Belize Discovery Guide

Belize puts the world's second-largest reef system, a 124-metre-deep sinkhole that Cousteau ranked among the five best dives anywhere, and Maya cities in standing forest within a country you can drive across in a morning -- and it does all of this in English, on a currency fixed at two to the US dollar, with fewer than a million visitors in a good year. The friction is that the reef is bleaching and the World Heritage listing says so; that the country's smallness means the cayes fill fast in the dry season; and that the interior asks for a car or a tour rather than a bus. The smart move is to split the trip in two: a caye for the reef and the Blue Hole, then the Cayo district for Xunantunich, Caracol and the caves, in the dry months from January to May, or in the quieter, greener weeks either side.

If you travel slowly

Take the water taxi to Caye Caulker -- 45 minutes, a village of about 4,000 people 32 kilometres from Belize City -- and stay until the boat schedule stops mattering. Then cross to the interior and give the Cayo district a week: the Maya sites are a morning each and the rivers and caves the afternoons.

If you want to see the essentials

Snorkel or dive the Barrier Reef at Hol Chan, the marine reserve established in 1987 where fishing is banned and snorkelling is allowed for a fee, with Shark Ray Alley added in 1999; fly or sail out to the Great Blue Hole on Lighthouse Reef, 70 kilometres offshore; and climb El Castillo at Xunantunich, the second-tallest structure in Belize after Caracol's.

If you seek local character

Listen to the country switch languages: English on the sign, Kriol in the street, Spanish in the north and west, Maya in the south, German among the Mennonite farmers who are almost four per cent of the population. September is a month of national celebration, from the anniversary of St George's Caye on the 10th to Independence Day on the 21st, and Garifuna Settlement Day in November is a holiday of its own.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

Actun Tunichil Muknal is a cave you wade and swim into to reach the calcified skeleton called the Crystal Maiden; cameras are banned without a permit since a visitor dropped one on a thousand-year-old skull in 2012, and you take your shoes off in the upper chamber. The Cockscomb Basin, the first jaguar sanctuary in the world when it was declared in 1986, is the forest at its thickest; you will see tracks rather than cats.

Belize is a Caribbean country on the Central American mainland, and its character comes from that seam. The census counts 52.9 per cent Mestizo, 25.9 per cent Creole, 11.3 per cent Maya, 6.1 per cent Garifuna, 3.9 per cent East Indian and 3.6 per cent Mennonite, and over half the population speaks more than one language. English is the official language -- the only Central American country where that is true -- but Kriol, which grew up among the enslaved Africans of the logwood and mahogany camps, is the language people actually speak to each other, with Spanish and the Maya languages beside it.

The British layer is thick: a parliamentary system, common law, cricket in the old photographs, and a national story that begins with the Baymen's victory over a Spanish fleet at St George's Caye from 3 to 10 September 1798. The Maya layer is older and everywhere underfoot; the Garifuna layer arrived on the southern coast and gave the country its drums and its November holiday; the Mennonites came last and farm the north and west.

Faith divides more evenly than in the neighbours -- 40.1 per cent Catholic, 31.5 per cent Protestant, 15.5 per cent none -- and the Guatemalan claim to the whole territory, which held up independence for two decades and which Guatemala refused to recognise in 1981, is still the country's longest argument.

The reef is the thing at risk. The Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System was inscribed as World Heritage in 1996 for the very habitats that bleaching now threatens, and the encyclopaedia's own summary is blunt: with continuous bleaching the coral will have little chance of recovery. Hol Chan's rules -- no fishing, snorkelling and diving on payment of a fee -- exist to keep the reserve's one square patch of reef alive under the boats that visit it daily; do not touch, stand on or feed anything, and choose operators who moor rather than anchor.

The caves and cities are fragile in a different way. At Actun Tunichil Muknal a dropped camera fractured a skull in 2012 and a footstep broke another; cameras are banned without a permit and shoes come off in the upper chamber, and the rule is the whole of the ethic. NICH sells the archaeological-reserve tickets and the fee is what pays the guards.

The forest is going: cover fell from 1,600,030 hectares in 1990 to 1,277,050 in 2020, still about 56 per cent of the land, and what remains inside protected areas has held far better than what lies outside them. The jaguar sanctuary at Cockscomb, the first in the world, works because people pay to walk in it. The cayes have no water of their own and about 4,000 residents on Caye Caulker host many times that; short showers and a refilled bottle are the courtesy.

January–February -- the dry season and the high season: the reef at its clearest, the roads to Caracol passable, the cayes full. Book the boats.

March–April -- still dry, hotter, and Easter week brings the region's own holiday crowd to the coast. The best weeks for the interior's caves and rivers before the rains.

May -- the last dry month, quieter and cheaper, with the first afternoon storms in the west.

June–August -- the rainy season begins in June; showers rather than washouts, greener forest, lower prices, and the Blue Hole still diveable when the sea is calm.

September–October -- the September Celebrations run the whole month, from St George's Caye Day on the 10th to Independence Day on the 21st, but this is also the start of the late hurricane season, which runs to December; the south floods first. Watch the forecast.

November–December -- the rains end in November, Garifuna Settlement Day fills the southern towns, and the dry season and the visitors return by Christmas.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs country average

Higher — San Pedro and Ambergris Caye, the atoll lodges, everywhere from Christmas to Easter

Average — Caye Caulker, the Cayo lodges

Lower — the towns of the north and south, and everywhere from June to November

Site prices checked against NICH's ticketing pages; the relative bands are editorial judgment and change with the season.