Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

We have just dropped the price on the first four trips of our season. Our Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef Full Week trips are 15% off, and our Belize Adventure Week trips are 10% off. Visit our Belize specials page to see which dates are on sale.

Today Belize fares dropped from all 26 cities that we watch, including dropping below $500 round trip from Houston and Charlotte. They have been steadily climbing for months, this is news!

Visit our Belize flights page for rates we found today.

One of Slickrock’s many island activities is sea kayak kite-sailing trips, where we employ special kites made to tow kayaks. When the wind is from the right direction, we often get out the kayak kites and hook them up for a down-wind run to Middle Caye. The kites still allow the kayaker to steer the boat with a rudder, although that is limited to about 45 degrees off from straight down wind. It is a challenging and exciting way to travel in a sea kayak, as one has to manage the kite, be able to steer, and reel it in when the next island is reached. But the thrill of moving under wind power in a kayak is a different experience that is always fun!

We often sail to Middle Caye when we have 15 mph winds or more (but not over 20 or it’s too hard to paddle back up!)

Click on images below to see full picture.

We sell a detailed Belize road map. I am happy to report that a new one is out and we are now selling this excellent National Geographic map of Belize. It includes protected area boundaries, the complete road network, including dirt roads, San Pedro and Belize City insets, diving and fishing locations, and much more travel information.

You can buy this Belize map from our secure web site, $12.95 shipped anywhere in the US and Canada.

Here is an example of the level of detail found in the map:

I just created this big shot of the island… it took 8 photos to put this together. I took these images last spring from the end of our dock. Slickrock’s kayak/windsurf beach is at the left in the photo, the dive shop is to the right.

Click on the image to see the longest version your screen will allow!

The Beaufort scale is a system for measuring wind speed based on visual observations, and is still widely used despite the advent of modern wind gauges and other instruments. What is truly interesting is that this wind scale system is still referred to at all, considering it was developed in the early 1800’s! Our digital weather station and wind gauge on the island still read in the Beaufort scale as an option.

The scale was devised in 1805 by Sir Francis Beaufort, an Irish-born Royal Navy Officer. The scale that carries Beaufort’s name had a long and complex evolution, from the previous work of others. It was adopted officially and first used during Darwin’s voyage on HMS Beagle.

Some sort of scale was badly needed, as naval officers made regular weather observations, but there was no standard scale so observations were subjective – one man’s “stiff breeze” might be another’s “soft breeze”. Beaufort succeeded in standardizing the scale.

The initial scale of thirteen classes (zero to twelve) did not reference wind speed numbers but related qualitative wind conditions to effects on the sails of a man-of-war, then the main ship of the Royal Navy, from “just sufficient to give steerage” to “that which no canvas sails could withstand.” At zero, all his sails would be up; at six, half of his sails would have been taken down; and at twelve, all sails would be stowed away.

The scale was made a standard for ship’s log entries on Royal Navy vessels in the late 1830s and was adapted to non-naval use from the 1850s. In 1916, to accommodate the growth of steam power, the descriptions were changed to how the sea, not the sails, behaved and extended to land observations. Today, many countries have abandoned the scale and use mph or kmph measurements, but the severe weather warnings given to public are still approximately the same as when using the Beaufort scale.

Many people, including our staff on the island, use visual references to estimate wind speeds, so although the Beaufort scale itself is becoming less used, its basic principle still lives on.

Slickrock’s big move out to Glover’s Reef occurred in the summer of 1996. We had been running sea kayak tours in Belize for 5 years out of Placencia, on the mainland coast in southern Belize, doing self support week-long tours among the islands along the outlying barrier reef.

But the islands were starting to get crowded, and a few developed, so our trips were losing their wilderness character. Lucy was contacting various lodges around the country as part of a project to just get to know Belize better, when she ran across the folks on Long Caye out at Glover’s Reef Atoll. We already knew that the atolls had the best reefs in the country, and were much more remote and pristine than the barrier reef islands. When the family wrote us back and told us they had a “spare island” for rent, we couldn’t believe it! At that, we decided to go down and see for ourselves what the atoll was like, with the possible plan to move our operation out there for the next season.

When we took the boat out to the atoll, we were immediately impressed by the location, and decided to make the move. This entailed hiring the family’s sailboat and going to Placencia, picking up all our kayaks, and moving the equipment to NE Caye, the island we decided to lease. That was the easy part.

When we arrived on the island next Dec, having already booked trips featuring this location, we were surprised that the island had not been cleaned up and the few cabins present were in bad repair. But we dove into the project of getting things ready, and soon had a nice set-up in place with 3 cabins, a kitchen building, and tent sites ready for our guests. Having an island base dramatically improved our itinerary, and over the next 4 years our business increased by leaps and bounds. The stunning coral reefs, private island location, and comfort of not being exposed to inclement weather were all big improvements to our Belize experience!

Later we moved to the island next door, but that’s another story…

Click on each image to see the full picture. All images taken at Slickrock’s facility in 1996-1998.

Susan Beveridge has been planning to join us for months and watching fares. She booked today because flights LAX to BZE dropped from $808 yesterday to $679 today. I checked and sure enough, using sample November and January dates it was $679 and from DFW to BZE it dropped to $614. I checked on American’s website: aa.com. If you can get to Belize via DFW or MIA, check their website today! This is great news!

A recent New York Times travel article points out that Latin America is a great deal these days.

Belize is featured in the article, with information about flying to Belize, and a listing of some great deals. They point out that you’ll still pay less for lodging than what you would for comparable accommodations in other parts of the Caribbean.

Our location at Long Caye in Belize is a kitesurfing dream come true, especially for beginners taking lessons at our new Vela Kitesurf School. Located out at Glover’s Reef Atoll in southern Belize, we are surrounded by long aprons of coral-free sand flats that extend behind the protecting ring reef of the atoll.

Not only does the reef cut out the chop and swell, but the shallow sand flats allow beginners to have unlimited space to learn and practice kitesurfing skills under the direction of our instructor. The prevailing trade winds blow directly down the flats most of the time, so kitesurf students just do ‘down-winders’ as they progress through their lessons, saving much time in not having to walk back on the flats (waist to chest deep water) to regain ground. But the best aspect of our lesson location is that there are no other kitesurfers or students around, which is a unique situation and saves everyone a lot of trouble in not having to watch out for each other.

You can see that this is a stunning location to learn kitesurfing. A private island, with warm water, top equipment and instruction, and unlimited space along the shallow sandflats.