UnBELIZEable! -Trip to Belize: Travel Day
- Kristal
- Jun 2, 2017
- 4 min read
Decided to do a last-minute trip to Central America for Memorial Day weekend. Was working 12 hour days and needed a break for real! Thought about Costa Rica, but looked at flights and the holiday weekend meant that so many were full or overbooked :-/ However, BELIZE still had openings so I was like...wherever there is a beach, I'm in! Let's DO IT!
We flew out of Austin (soul-crushingly early) to ATL on Delta. Delta Airlines is amazing btw. I know there has been a lot of crap about airlines recently, but Delta is the way to go. They have great service and nice new planes with WiFi so I could watch Trolls and get my brain ready for VACATION!
Since we didn't exactly know where we were ending up, we didn't book a hotel before getting on the plane so in between watching Trolls, we were on the Agoda app, Hotels Tonight, Tripadvisor, and AirBnB trying to find some good deals as well as information on the best places to stay in Belize.
What I learned was:
Belize City = Lots of places to stay. Good for inland trips to Jungles, Mayan temples, awesome city exploration, history etc. Downside= hot, can be dangerous for tourists in some places, and the beach is meh..
Caye Caulker (pronounced Key Cocker) = Cute little island about 45 mins by water taxi from Belize City. Good for relaxing, fishing, chilling. Some cruise/fishing/snorkeling companies on the island and a cool bar on "The Split" which is where the sandbar got swallowed in the middle by the ocean. Downside to this island apparently is that it's pretty small so unless you're really just wanting to relax, you can run out of things to do pretty quickly. We met an awesome couple at the airport who wanted to just chill and lay out for their vacation days so they ended up staying here and were really happy about it.
Ambergris Caye (pronounced Amber-gree Key) = San Pedro is the main city on this island. It has a small airport (domestic) so you can fly here from the Belize City airport (international) and it only takes about 15 mins (costs about $150 per person though) or you can take the Water Taxi which takes about 2 hours (but only costs $35 roundtrip-holla!). San Pedro has shopping, nightlife (allllll night), all the excursion-y companies, and good restaurants. I like to do things on vacation but also with the pictures of the beaches I saw online, I was like SOLD!! We booked on AirBnB a super cute place called Hummingbird Suites for less than $40 a night -Yas!!
Arriving at Belize City airport, the first thing was like...Bam! Humidity! It was only in the high 80s, but with the humidity it felt like 105! The WiFi in the airport is pretty terrible so we didn't get to see if the AirBnB was confirming our reservation but we figured we can always just show up and say hi! We got a taxi to the San Pedro Express Water Taxi and it was a little weird because our taxi driver said like...no words to us the whole time. We tried to talk to him and he was just like...<crickets>. Honestly started to wonder what we got ourselves into. The end of May is not tourist season so we figured maybe he was just burned out from all the other tourists earlier in the year? I don't know, but anyways he took us to the San Pedro Express Water Taxi station and there was only about 4 other tourists (including the couple we met at the airport who were staying in Caye Caulker). There was a big pallet near the road and the taxi guy told us to leave our bags there. Me and the other girl looked at each other like...ummm maybe? It seemed pretty far away from the actual water taxi place, but since I didn't have any valuables in the bag I was like..ohkayyy. Everything turned out fine, but yeah we both thought it was kinda weird to leave our bags so far from the actual place.
Also, fun fact: if you decide Belize is not for you, you can always take a boat (or a bus if you hate yourself) to Guatemala or Mexico from here.
The water taxi leaves every hour or so and we were starving so we ducked into a restaurant that was serving local food. Had some fried conch with mushroom rice and rum punch-- Yum! I'm not much of a sweet cocktail person, but it was perfect and not too sweet. The local beer is delicious- Belikin beer but the bottle is pretty small (9.6 oz) so it's like 3 gulps? The Belize dollar exchange rate was .5 to the USD which was easy. So if something was 20 Belize dollars it was 10 USD. Things in Belize are really not that cheap (besides our room-which was awesome) as it is a mostly tourist-based economy so they charge US prices. Ie: a beer was about $4USD, a bottle of water $1.50USD etc. Also, the bathroom in the station area costs 50c. so bring cash with you!
We got on the water taxi and oh jesus lord it was STIFLINGLY hot. They load the people first and then the bags and until the boat moves there is no wind so...we were sweating like nobody's business. It was pretty gross. Some poor people in the water taxi (tourists) were wearing jeans!! My heart went out to them as the swamp-ass must have been horrific. I wished that I had brought my little folding fan as it would have been a lifesaver. Bring water (they don't allow beer on board)! But also-- pro-tip: This water taxi had a bathroom (with a sign that said #1 only), but the one we caught on the way back did not. Not sure if that's the same every time, but just a heads up.
And we're OFF! Oh it felt so good once the boat started moving and the wind came. The ride was smooth and beautiful. About 45 minutes to Caye Caulker where we stopped for about 5 minutes and then headed on to Ambergris Caye--woohoo!!
To Be Continued!
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