Can we rent a vehicle close to where we tender in?

[937runnergrl]

We are going on a Royal Caribbean cruise stopping at Belize the beginning of April. We would really like to go to some ruins, but would like to drive ourselves around to have a little more flexibility. I could not find a rental car place close to where we tender in, just at the airport. Also, is it safe to drive ourselves around Belize?

Looks like the Lamani ruins are the closest to port, but might be hard to get there. The Xunantunich ruins look farther, but it looks like you can take the western highway the whole way there. Has anyone driven themselves to any ruins in Belize? Thanks so much!

[pdmlynek]

Looks like that I am too late for you, ’runnergrl, but someone else may have the same question. We've done all three on our own in November 2011.

 

Driving to Altun Ha

If you want to visit a site on your own, and want to rent a car to get there, then go to Altun Ha. This is the easiest of the three to drive to and see. From Belize City head northwest on Northern Highway, then about 15-17 km past the International Airport turn right onto the Old Northern Highway. The turn off is well marked, but the Old Northern Highway is pretty bumpy. Another 15 to 20 km there will be a turn off on your left to Altun Ha.

 

 

Driving to Xunantunich

If you want to rent a car to visit Xunantunich on your own, the drive is long (130 km or so) but the road is in a relatively good condition.

 

The trickiest part is getting though Santa Elena/San Ignacio; you should study maps of this twin town to save yourself the time. Santa Elena is on the eastern bank of Macal River, and San Ignacio on the western bank. There used to be only one old one-lane historic suspension bridge (Hawksworth Bridge) across Macal River. When Hawksworth bridge was being repaired many years ago, the repair crew put up a temporary bridge to route the traffic around their worksite. When they were done repairing the Hawkesworth Bridge, the town just decided to keep the “temporary” bridge as a one-way bridge from east to west and made Hawkesworth Bridge as a one-way bridge from west to east. It is your challenge to find the temporary bridge; it is on one of the side streets of Santa Elena and not marked, but the locals know where it is -- just follow the traffic. And after crossing the temporary bridge, you’ll need to take a handful of side streets to get back onto the Western Highway (on the way back it is much easier). (Supposedly there is a construction of a new bridge underway). Once out of San Ignacio, you should have no problem finding the hand-cranked ferry to get across Mopan River for the final 2 km to Xunantunich.

 

 

Driving to Lamanai

If you want to rent a car to visit Lamanai, then you need to be early enough to make it to the bridge across the New River from underneath which speed boats take off for Lamanai. There is usually someone hanging around the bridge who could take you to Lamanai for a reasonable fee if you miss the boat. The speed (and thus cost) of the transport depends on the horsepower of the engine.

 

It is also possible to drive all the way to Lamanai. Cross the bridge crossing the New River, and then 0.75 km further turn south on a packed gravel, unmarked, road through Old German Mennonite farming communities. Note that both ITM maps (250K Belize and 500K Yucatan) differ from each other and from reality, thus you should rely on Google Earth. Study the route on Google Earth before you go, and mark on your print-out distances and waypoints. There are many, many turn offs which end up on Mennonite farms or rendering plants, instead of taking you to Lamanai. Except for the last turn off, there are no direction highway signs. The traffic here is pretty non-existent, except for buggies full of men in black outfits, women in long dresses and a whole bunch of blond kids. We got no cell phone signals (it turns out that Mennonites are not heavy cell phone users :) ), so we could not rely on on-line maps, thus we used GPS signals along with a previously obtained dataset of waypoints. Most Belizeans find Mennonite less than helpful when they get lost in this area, but we found that speaking to younger males in German got us a positive response.

 

Good luck!