Belize - March 13 - 22, 2008

Cathleen Preparing to Zipline in the Jungle near Tikal, Guatemala

As I create these pages about Belize, it is more than 1 year after the actual trip. Yes, I am very timely!

Belize is a small country located south of the Yucatan Peninsula on the Carribean Sea. Formerly, Belize was known as British Honduras. Belize gained its independence from Great Britain in 1981. Guatemala still claims the Belize belongs to them (crossing the border between the two was a surreal experience).

About 210,000 people or so inhabit Belize. There is one prison (I know because I drove past it several times on the Western Highway). Belize has 4 main roads/highways - 2-lane roads that connect the North, South, East, and West together. There are other paved roads, especially in Belize City and the capital city, Belmopan. San Ignacio has some as well. However, most roads not the 4 main roads are rutted dirt roads that are a lot of fun (not!) to drive on. One can also travel via water, and I did that some as well, and via small airplane (did that too).

The very fanciful postcard image to the left gives you an idea of the roads system - the red lines are the 4 main roads. Belize itself is about the size of either Massachussets or New Hampshire, but considerably warmer than either and, I am sure, possessing more mosquitos than both those states as well. I visited during the "dry season" (March), and the humidity was already high. I had great weather though, but I did return with the unwanted souvenir of about 50 mostquite bites. I am very tasty, apparently.

You may ask Why Belize? Of all places. A lot of people have never even heard of the place, for goodness sake. Obviously, I am not one of those people and have not been for many, many years. It was always "on the list", so to speak, of places I wanted to visit and would eventually get around to. 2008 turned out to be when "eventually" occurred. In 2002, however, some people I knew went to Belize for about a week and came back raving about how wonderful it was. Well, that was that. It would take another 5 1/2 years, however, before the trip occurred.

In the Fall of 2007, I began the planning of the trip. I bought and read books, searched the internet, read travel guides - all in an effort to determine just exactly I wanted to do and see while I was there. I made a list of anything that even remotely sounded interesting. (This is very similar to the steps I took in planning my trip to the United Kingdom in 1998.) Based on where all of the activities fell, I knew approximately where I would be staying if not exactly what I would be doing. Then I searched around the internet to see what was available in the way of tours and packages and, frankly, nothing was exactly what I wanted. The tours always had several activities and places in which I just was not interested.

So I contacted a few of the travel agents and hooked up with Delia Noble. Delia works for a travel agency located in Belize City, Belize. I have never met Delia, never even spoken to her by phone. All of our communication was via email. And it worked out quite well. I told her what I wanted, she made some recommendations, and I had a trip. She crafted a wonderful trip for me and I came home thoroughy fulfilled and feeling like I had gotten the utmost out of my trip - I did and saw everything I wanted to.

 

In my mind, I have broken the trip down into 3 distinct phases:

The Jungle

The City

The Island