Statistics
Days: 23. Arrived in Belize on October 13. Left Belize on November 4.
Cities: 3. Caye Caulker, Placencia, Belize City.
Apartment Rentals: 1. We stayed at an apartment on Caye Caulker for 2 weeks.
Our kitchen, dining room, and living room all in one! It was small but worked for us!
Hotels: 2. We spent 5 nights at Sea Spray Hotel in Placencia and 2 nights at Sea Breeze Guest House in Belize City.
Modes of Transportation: 5. Boat, golf cart, taxi, chicken bus, and walking.
Our bus rides to and from Placencia were on old school buses – not the most comfortable for 6 hours of travel!
Q&A
What was your favorite site or place that you visited?
J: Shark Ray Alley – we got to swim with sharks!
L: Everywhere we went on the water snorkeling and scuba diving. It was our first time doing both activities and we loved it! There was so much life underwater and we were lucky enough to swim with manatees, a turtle, nurse sharks, sting rays, and so many fish!
This was one of many sting rays that we swam with at Shark Ray Alley.
What was the biggest surprise you had during this time?
J: The cost of things and also all the crabs on Caye Caulker. There were crabs out mainly at night and they were big!
L: The cost of things in Belize, particularly on Caye Caulker. We had assumed that prices would be lower in Central America, but we found most prices to be on par with what we would find in the USA. Buying groceries and cooking meals ourselves wasn’t much cheaper than eating out (depending on what we would order). The exception to this on Caye Caulker was the seafood – we could get a full lobster dinner for $10USD!
Italian for dinner was not cheap! This was a splurge, complete with wine (a rarity for me these days!).
What was the lowest point for this part of the trip?
J: Belize City wasn’t what I had expected – it was dirty and more boring than I had thought.
L: We didn’t really have any low moments on this part of the trip, thankfully! If I had to pick something, I would say either the budget (since it was more expensive than we had thought) or the fact that we were in Placencia during low season and therefore many places we wanted to go were closed.
What was your favorite food or meal that you had?
J: All of the fresh grilled lobster that we ate!
L: This is a hard one since we had so many good meals; I don’t think we had one bad meal our entire time in Belize! I will be generic and answer “lobster” since I ate it just about every other day while in Belize. I had several good dishes with lobster, on its own and with other things like a salad or omelet. Each time, it was delicious!
This was one of many lobster dinners that we enjoyed during our time in Belize!
What would you change if you were to do it again?
J: I wouldn’t go to Belize City – I would have gone straight from Placencia to the airport to fly out.
L: There was a pair of conch shell earrings that I saw in Placencia, and I’m kicking myself for not buying those. But on a larger scale, I probably would have taken a day away from Placencia and 2 or 3 days away from Caye Caulker and added another city on the mainland to explore. I can’t say that we were bored at the end of our time, but we were definitely ready to be moving around more than we had been.
What advice would you give someone doing a similar trip and route?
J: Be mindful of prices that you see – it was a mix between Belizean and US dollars and not always labeled, so sometimes things ended up being more expensive than we thought. Enjoy the smaller cities and skip the large cities.
L: Depending on how much time you have in Belize, pick 3 or 4 (or more!) different cities and spend a few days in each (as opposed to spending all your time in just 1 or 2 places). Belize is small enough and it doesn’t take very long to get from place to place, so it would be worth making the effort to explore as much of the country as you can in the time that you have. It’s very diverse, culturally and environmentally, so you won’t get bored!
In addition to the many crabs in Belize, there were a lot of lizards and iguanas as well!
What is the best memory that you’ll carry with you?
J: Scuba diving.
L: Scuba diving for our first time! That was something I had wanted to do for so long and I’m thrilled that we finally did it. I’m so excited to have this ability now and am looking forward to the diving that we can do in other countries around the world as we travel. I’m also happy that Jon was willing to do it with me – I know it wasn’t his favorite activity and he was scared to get in the water with sharks, but he did it and I’m so proud of him for it! I love that we experienced it together.
Jon and Lana – official open water scuba divers!!
What to read more?
Read about our time in Belize…
- Traveling overland (and over water!) from Mexico to Belize
- Getting SCUBA certified with Frenchie’s
- What a Typical Tuesday looks like in Belize
- A day spent snorkeling and sailing in the Caribbean Sea
- Why we delayed our honeymoon for over four years!
- What we ate in Caye Caulker
- How to enjoy low season in Placencia
- Our 36 hours in Belize City