Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

I just received the most amazing publication via email: The Toledo Howler, a newsletter of the southern-most chapter of the Belize Tourism Industry Association.

I love Toledo. I spent a day there two months ago touring many of the local lodges. What a wonderful place! This is my favorite part of Belize – next to Glover’s Reef, of course ;-). It is the most remote, quaint, and picturesque part of mainland Belize. I blogged about Punta Gorda, the final frontier of Belize right after I got back.

So anyway, I was astounded at the amount of information in this little newsletter. Whoever put it together did a fantastic job. And I haven’t even found time yet to look at what they have in all of the back issues!

This single issue has articles on:

Shark conservation
Grackles
A local plant, Genipa Americana
Recent tourism awards, including 2 people I met when I was down there : )
An extensive calendar of upcoming events
A restaurant guide
A recipe for Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce
A map of downtown Punta Gorda
Contact information for local lodges and tour guides
Nim Li Punit, the Mayan ruin
A Mayan women’s co-operative at Indian Creek village
Organic gardening in Toledo
A tour of Dem Dat’s Doin farm
Bus and plane schedules connecting Toledo with the rest of Belize
An interview with Leonie Requena, the owner of the local water taxi serice
A map of Toledo with all of the attractions marked

What an amazing guide, don’t leave home without it!

We just created a new webpage with a month-by-month description of the weather conditions in Belize. Storms, wind, dry and rainy season, and hurricane season are all discussed.

It’s good to know the weather as the season progresses, because it helps to choose your vacation date based on which sports you are interested in. Windsurfers and kitesurfers should look at January-February, snorkelers and divers should consider March-April, and surfers should focus on December-January.

We are closed mid-May through mid November because of weather. Visit our new Belize weather page to see why.

Slickrock has added 3 new ‘cruiser’ paddleboards to our collection of SUP’s this season. This style of paddleboard is designed for longer distance paddling tours, and the boards have a more defined keel for better tracking and a pointed bow to cut through chop. This allows the board to cover more distance efficiently, and is the design used in racing and long distance paddling.

We will start a new Belize paddleboarding activity with these boards, paddling downwind to the neighboring islands of Glovers Reef which are 3 and 6 miles away. These tours will then be picked up by our motor skiff for the ride back to Long Caye. The tours will follow the ring reef of the atoll and trips can be made outside the reef in open sea conditions for more advanced paddlers, or inside the reef where no swells exist. And, we will paddle in calm conditions or when the wind is blowing downwind only.

Check out the cruiser board in the photo with its high-volume bow and keel as an example of the difference between it and a regular paddleboard.

Last week I was on Trip Advisor answering questions about Belize, and someone requested help finding a map of the jungle lodges in Belize. This is something I have always wanted also. There are over 70 jungle lodges in the country, and many of them don’t have a map of their lodge on their own website, so it’s hard to figure out how far they are from town, which road they are on, etc.

With this request, I realized that SOMEONE needed to make a map like this, and I knew who to ask: Marty Casado of AmbergrisCaye.com. Marty has the best Belize map page of any I have seen. He has maps of the country, maps of Belize geology, maps of Belize cities and towns, maps of the Caribbean, it goes on and on. If you are looking for a map of Belize, Marty probably has it.

But guess what, he didn’t have a map of Belize jungle lodges. Once I asked him about it, he went to work, he stayed up until 2 am working on it! He started with our detailed Belize map, and a definite list of Belize jungle lodges from Lan Sluder of BelizeFirst.com and 5 days later, voila’, there was our map! Way to go Marty!

Five days ago I posted that fares dropped from Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto to Belize, although I thought you had better jump on these fares, and that they wouldn’t last: http://belizeadventure.com/2011/09/flying-to-belize-from-canada-book-your-flight-today/.

Now it appears that these prices have dropped through the winter! United, American, Continental, and Delta just engaged in a serious fare war to Central America. They’ve made an unadvertised price drop to Belize City (BZE), down to $646 roundtrip after taxes.

The most affected prices look to be between now and January 2012, although the rest of 2012 looks to have dropped as well.

Read the full article: http://www.yvrdeals.com/vancouver-to-belize-or-costa-rica-646-roundtrip-after-taxes-throughout-winter

Ospreys are found at all times of the year on Long Caye. There is a large population of ospreys in Belize, and they inhabit practically every island found in the country, since the barrier reef and atolls provide a perfect habitat for these fish-eating raptors with the abundance of fish present.

We commonly have two pairs of osprey nesting on Long Caye, and they patrol the island constantly to keep other ospreys out of their territory. They soar on the updrafts caused by the trees of the island, and screech, dive, and fight off other birds that they perceive as a threat. The fishing is easy for these birds, and we see them catching and eating fish at all times of the day.

Ospreys are not afraid of humans, and will nest near inhabited areas with no problem. Our nesting ospreys are easily observed at close quarters, and it is fun to observe their habits without having to use binoculars. They commonly raise a brood of chicks each season. We have built osprey platforms for their nests since first moving to Long Caye in 1992.

(Click on each image to view the full picture.)

Slickrock’s island at Long Caye, Belize is the perfect location to learn how to roll a kayak. We offer instruction in rolling to any guest who is interested, using river kayaks we keep on the island for this purpose.

Kayak rolling lessons are one-on-one and we fit these instructional sessions around the other activities. You can also learn a lot about kayak rolling watching someone else learn, so often a group of 2 or 3 will take turns for a few hours in the morning or afternoon. After all, once can only stand turning upside down in the water for so long.

This is a perfect place learn kayak rolling because we have students wear their snorkel mask to help them see and understand the moves. The warm clear water and our shallows off the beach provide the perfect setting to learn this skill.

After learning the roll in a river kayak, one can easily graduate up to rolling a sea kayak, or using the river kayak in our surf spot.

And then, once you have mastered rolling a sea kayak, you and your buddy then can move up to rolling a DOUBLE kayak!

Looking for a great place for a Caribbean honeymoon? Slickrock’s private island is the perfect destination. And when making your reservation, mention that it’s for your honeymoon and we’ll make sure to reserve you the Sumo Love Shack, the most private cabana on the island.

Many people wonder how to get to Belize from Cancun because occasionally flights to Cancun are so much cheaper. ADO Bus Line, Mexico’s largest bus carrier, has just started direct bus service from the Cancun airport to Belize City.

The trip costs around $90 RT and overnight schedules are available to allow travelers the convenience of not having to take an extra day to make the connection between Belize City and their flights in and out of Cancun. The bus trip is 8 hours and passengers ride in first class buses, much nicer than US bus services.

Flights from the US to Cancun are usually less expensive than flying to Belize, and occasionally one can find super deals as low as $300 RT. If this is the case, it can be worth it to look into this route for travel to Belize, especially if you are coming as a family or larger group. If you aren’t getting as low as $300 RT for the air, it probably is not worth it to get to Belize via Cancun.

To look into the bus schedules and to make reservations, go to ADO Bus Line’s website (in Spanish) at http://www.ado.com.mx/ado/index.jsp. If you find fares listed in Mexican pesos, convert to US $ by dividing by 13.

We just found out that for some mysterious reason flights to Belize from Canada just dropped substantially today. In fact, it is cheaper right now to fly from Calgary, Montreal, or Toronto to Belize than from Houston! So, for a date in November that corresponds to our first Belize trip on sale, the round trip rates are:
Calgary (YYC) to BZE – $681 US
Montreal (YUL) to BZE – $675 US
Toronto (YYZ) to BZE – $663 US

So book your flights today from Canada!