sea.

Cloudy but still warm outside.

Little plovers wandering on the sand.

There were lots of huge brown pelicans everywhere, plus Magnificent Frigatebirds swooping in the sky.

Mangroves near the north bridge area.

A nice public park near the north bridge, families picnicing, guys were fishing from the wall near the bridge where the sea flows through.

This is the Purple Pelican restaurant on the inner side of the caye.
I wanted to peer into the water.. until I saw the sign. DANGER: Crocodiles!!!

Wandering the back streets, some rather impoverished looking homes. Many of the buildings were simple wood structures raised on pilings.

One thing that was different for me in San Pedro, Belize, was that there were very few dogs on the streets. I talked to some nice folks from SAGA, the animal welfare group on the island, and they said they have worked hard to control the street dog population and to promote responsible ownership. Great work, SAGA! 

While I was walking around the residential areas, I saw a surprising number of cats. They were all very small-boned kitties, but in a wide variety of colours. I guess in a fishing town, cats would be quite happy!

I may have wandered a wee bit out of bounds. 😖

My wanderings somehow took me behind the airstrip (yes, there's an airstrip on this tiny narrow island), and I was a bit concerned that I wouldn't be able to find my way home. After too long of a walk and some twists and turns thru a residential area, I checked the time and decided to ask for directions. A kind man gave me a bit of a shocked face when he realized how far I'd come, but gave me accurate directions to get back to my hotel. It took me 45 minutes to walk back! I was grateful that it was a cloudy day as I would have been really sunburnt if it was sunny.

Finally, Monday dawned clear and bright and it was time for snorkeling! I booked with Searious Adventures and they were great! (Plus a little cheaper than some of the others.) It was a half day tour with two stops -- Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley.

A perfect morning for snorkeling!

When we arrived at Hol Chan Marine Park, every buoy was filled. They only allow a limited number of boats to tie up and there was no room for us.
But that was no problem -- we just did our two stops in reverse order!

Ripping along across the Caribbean Sea!

Shark Ray Alley was an amazing experience! I was the first one to get in the water, and I immediately wished I had brought an underwater camera. We swam with about 5 or 6 Nurse Sharks and countless Southern Stingrays, plus a multitude of fish. It was exhilarating! They were so close I could have touched them -- but I didn't dare! I mostly floated and looked down at them as they swirled around. The water was not very deep, maybe 8 to 9 feet? Some of the boats were chumming the water -- throwing bits of fish -- to attract more creatures. They even threw some fish up to the circling birds. Besides the sharks and rays, there were outcrops of coral with fishies swimming around, but nothing compared to what was to come at Hol Chan.

A Nurse Shark (not my photo)

Southern Stingrays (not my photo).
These guys were circular and about 3 - 4 feet across.

Doing our two stops in reverse order meant less people at the spot.
This is Shark Ray Alley, only a few other snorkelers. Such clear water!

Soaking wet and grinning widely, we got back in the boat and went to Hol Chan. It was frrrrrreeeezing to be in the wind as the boat zipped along. As soon as we tied up at Hol Chan, we leapt back into the sea, which at that point felt a lot warmer than the air. I have to say, the water was chillier than I expected for the Caribbean, and after swimming for a while, you did tend to shiver a bit. One of the thinner girls had blue lips by the time we were done, but still had a huge smile on her face.

At Hol Chan, our awesome guides split the group into two (7 each) and they each took us around the "loop" of coral formations in a semi-orderly way. There were still quite a few boats moored and not all of the snorkelers were with tours that tried to do things in a pattern, so sometimes it felt crowded with flippers in your face. The guides were great at pointing out rare fish and keeping us mostly together so we could all see everything we wanted to. 

There was a crazy amount of fish at Hol Chan and I am certain I can't remember them all, but I will list what I did see and show some reference photos. 

Sergeant Majors (bold little guys everywhere), different coloured angelfish and butterfly fish, trumpetfish, damselfish, black grouper (big as a dog!), ballyhoos, stoplight parrotfish, different wrasses, grunts, shiny silver tarpons, ugly hogfish (haha!), triggerfish, snappers, blue tang (Dory!), one grumpy barracuda, spiny lobster, long-spined sea urchins, and a shy green moray eel. 

This is a lot like what it was like at Hol Chan -- fish everywhere!
These are the cute little Sergeant Majors. They would swim right up to you, and then zoom off with one little flick of their tail.

Stoplight parrotfish, they start out looking like the top left one and as they grow older, they end up looking like the blue one!

We were so lucky to see one tiny juvenile yellow-tail damselfish, that looked just like this.
His spots were so bright, it was almost like they were glowing. He was about 2 inches long.

Everyone seems to call this a needlenose fish, but I found out their real name is Ballyhoo!
They swim really close to the surface and sometimes kind of skip along the top of the water when they're startled.

There were lots of smaller fish poking about in the coral, like this bluehead wrasse.

Queen Angelfish

And one of the most thrilling things we saw snorkeling at Hol Chan -- four Spotted Eagle Rays! They were so graceful and majestic. I think I held my breath as they "flew" slowly past me.

Spotted Eagle Rays

Here is a poster I found of all the types of fish we could have seen at the reef. There were so many fish around you all the time, and more hiding in the crevices and under the ledges. Sadly, I am far too buoyant to be able to dive very deep, and it made me wish I had booked a SCUBA package instead! But it was a truly amazing experience just to float in the clear waters and admire all the unique creatures, plus coral formations, sponges, worms, snails, conchs, and sand dollars. 

poster of various animals found in Belize

Sadly, we didn't see any sea turtles, but they said it was only a 50/50 chance that they'd be around. There was so much to look at, I could have stayed all day. But it was also quite tiring to be swimming in the current. You didn't realize you were being pushed until you turned around and tried to swim against it. My arms & shoulders were certainly sore by the end of the trip.

While riding back to my hotel (they literally dropped me off at my dock!), I asked the guide if the other snorkeling spot, Mexico Rocks, was worth a trip. He smiled and said, "It's my favourite. We're going tomorrow!" So of course I marched right in and booked my second snorkeling trip for the next morning.

Dusk on Ambergris Caye. San Pedro and most of the hotels and resorts face east, so sunrise is better than sunset, but still pretty.

A lone sailboat at dusk in a pastel paradise.

9am, off to Mexico Rocks, which is quite a ways north along the shore of Ambergris Caye.

As we were zooming along to our snorkel spot, another boat heading the same way suddenly veered and stopped. Our driver stopped too... and then we saw them. DOLPHINS!!! 

There were three of them cresting occasionally out of the water, you could just see their shiny grey backs and dorsal fins. Then one did a "headstand" so we could see his tail fin sticking up! I was absolutely over the moon! One swam about 10 feet from our boat, but stayed underwater. I could clearly see him swimming by. AMAZING.

There are dolphins in this picture, they're just underwater, lol.

After that brief excitement, we sped onwards for several more minutes before reaching our spot, where we checked in with the park ranger, who spends all day on a boat, I guess?

Snorkeling at Mexico Rocks was even better than Hol Chan, in my opinion. It was a lot less crowded and the visibility was really great. We saw all of the fish mentioned above and more! There was lots of coral formations to explore and the dive guide was pretty lenient with us straying off to look at things. We also got to see a green moray eel come out of her hidey-hole and swim around. She was magnificent and silly-looking at the same time.

Another wild thing that happened is a huge school of horse-eye jacks, about 40 of them, swam right past me, only inches away, staring at me the whole time! 

Pretty  much what I saw as the school of horse-eye jacks swam past me. I kept my arms and hands tucked in so I wouldn't scare them.

After fully exploring Mexico Rocks, we did a second stop at a small location called Tres Cocos. It wasn't part of the marine reserve, so the boat just dropped anchor in the sandy bottom. I jumped out with my fins on... and the water was only up to my waist, haha! It got a bit deeper as we snorkeled around to different areas, checking out the scattered coral formations. There was a large brown pelican who was floating on the water right near to us, waiting for someone to toss him a snack. When the tour guide tossed some fish in the water, a bunch of southern stingrays and one nurse shark appeared seemingly out of nowhere to feed. And then one HUGE ray swam right up underneath me. He was probably 5 feet across and a lighter colour than the others. I stayed still until he was past me, then raised my face out of the water to ask what it was. The guide looked down and said it was a "whippy tail ray". I was like, "Oh boy, I hope he doesn't whippy tail me!!"  Although they look big, soft, and harmless, all stingrays do have -- you guessed it -- stings. I was very careful to remain still and keep out of their way as much as possible.

After our adventure was done, I asked a fellow snorkeler if they'd had a nice lunch anywhere. They immediately suggested The Ol' Tacklebox, an "overwater" restaurant just a few docks away. I eyed the rusty roof and unpainted wooden board walls of what looked like a fishing shack and thought, "This might be more within my price range." NOPE. I ordered an appetizer of Lobster Poppers and a "main course" of Coconut Shrimp. This spare meal cost me a whopping $92 BZ, or about $61 Cdn. I wasn't kidding when I said Belize was expensive! While delicious, I did feel that the price tag should have included at least some rice and maybe two pieces of broccoli??? 

Lobster Poppers and Coconut Shrimp

Lunch time view from The Ol' Tacklebox.

Although I was tired from my morning snorkeling (these trips were about 3 hours each, by the way), I meandered my way back to my hotel along the seashore, taking in all the sights, as this was my last day in Belize. 

I wanted to walk out on this pier, until I noticed this fine fellow.
I decided not to bother him.

A short video of the rocks and fish as seen from the sea wall as I walked back to my hotel. You can see some little fish swimming; there are sergeant majors and I think the tiny ones might be called silversides.

Another very short video. I walked out to the end of a wooden pier to look back and show the shoreline. There were actually really big fish under the dock but the sun shining on the water made it impossible to take pictures of them. I think they were tarpon. I wish I had the courage to put on my snorkel and just jump in here!

So that was the end of my 5 days in Belize. The next morning I was up at 5am to start the long journey home, which was even longer than expected as there was a traffic jam outside of Guate City so that I didn't end up getting back to Panajachel until almost 7pm. Still, worth it!! 😀

I will leave you with...

My Tips for Ambergris Caye, Belize:

1. Remember that when they say "dollars", they probably mean Belizean dollars. If you're unsure, double-check before paying to confirm if it's BZ or U.S. dollars. I mistakenly paid in U.S. for my water taxi ticket and therefore paid double. Thankfully, they understood the mistake and gave me a refund.

2. Go snorkeling on your first morning -- and every morning after! The snorkeling on the coral reefs (and SCUBA diving) is what makes Belize so special. Don't miss out! I would personally avoid the full-day tours, as swimming in the waves can be very tiring. 

3. Go to the Island City Supermarket for snacks, toiletries, and pretty much anything you could want. The store is HUGE inside. If you need sunscreen, shampoo, flip-flops, crazy glue (yes, i broke my glasses again), towels, souvenirs, cat toys (no joke, I bought one), booze, or whatever, you can get it there.

BONUS TIP: Before snorkeling, put sunscreen on your butt. Trust me on this one! 😆