Best Belize Advice

[mn mary]

Please share your best advice on enjoying Belize. My husband and I will be there on the NCL Sea in late January. We have two older teenagers (girls, but not toooo girly.) We like to snorkel and are have heard a little about a tree-top jungle tour. Has anyone done this? Can it be booked along with a beach trip? Is it worth it and who did you book it through? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[TVMet]

Reggie for cave tubing. Took my 12 y.o. daughter (she's really athletic and into sports and swimming) a few days ago and Reggie's son was great with her. We had a small group and had a wonderful experience.

[Ks Bob]

Please share your best advice on enjoying Belize. My husband and I will be there on the NCL Sea in late January. We have two older teenagers (girls, but not toooo girly.) We like to snorkel and are have heard a little about a tree-top jungle tour. Has anyone done this? Can it be booked along with a beach trip? Is it worth it and who did you book it through? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

The jungle canopy tour was great. See my thread in this forum. Definetely worth doing. We booked throught the ship and I don't think they book indepently of the cruise ships. They have only been open since Oct. The name of the operator was Bak-A-Bush I believe. There is no beach to go to.

[terryteacher]

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/t.zablocki@sbcglobal.net/album?.dir=/205d&.src=ph&.tok=phpKdRCBTC4997vV

 

Photos of our cruise...NCL Sea 12/25 We flew Maya Air to Ambergris, rented golf cart and had a blast. It was only $60 a person to fly. We had a nice tour of Belize City on the way to and from airport...which was included in price of airfare. The view from the plane was too good! Hope this helps.

[terryteacher]

The feedback from those who did the Sea canopy/cave tubing tour was that there were really long lines. You went from one station to another, and there were alot of people. Everyone we talked to enjoyed the day, but they did comment on length of lines. Also, one guy told me it was a lot of work!

[kedmondson]

We just returned- My husband and I went to Goff's Caye. They picked us up right from the ship and took us out to the caye. It is about the size of a football field but sits right on the reef. You can snorkel from the boat or from the island-- a great day! My teenagers took a cave tubing tour. They saw some of Belize City, some jungle and caves. They enjoyed it although it was kind of cold and the trip was longer-- they caught the next to the last tender back to the ship.

[carbon]

sheheke, was that $60 round trip per person?

[terryteacher]

yes, and that included transportation to airport in Belize City. You leave right from the tender area, and on the way back Dylan was kind enough to drive us past the swing bridge. He was an excellent tour guide.

[Brianinidaho]

Please share your best advice on enjoying Belize. My husband and I will be there on the NCL Sea in late January. We have two older teenagers (girls, but not toooo girly.) We like to snorkel and are have heard a little about a tree-top jungle tour. Has anyone done this? Can it be booked along with a beach trip? Is it worth it and who did you book it through? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

This is from a previous thread that got buried.. hope the info helps.

 

posted a comprehensive 11 page review of our cruise on the Carnival Miracle trip of 11-28-04 on the ship review part of this site, and included the following information on Belize. I hope this information is helpful. Brian in Idaho

 

Friday at Belize. As you may know, there is a great reef and lots of atolls in the waters outside of Belize City. So the ship parks a few miles out in the harbor and high speed boats shuttle you into port, about a 15 minute ride. You land at a gated, policed “Tourist Village” with lots of shops and tour guides available. There was a good internet café that charged $3 for 15 minutes in this village.

 

 

We met up with Douglas Gentle of Belize Taxi Tour Guide Association at the dock and hired him to take us to Alta Hu Mayan Ruins for $30 each. Doug is a former New York City resident who got laid off from his job at the World Trade Center a few months before 9/11 and decided to return home to Belize to care for his ailing parents. He gave a most excellent tour. www.bztaxitourguidesassociation.com or email Douglas at betta@btl.net

 

 

There are licensed (and more expensive) tour guides inside the village, and you can leave the gated area and go with cheaper unlicensed ones. After driving around Belize, there is no doubt in my mind that the extra few bucks was worth it to go with a licensed guide.

 

 

A few words of opinion about Belize City: “Second World.” It is poor, run down, and there are bars on nearly every window of every home and business that we saw on our 4 hour tour. Crime is high, and our tour guide said the bars on the windows are not for decorative purposes. We did not feel very safe downtown Belize City. We have felt safer in South Chicago or East Los Angeles than here.

 

 

We took the nearly 4 hour tour which included a city tour in Douglas’s older, beat up mini-van, and a ride out to Alta Hu, about 40 miles. The roads are terrible (full of pot holes) so it took an hour and a half almost. The ruins are really neat. You pay a $5 tax at the pier for a ticket and take it to the ruins for admission. Douglas handled all this for us. Douglas acted our tour guide at the ruins (besides just our taxi driver) and told us all about the ruins, history, and local culture. There were several large buildings that were discovered in the 1960s by accident and have been partially renovated. He noted the similarities between these buildings and the pyramids in the old world. It was as if some of the people might have traveled back and forth between the old and new worlds. A discussion arose about how some people believe an ancient record was found and translated into English that tells of such a people who left the old world and came to the Americas anciently and built cities here. The record is religious in nature so it is controversial, but a free copy is available at www.mormon.org and it is called the Book of Mormon. Anyways, back to the tour. We stopped and saw iguanas out on the side of the road and caught a giant tarantula in the middle of the road and picked up with a piece of cardboard and looked at it. Very interesting! Douglas was well worth seeking after as a tour guide.