Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

Going out to the sand flats for the first kitesurf lesson of the season!

Slickrock’s new Vela kitesurf school started up this past week with our first guests of the season. After completing the new cabin and setting up our Vela windsurf and kitesurf equipment, we then scouted out locations around the atoll. Meg Griffiths, our new instructor, will be spending the season on the island with us. A top competitor and professional instructor, Meg has instructed kitesurfing in Brazil, South Africa, UK, and Turkey. She travels the world kitesurfing; we are EXCITED to have her join our staff.

Meg reports that our location is perfect for lessons for all levels of students, where they can enjoy the warm 80 degree water and nearly constant winds. Only one-half mile from the island is a large area where the water is chest deep or less. With no currents or tidal exchange, this calm area is a great place to learn.

Our extensive sand flats are not only perfect for teaching conditions, but Meg says she has never been able to teach in such a wide-open area with no other kitesurfers, windsurfers, or other instructors teaching nearby. This creates an ideal situation for students to learn all the basics of kiteboarding: kite control, bodydragging, and board riding. And no worries of competing kitesurf “traffic”!

Slickrock’s Vela school is also offering great first season rates of only $50/hour for lessons if you share your lessons with one other student. This is far below what most kitesurf schools charge, and few other locations can match our pristine, uncrowded conditions. Come take advantage of our first season excitement! Be among the first to learn kitesurfing at Glover’s Reef Atoll. And if the wind doesn’t suit you, well there’s always sea kayaking, surfing, paddleboarding, unbelievable snorkeling, and a dive shop right on the island.

Join us in Belize for perfect kitesurfing conditions!

I heard from Cully in Belize… our new Vela wind center is now up and running!

I am just off the island for a few days, and wanted to post these photos we have taken over the past 2 weeks. Since mid October we have been busy preparing for our winter adventure tours and building our new Belize Vela Windsport Center. We have set up our gear and are busy constructing our new kite and windsurf building, as well as setting up our sea kayaks, paddleboards, and surf kayaks.

The wind has been up and down, common for this early part of the season, but our winter weather pattern hasn’t kicked in yet, which enjoys much stronger, steadier winds along with our ‘northern’ cold fronts which blow through almost weekly where the wind usually blows 25-30 mph for a few days at a time. Meanwhile, we are doing a bit of sailing and windsurfing, and the surf has been great so we’re out surfing and paddleboarding our break almost everyday.

I hope you can join us in Belize this winter, the island is looking great and we are really having a blast out there!

What’s the best way to find Belize flights?
After years of advising people about Belize travel arrangements, we summarize the options and strategies this way:

What airlines fly to Belize?
There are not that many options for flying to Belize because it’s a small country and there are only a few flights/day, and all go through the United States. There are no direct flights from Europe or Canada. You fly to Belize on one of five carriers: Continental (out of Houston), American (out of Dallas or Miami), U.S. Airways (out of Charlotte), Delta (out of Atlanta), or Grupo Taca (out of Houston or Miami). Even if you wanted to go to Belize after traveling in Costa Rica, for example, you would have to fly first to Miami from Costa Rice, then back south to Belize.

How do I find cheap flights to Belize?
There are no really cheap flights, for some reason people expect to find $300 round trip fares to Belize just by looking harder. You should expect to pay around $600 round trip, depending on where you are coming from, of course. If you find a fare less than that, buy it! You will get the best rates if you book early. Another technique is to try other dates (fly in Thursday even if you really need to arrive Saturday). Or try a different airport, possibly driving a little further. If you get a killer rate on a flight to Cancun, you can take the bus down, see our blog post “How to get to Belize from Cancun”. You can fly to Belize from Cancun, but it’s so expensive it cancels out the savings on the Cancun leg of the journey.

Any other advice on flying to Belize?
When you make your reservations, try to arrange for as few connecting flights as possible. If you have several connections, small delays can add up to missing your final flight from your gateway city to Belize. If at all possible, do not accept reservations with less than two hours between connections; very tight connections increase the possibility that you will miss one of your connecting flights. If you are flying in a day early you don’t have to be as concerned about multiple and tight connections. Because most airlines only fly once a day to Belize, if you miss your final flight to Belize, you will be 24 hours late.

We fly to Belize every year, what do we do?
From Moab we drive to Grand Junction, CO or Salt Lake City, UT and on to Houston or Dallas on whichever airline gives us the best deal, or with which we have frequent flyer points, and we often overnight in that US city if the connections would be too tight to get to Belize in one day. We might then switch to Continental or American to fly to Belize. This way we get the best price, and if staying in the US overnight, our luggage can catch up (it may be still behind).

Belize Air Schedules and Rates
For Belize air schedules, visit our Flying to Belize web page. For rates visit our Belize Flights page.

Our guest Rich Mitchell took this photo out of his plane window on the way to Belize. He put his sunglasses over the lens!

Our kayak travel trips cover a wide range of kayaking skills, using a variety of boats. We base out of our island, Long Caye at Glover’s Reef, located 35 miles offshore in Belize. On our adventure tours we teach sea kayaking, surf kayaking, snorkeling from kayaks, kayak rolling, kayak fishing, and we have both single and double kayaks. Inland in the jungle we also teach river kayaking and UNDERGROUND river kayaking.

Everyone knows about Belize cave tubing, but less is known about running the Caves Branch River by kayak because no one (except us) has the equipment. We have been running this underground river in Belize since 1991, using both kayaks and rafts to explore this incredible water cavern. The problem with cave tubing in Belize is that the runs have to be extremely short as this river is too shallow to allow an unimpeded float. Slickrock Adventures is the only company to use kayaks and rafts to run the whole section of caves.

The Caves Branch River flows through four caves traveling from the Maya Mountains until it empties into the Sibun River. We start near Ian Anderson’s Caves Branch Jungle Lodge, after first covering the basics of paddling a kayak. First we paddle through several miles of jungle before arriving at a huge white cliffs that the river suddenly veers right into, and darkness soon envelopes us. Using headlamps for lighting the way, the current takes us though four caves, which occasionally pass by openings into the jungle. What a great way to learn to kayak!

Out on the island, we have well over 40 seats in sea kayaks so that everyone can choose a boat that fits them. It’s hard to learn this fabulous sport if your boat is not the right one for you. We provide choices between boats for experienced kayakers, boats for those who have never set foot in a kayak, boats for tall men, for small women, for those who need a little bit of help with balancing, and we also have several doubles for paddling your kids around in. You can claim a boat for the week and use only that boat, or switch around and try them all. Visit our Belize kayaking page for a complete list of our sea kayaks.

Our surf kayaks are a completely different animal, they have a skeg that grabs onto the wave to help you stay in the surfing position. Slickrock’s primary wave-sport activity is surf kayaking. Our high-tech sit-on-top surf kayaks have planing hulls, fins, ankle leashes, seat backs, and leg straps. The ocean kayak surfing on our island is great for beginners. Surf kayaks allow anyone to easily catch a wave since you are using a paddle rather than your arms to propel you craft, and it is easy to adjust your position to start a ride in exactly the right spot. With a few fast strokes you are on the wave, and the thrill of accelerating down its face is like no other.

We also have old-style river kayaks for our rolling classes. What better place to learn how to roll in a kayak than where the water is 80 degrees? And not only that, you wear your snorkel mask while learning to roll and you can see your paddle and don’t inhale buckets of water! These river boats are much easier to roll than a sea kayak. We teach you first in one of these, and you then graduate up to the sea kayaks when you are ready.

In addition to all of this, we have the only fleet of fishing kayaks in the country. They have tons of specialized features like tackle storage, rod holders, fish holds, and they are wider than sea kayaks to prevent them from tipping over while casting. They also use anchors and pontoons to stabilize the craft. Fishermen who have heard about fishing at Glover’s Reef have the opportunity to use these top-of-the-line fishing kayaks as an alternative to wading in from shore or fishing off of our dock. This allows you to be able to fish in places where you might otherwise feel you need to hire a fishing guide and boat (at several hundred dollars/day!)

Our river kayaks that we use on the Macal and Caves Branch rivers are designed specifically for whitewater. All told we have well over 100 kayaks in Belize so you can experience each sport we offer in the best gear possible. This makes your fantastic vacation even more fun! The only problem is you will come home wanting one of each…..

Earlier I posted “before” and “after” shots of our surf dock (the dock where we sit and watch the surfers from, while enjoying a cold Belikin) that got damaged this fall during Hurricane Matthew. The dock has been fixed, along with a lot of other building currently going on on the island.

I heard from Cully today, he’s been out on the island supervising the building of our new Vela windsports center. The new windsurf rack full of all new sails has just been completed. I know this made Cully happy to see this much cool new windsurf gear on the island! He reports they are also working on the new kiteboard cabin, as well as fixing some hurricane damaged facilities.

If you are looking at Belize tours and don’t know what to do, the Lamanai tour is a no-brainer if you need a one day tour out of Belize City. This tour is offered every day of the year by several tour companies, and they pick up and drop off at all Belize City hotels, so you may be grouped with others from other hotels. A 1-1/2 hour bus ride takes you north to the New River, only 11 miles shy of the town of Orange Walk. The banter of the guide can a little grating here, with bad speakers and Belize-Fun-Facts, but this is not an omen for the rest of the day, don’t worry. At the New River bridge you transfer into fast river cruisers that boat upstream about an hour to the ruins, stopping often to view exotic wildlife along the banks. The guides are always top-notch; on one trip our we saw about 15 different tropical birds including: jabiru stork, green-backed herons, northern jacana, olivaceous cormorants, and purple gallinules. Crocodiles and blooming water lilies were everywhere! Once you arrive at the ruins, lunch is served and the tour that follows includes excellent interpretation on the Mayan culture and history.

The tour is about $121/person and can be booked at your Belize City hotel. A slightly less expensive alternative is to call Discovery Expeditions directly. They will charge you about $105 pp, their number is: 011.501.223.0748. What to bring: binoculars (a must!), money for the gift shop, rain and warm gear (the boat ride is cold, and if it rains you’ll get wet too), bug spray, your iPod for the boat ride (the engine is noisy). This is a fantastic tour, don’t miss it. For more information on all Belize Mayan ruins visit this page on our website.

Cully is down in Belize and sent me some images from the ongoing building projects from last week. We are doubling the size of one of our Belize accommodations, our beach cabana we call Iguanaville. Iguanaville has always been one of our most private cabanas, and now it will be twice as large. Here are some before and during shots… I don’t have any “after” ones yet.

We have just put a few more dates on special. Our Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef trip visits our island for sea kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, kitesurfing, windsurfing, kayak surfing, sport fishing, kayak fishing, paddleboarding, and board surfing (not to mention hammock surfing!) The Belize Adventure Week trip is a jungle-island combo trip. Inland we whitewater kayak the Macal River, raft or kayak underground on the Caves Branch River, cave at Che Chem Ha Mayan pottery cave, and explore Tikal Mayan ruins in nearby Guatemala, the premier ruin in the region.

Here are the special sale dates and prices:
Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef Full Week, Fri – Sat, 9 nights, $2075 per person regular rate, 15% off! now $1763.75 US per person! Read more: http://www.slickrock.com/adventureisland.html
November 19 – 27, 2010, flying home no earlier than the 28th
November 26 – December 4, 2010, flying home no earlier than the 5th
December 10 – 18, flying home no earlier than the 19th
January 21 – 29, flying home no earlier than the 30th

Belize Adventure Week, Sat – Sat, 8 nights, $2395 per person regular rate, 10% off! now $2155.50 US per person! Read more: http://www.slickrock.com/belizeadventureweek.html
January 1 – 8, 2011, flying home no earlier than the 9th
January 15 – 22, 2011, flying home no earlier than the 23rd
January 22 – 29, 2011, flying home no earlier than the 30th

Just think: in a couple of months you could be here!