Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

I just received the latest installment of The Toledo Howler, a newsletter of the southern-most chapter of the Belize Tourism Industry Association, based out of Punta Gorda, Belize.

Those of you who have read this blog for awhile, or who have called me on the phone for Belize travel advice, know that I am always talking up Toledo.

Belize is divided into districts (sort of like states), and Toledo is one of the least-visited and most-like-the-way-Belize-used-to-be. I love Toledo. I spent a day there four months ago touring many of the local lodges. I blogged about the Punta Gorda, Belize hotels I visited right after I got back.

This newsletter is put together by Marta and Rob Hirons, owners of The Lodge at Big Falls, located just outside of Punta Gorda. Follow the link above to download your own copy. The variety of the subjects they cover in each issue is astounding, 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:

The Garifuna Settlement Day (Nov. 19) Battle of the Drums competition
An extensive calendar of upcoming events
Aguacaliente Wildlife Sanctuary
A restaurant guide
A recipe for scones from the Coral House Inn in downtown PG (a great bed and breakfast!)
A map of downtown Punta Gorda
An interview with Dennis Garbutt, local fishing guide
And interview with Gary Mathews, an intern guide from Trinidad and Tobago
Yok Balum Cave
Paul Nabor, a Toledo musician
Contact information for local lodges and tour guides
A medicinal plant, Peperonia pellicida
Bus and plane schedules connecting Toledo with the rest of Belize
A map of Toledo with all of the attractions marked

If you are going to visit the most remote part of inland Belize, don’t leave home without it!

We are so lucky! Our island, Long Caye at Glover’s Reef, enjoys the only breaking surf in Belize that is both accessible and not breaking over live coral. As a result, we have the only Belize surf center.

There are other Belize locations where the swells break on the barrier reefs and atolls, and there are even a couple of nicely formed point breaks at channels through the reef, but all are either breaking on live coral, or are a long boat ride from dry land.

The swells break on the end of our reef as it opens to form the channel between Long Caye and a neighboring island, and peel off to the right in long, running breaks that can go for several hundred yards. Our point break is almost always active where our channel intercepts trade wind-driven swells. The bottom topography under this break is eroded coral rubble, with no live or sharp coral faces, creating a safe (but hard) bottom surface for the inevitable wipe-outs and swims.

Surfing at our island is great for intermediate and advanced surfers alike, our break is not ideal for beginners, and therefore not for beginning surfers. This break is on a reef of broken coral rubble, not sand. Since beginners often fall, this could result in a serious injury. Hard bottoms are not recommended for beginners.

But no worries, if you are a beginning surfer you start out first on our surf kayaks and paddleboards. You can work your way up to a surfboard!

Surfers may also bring their own board, which we will gladly carry out to the island from our base in Belize City One can ride a variety of boards on the break, everything from long boards and fun shapes on mellower days (or for the less experienced) and our wave is also great for the modern fish shapes on bigger days. True short board thrusters occur on bigger days for those in the know. A fish is probably the all-around best bet as it works in most size waves, including smaller, mushier days. Another good option would be the new hybrid “mini-tanker” boards with higher volume/less length in the 6-7 ft range. Our wave is not a consistent short board break but it is a very consistent long board break; any board over 7’ is going to perform well on our wave.

A list of our surf boards:

-6’10″ Epoxy Fish by Yancy Spencer
-6’10″ Funboard by Blue Surfboards
-7’6″ MBB Model Thruster by Channel Islands
-7’10″ Funboard shape by Blue Surfboards
-9’0″ Performance Epoxy Longboard by Colbalt
-9’2″ Squash Tail Epoxy Longboard by Colbalt
-9’0″ beginner hard-bottom foam board

If you want world-class, immaculately groomed long fetch overhead barrels – you should consider a destination such as Tavarua or the Mentawais. However, if you’re a surfer planning to go to Glover’s for the reefs and kayaking, windsurfing, etc. – you also might be rewarded with some very fun, VERY uncrowded tropical surf.

Caye Caulker is a popular island for tourism in Belize. It’s kind of funky and fun, and has a lot of hotels, restaurants, and bars. It is right on the Belize Barrier Reef and gets a lot of traffic from the younger set. It is about 20-25 miles from Belize City, and is easy to get to. Sometimes our guests want to go there for a couple of days before or after their adventure island trip with us, so I do get this question periodically.

If you are doing the Caye Caulker trip before our island adventure, and planning to visit Caye Caulker as soon as you arrive in the country, I would recommend flying to Caye Caulker, not taking the water taxi. You could return on the taxi, but at the beginning it makes more sense to fly. The reason is you fly into an airport, so you are right there to catch a flight, and it is so much faster. It IS somewhat cheaper to take the water taxi, so if your budget is a concern, you might not wish to take my advice.

Here’s the $ comparison:

Flight: $65 per person

Water taxi: land taxi to get to the water taxi dock $30 per cab
Water taxi from Belize City to Caye Caulker $10 per person
Total: $40 per person or $50 for two

Belize airlines:
Tropic Air
Maya Regional
Water taxi:
http://www.cayecaulkerwatertaxi.com/

Here’s the time difference of each option:

Flight: wait for flight, approx 20 minutes, flight: 8 minutes, total: 28 minutes

Water taxi: cab to dock, approx 20 minutes, wait for boat departure, approx 20 minutes, taxi time: approx 45 minutes, total 1 hour 15 minutes.

I just finished my weekly research on flights to Belize. I am happy to report that fares from 22 cities (out of 26 that we check) dropped for mid-December dates.

The dates I chose were departing on December 9, returning on December 18. These dates correspond with one of our packages that has been put on sale.

The price reductions were not huge, the largest was from Montreal to Belize which dropped $64 from last week. But every little bit helps! You can see all fares on our Belize flights page.

Meg Griffiths, our island kitesurf instructor, just got to Belize City today. She took the new ADO bus and sent this report:

“The bus service was great.

It leaves Cancun just before 11, stopping in Playa Del Carmen and Tulum.

I left Playa at 1140 and was in Belize City by 0800 this morning. We reached the border around 4 and got through very quickly, as you would expect there aren’t many people heading through at 0400! I slept well, the seats are more comfortable than most planes and recline a lot further! Woke up just as we pulled into BC bus station and jumped straight in a taxi, the journey couldn’t have been more simple.

I flew direct to Cancun from Manchester in the UK, a number of companies make direct flights, just 9 hrs all during the day. Really straight forward, and a chance for a brief stop over in Mexico, this new ADO service makes the entire journey very easy and stress free!”

Are you wondering where to dive in Belize? Do you want to do it all in one trip?

We have many incredible dives within 10 minutes from our island. Because we are right on the reef, we never do 2 tank dives. We ride the boat 5 minutes, get to the reef, dive, and ride back. You can do another long dive later in the day, after you catch a few runs on our private wave.

We have a lot of different dive sites this close to our shore: Long Caye Wall, Bev’s Garden, The Abyss, Middle Caye Wall, The Crack, and The Aquarium just to name a few. We dive these sites every week.

No one else is out there, we have the whole place to ourselves.

You would never, however, access Lighthouse Reef from Glover’s Reef. To visualize this you need to look at a Belize map. Lighthouse Reef is always accessed from due west because the tradewinds blow from the east. In that way, coming from Belize City, you would first ‘hide’ behind the Barrier Reef, then hide behind Turneffe Islands, then hide behind Lighthouse Reef itself to avoid a rough boat ride. If you went from Glover’s to Lighthouse it would be 100% in the open ocean, fighting the wind the whole way. By the time you got there, you would never feel like diving.

So come to Glover’s Reef for the pristine uncrowded diving. Then return to Belize City and head out to Ambergris Caye or Caye Caulker for a day of diving the Blue Hole.

I predict you will prefer having the whole ocean, just you, your dive buddy and the Dive Master! There are not many places in the world this seldom-visited. Come check it out this winter!

Every year we watch tropical hurricane websites starting in July. If you own an island in Belize, believe me you pay attention to hurricane season! Every year, when November 1 comes around I breathe a GIANT sigh of relief. I waited a few extra days just to be sure, but I can now state that I am ready to proclaim the 2011 Belize hurricane season to be OVER!

This year was a breeze, only one evacuation. The hurricane that passed close to us did little, and the hurricane that could have come our way didn’t. We have heard there is a lot of trash to clean up from Rina (which never got any closer than about 250-300 miles from us). We can handle that! Cully goes out to the island for the first time this season tomorrow, undoubtedly I will be hearing more from him in a week or so about how it looks.

We haven’t had any major hurricane damage since Mitch in 1998. Since then there have been some scares, and a few cabanas that needed subsequent repair, but no mass-rearranging of the island like we had with Mitch. If you can visit us this year, you will see an island that looks like this:

We have a fantastic menu serving Belize food and other great recipes out on the island. I am the one responsible for the menu (with many suggestions incorporated from guests and staff alike), so I LOVE all of the food we serve as a result.

I can state that my favorite meal on the island, hands down, is Fish Tacos. I could eat them 3 times a week, they are that good.

The reason they are so good (besides the tortillas being freshly made and the fish being freshly caught) is the secret sauce. Charlie Woodward, one of our managers, is responsible for this gem of a recipe. And now I am going to publish it right here!

All you need is 3 ingredients: cilantro, freshly squeezed lime juice, and mayonnaise. Use 3 parts mayo to 1 part lime juice and 1 part finely chopped cilantro. Mix them together to the consistency of a salad dressing.

For fish tacos serve the taco ingredients buffet style (each person makes their own taco) with tortillas, fried fish, slivered cabbage, chopped tomato, onion, and bell peppers, grated cheese, and cooked beans. Pour the secret sauce over your taco and enjoy!

Kids LOVE scuba! The dive shop on our island is a full service PADI dive shop offering scuba diving courses and daily dives for certified divers. Kids ages 12 and over have all of the options available to them as far as courses and certified dives go, there are no restrictions for kids in this age group. So kids ages 12 and up simply join adult classes that are offered.

Kids that are 10 or 11 are also able to take adult courses, but only at the discretion of the dive instructor. The dive instructor will accept children this age for adult courses, but PADI authorizes the instructor to direct the child into the Bubblemaker course if they feel the 10 or 11 year old is not yet ready for full certification.

The Bubblemaker course is for kids ages 8-11. It has a 6-foot depth limit. This is a half-day course, and includes a certificate, but does not count toward certification when the child reaches an age where they can go for full certification. Kids in the Bubblemaker course must be accompanied at all times by a dive instructor. They can continue to dive with an instructor for the rest of the week, but not exceed the depth limit imposed by PADI.

If parents are divers, they are discouraged from sitting in on the kids’ certification dive. Our dive shop has found that this impedes the child’s ability to successfully complete the course. Once your child is certified, the whole family can dive together as certified divers. If parents are also students in the same course, then they will all be diving together.

If you are planning to join us for one of our kayak trips you don’t have to commit to diving or dive courses in advance. You simply let us know your intent. We make sure the dive shop knows what you want so they have enough staff to accommodate everyone, but you can make the final decision when you get there.

Diving at Glover’s Reef is some of the best diving in the world! Last year a couple of teenagers in a course saw a whale shark on their SECOND dive! What a way to start!

Click on any image below to see the full picture. Many thanks to Robert Dunlop and Garry Lee for these pictures of their kids on our island packages.