We recently heard from one of our wonderful past guests, Susan Saraf. Susan has visited us twice on our Belize island, but both times she joined us, it was ages ago (we hope she will come back someday soon). Susan just sent me a bunch of photos from early 2000, which was only about a year and half after Hurricane Mitch, which really rearranged everything on the island.

As a result of that hurricane we lost our dining hall and several of our cabanas, along with about 75 feet of our island on one side. But land doesn’t just disappear in a storm like that, this sand ended up around the corner, on the other side of the island, giving us a brand new beach. All it all, the island was much better for it; the hurricane turned out to be a good thing.

But this new beach had zero trees on it, because before the storm, that area was water. Also, the hurricane (October of 1998) coincided with the arrival of the palm tree disease, Lethal Yellowing Disease, which hit Belize at about the same time the hurricane did. Subsequently, we had a tree crisis. This started us on a huge tree-planting and tree-treatment program which continues to this day.

So Susan’s photos are a joy to us, because it’s so much fun to see the results of all of this hard work. Here are two photo comparisons, before and after. We have so much shade now, it’s easy to stay out of the sun the whole time except when you are actually in the water. We have planted about 400 trees (resistant to the disease), and we treat about 500 other trees. We now know more about palm trees than we ever dreamed there was to know when we started in this business in 1977!

We employ as 12V electrical system on the island, using solar panels and wind generators to charge a bank of batteries from which we draw power for our lights, water pumps, and refrigeration systems. The system is very efficient and we love using a renewable energy source so we can do away with noisy gas generators. We also appreciate the fact that the system is very safe since it is such low voltage.

In recent years our guests are bringing ever increasing numbers of ‘personal devices’ with them on the trips, such as smart phones, iPads, and of course cameras, which need recharging. We provide a 12V recharging station in our dining hall which requires a ‘cigarette lighter’ style plug. Guests have to bring their own inverters if their devices require a standard 110V plug; these inverters are inexpensive and easy to find at any electronics store. The inverters plug into the cigarette lighter plug and convert the electricity to 110 for standard chargers. However, recently we are finding that many devices now are recharged with a USB plug system, which is much more efficient since this will bypass the inverter system. Guests can now bring a cigarette lighter receptacle that has a USB plug in the back of it, which are available in electronics stores such as Radio Shack or Best Buy.

[top photo by Wil Thijssen, bottom photo by Charlie Woodward]

Fly to Belize and stay in this beach cabana!

In doing my weekly update for our Belize flights webpage I was happy to see that fares dropped in just one week in 18 of the 29 cities we track. If you fly from New York City, the fares dropped 28% and if you fly from Anchorage they dropped 25%! Here are a few sample Belize fares:

To view the complete list of current Belize fares, visit our website.

Photo by Mike Anderson