The beautiful country of Belize is known for its gorgeous beaches, the Great Blue Hole, and incredible weather.
As the only Central American country that speaks English, Belize is a great place for Northern Americans to visit. We only had a few days in Belize and already want to go back!
Top Belize Experiences
The amazing thing about Belize is that within just a short drive, you can experience both the beach and the jungle. Here are some of the best things to experience in Belize:
Islands: Belize has many beautiful cayes (such as Caye Caulker) with white sand and turquoise water. These are great for relaxation and and to catch that Caribbean vibe!
Jungle: Within an hour or so drive inland, you can also experience waterfalls, caves, and jungle. The adventures are endless. Belize is especially popular for people interest in spotting lots of wildlife and birds!
The Great Blue Hole: One of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Great Blue Hole in Belize is a spectacular view. A collapsed cave dropping 140 feet into the ocean makes for an iconic spot for helicopter tours and divers alike!
Resorts: There are many all-inclusive resorts in Belize, where you can enjoy the beach, eat delicious food, and either choose to relax or go on adventures.
Our Experience in Belize
Playa del Carmen (where we’ve been living in Mexico the past year) is four hours from the border of Belize, so we’ve been wanting to visit for a while. We flew into Belize City and then had to take another small plane and I’ve never seen a more beautiful landing strip right along the ocean!
The most interesting part of our arrival day was when they told me I was going to be the co-pilot and sat me right beside the pilot (happened before on a sightseeing flight but never on a commercial flight with 12 people and an actual control wheel right in front of me)!
We knew we’d only have a short amount of time to experience Belize so we decided that — as much as we’d someday love to experience one of the islands — we’d rather go somewhere where we could enjoy both the beach and the jungle. After researching the best Belize resorts, we ended up partnering with Hamanasi Adventure and Dive Resort, which was the perfect experience of adventure combined with romance.
Hamanasi Adventure and Dive Resort
Hamanasi offers build your own all-inclusive Belize vacation packages where you can choose from reef, jungle, romance, or other adventures. Everything is centrally located — our scuba boat literally left from the pier that was a 3-minute walk from our treehouse.
What’s also unique is that they run many of their own tours; their divemasters and tour operators are mostly in-house, and for the tours that aren’t, they’ll send along a Hamanasi guide with you. We’ve previously experienced resort tours that weren’t the most well-run, so this level of service that Hamanasi provides amazed us.
Having such a centralized location also means that at Hamanasi, you can stay in one destination instead of traveling from one location of Belize to another and having to move around every couple nights.
From the moment we arrived, we were blown away by the kindness of the Belizean people. We fell in love with the people, the food, and the beach in our short time there and already want to go back! The Hamanasi staff (Nathan, Victor, Melonie, & Sherice – just to name a few) treated us SO well, even fulfilling random requests like giving us a new bottle for my leaking essential oils :)
One day Macario & Jerome gave us a tour of their garden, which was incredible to see how eco-friendly everything is – they grow many of their own vegetables and herbs for the kitchen, and are very serious about recycling and using their compost to continue the cycle. We also got to tour the carpentry shop with Selvin & Carlos and learned that almost everything in the treehouse we stayed in – the bed, lamps, tables, chairs, etc – had been hand-created by their team. They are incredibly talented!
As for accommodations, you can choose to stay in either Hamanai’s luxury treehouses or oceanfront rooms. Hamanasi put us in their deluxe treehouse and WOW that’s my kind of treehouse. :) I know I am going to be looking back at this picture the other 99% of days when I’m sleeping on the airport floor or in a cheap, gross AirBnB (oh wait, that’s right now)!
Our Favorite Experience in Belize
A goal of ours while in Belize was to go scuba diving! The Belize barrier reef is the second largest barrier reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia) and has beautiful reefs, a huge variety of sea life, and many great dive spots. Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to scuba dive the blue hole (hopefully we can come back someday soon!), but we really enjoyed our dives. We saw a nurse shark, sting rays, a turtle, eels, and many colorful fish. It was so much fun and definitely our favorite experience in Belize!
After diving, we spent the rest of our time at Hamanasi Adventure & Dive Resort just relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather. We got an oceanfront massage, ate delicious food, and kept talking about how we need to come back to Belize ASAP.
We also had an interesting flight experience on our way back to Belize City – we accidentally had the whole plane to ourselves! Since we’d flown a small plane with only us and another couple in it, we figured the international terminal was just across the street because the airport didn’t look like where we’re previously been. After getting our bags and asking how far it was to walk, we realized they’d taken us to a completely different airport (same city but would take three hours to walk). I guess they’d accidentally called the wrong names when they told us to get off?! So as the airplane was taxi-ing down the runway to take the “Criders” to Belize International, they walkie-talkied the pilot who somehow stopped the plane and swapped passengers before taking off again. It was pretty fun randomly having our own private plane!
If the first few flights are any indication of how the rest of our Central & South America trip is gonna go, we are in for an adventure! And Belize was an incredible way to start!!
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