Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

La Ruta Maya Belize River Challenge  is a grueling multi-day canoe race traveling a perilous river route across the country of Belize. The route runs West to East along the Macal and Belize Rivers, once the only link between beautiful San Ignacio, in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, and the bustling port of Belize City. This is a race for everyone (not just professional racers)!

There are 8 divisions for the race:

• Male
• Female
• Mixed
• Masters
• Dory
• Intramural
• Pleasure craft
• Family Adventure Race

The race occurs each year in March, coinciding with Baron Bliss Day. This year (2011), the canoes will leave San Ignacio on March 4 and arrive in Belize City on March 7. The teams, which race for station prizes along the way, battle for the major cash prizes awarded at the end of the race.

Why not come to Belize early, and either watch the canoe race or join the team, and then go out to our island right after? Our private Belize island will be waiting for you!

Our Adventure Island package is all-inclusive, meaning that from the time you step out of your taxi at the Biltmore Hotel until we return you to the hotel a week later, everything is provided — with one exception: liquor. We have a refrigerator in which we provide as much beer as a guest might want, but due to the limited amount of electricity available from our solar arrays and wind turbine, we don’t provide ice and therefore, we don’t have a bar.

But the night before departing for the island, before dinner and after the orientation with your guide, guests stop off at a store in Belize City, where individuals can make last minute purchases of items they may have forgot to bring and their own personal stash of liquor, if they choose. And one of the perennial favorites is a local Belizian drink called 1 Barrel Rum.

Here’s what Men’s Journal had to say about it: “The uncommon rum worth seeking out is Travellers 1 Barrel. Made at a small distillery in Belize, it boasts a memorable flavor that’s slightly sweet, slightly nutty, with something unexpected hidden in the lower layers. Tobacco? Coffee? Maybe it’s the suggestion of those flavors, but 1 Barrel is ideal served up with dessert.”

And for guests who visited the island and developed a taste for it, the good news is that 1 Barrel is available in the good ‘ol USA.

Want to visit Belize and do it all? Our Belize Adventure Week trip spends half of the week in the jungle for whitewater kayaking on the Mopan River, underground rafting and kayaking on the Caves Branch river, caving in Che Chem Ha Mayan pottery cave, and an exploration of Tikal Mayan ruins in nearby Guatemala, the premier ruin in the region. Then the group goes out to our private island for sea kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, kitesurfing, windsurfing, kayak surfing, sport fishing, kayak fishing, paddleboarding, and board surfing. You won’t find another itinerary with this much going on in one week anywhere in the Caribbean! AND we just put 2 dates on sale!

Or, maybe you want to go to Belize REALLY bad, but you only have a few days? Our Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef Second Half trip, only 5 days, is also on sale in late February.

Why don’t you join us?

February 11 – 18, 2012
February 25 – March 3, 2012
Belize Adventure Week, Sat – Sat, 8 nights
10% off, $2155.50 US pp ($2395 regular rate)
http://www.slickrock.com/belizeadventureweek.html

February 28 – March 3, 2012
Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef Second Half, Tue – Sat, 5 nights
15% off, $1100.75 US pp ($1295 regular rate)
http://www.slickrock.com/adventureisland.html

Parrot-Nest grounds

Occasionally I exchange emails with Marcus, the owner of The Parrot Nest in Bullet Tree Falls, Belize. The Parrot Nest is a great, low-cost alternative to the more expensive lodges in Western Belize (called Cayo). Recently Marcus notified me that he has a new aggregated Belize blog; he collects other blog posts about Western Belize and posts them on this collection page. If you are thinking of traveling to San Ignacio, this is a great resource.

Recent articles posted on his blog included a photo tour of San Ignacio via public bus, a plea for financial assistance form the Cayo Outdoor Theatre, a San Ignacio restaurant review, and an article about 36 weddings that are planned for December 21, 2012 (the end of the Mayan calendar) at Cahal Pech Mayan ruin!

His aggregated blog is called the Cayo Scoop! Best of Cayo’s Online Magazine.

Belize was recently named one of the Top Budget Travel Destinations for 2012 by budgettravel.com.

“Belize tends to be overshadowed by its neighbors: Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, which in 2010 saw twice the visitor arrivals that Belize did. Yet this English-speaking nation has plenty to recommend it, including a bounty of exotic birds, stunning Mayan ruins, and the world’s second-largest barrier reef. On top of all that, Belize is also one of the region’s biggest bargains.”

Meg Griffiths was out on the island our first week of the season teaching wind-sports. She sent us a report via Belize City!

Waves, windy days, calm days and glorious sunshine; we couldn’t have asked for a better first week on the island, and the Thanksgiving celebrations were pretty fun too…

Everyone got involved in the surf kayaking as the waves built over the first half of the week. 6ft faces on the inside for the guides to show off their awesome paddleboard skills and little waves on the outside for the beginner surf kayakers. The water is super warm, not a wetsuit in sight, boardies all round.

The wind gave us a three perfect kiting days. Our trainer kite sessions with our 2m kite were great fun, everyone got involved. Two of the guys loved it so much they went straight on to a ‘big’ kite lesson; this is the first stage of learning to kiteboard. We head out on our teaching raft to the pristine and incredibly perfect ‘sand flats’ and the students learn to fly a full size kitesurf kite, they get pulled around, learn to get lift and of course how to stop! Davis Farrar of Carbondale, CO said: “It was exhilarating to get the kite in the air and feel the power of the wind as I learned to use the kite to pull me through the water, it was great fun; I highly recommend it.”

The windsurfers also got out for some ‘ripping’ sessions on 5 and 6m sails. We have a wide variety of equipment from beginner to expert. Our calm lagoon provides a perfect haven for the newbies while the regular windsurfers were out in deeper water screaming along reaches well over a mile long. I got a couple of great sessions in the strong winds then when the wind dropped to 9m kite weather I hopped on my kite board and demo-ed a few aerial tricks, landed some on my feet others ended in a big splash…so much fun.

Just when we were thinking a nice easy snorkel over the wall would be popular the wind cooperated completely and gave us a completely calm windless day and perfect visibility to check out the ‘wall’ 30ft below, grouper, lobster, lion fish, small sharks and even a turtle.
Turkey and the works was served up for Thanksgiving dinner after cocktails on the surf dock.
Long Caye life…its so great.

(All photos by Bryony Swan.)

When you sign up for one of our Belize trips, you will receive a “What to Bring” list in the mail. You might think all you need is a couple of t-shirts, your swimsuit, and a toothbrush, but there are a few other things you will need to fully take advantage of our adventure sport program. You can request the full Belize packing list from us by email, but in a nutshell the other items include a dive skin, booties, mask, fins, snorkel, and flashlight. In addition to this, you still need your t-shirts, shorts, raingear, and toothbrush, plus a few other items.

So it IS possible to do it using only carry-on luggage, but in my opinion it is not worth it.

The Belize airport is small, you get your luggage quickly, and at best you will get to your initial Belize destination about 15 minutes faster by doing carry-on only.

And what do you sacrifice? If have seen people leave their fins at home, or buy these horrible tiny fins just to avoid checking luggage. I don’t get it. You go to one of the top snorkeling destinations in the entire world, and you don’t bring your fins, just to save 15 minutes?

That’s nuts!

To see our full Belize packing list, shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you: slickrock@slickrock.com.

Here’s a list of airline carry on luggage rules. Belize airlines are Continental, American, Delta, and US Airways.

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.

Aerial view of Caye Caulker

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.

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:

Long Caye at Glovers Reef, Belize

I am back from MY vacation (backpacking in Utah), and I’m back just in time to see the van loaded to the gills for Cully’s annual drive south. He’s not taking a trailer this year, just a new van, so the load is particularly creatively packed.

Victor's van. This is a vegetable-oil-powered diesel. Note tank on back

Cully drives to Belize every year. That is the only way to get all of our kayaks, boards, generators, etc. down to Belize and out to the island.

Victor Myers, one of our Belize trip managers, showed up from Boise last week with most of the boats and boards Cully will be driving down.

Victor attended the Outdoor Retailer trade show for us in July and bought a lot of new equipment for us there, and this was the delivery of the new loot!

New gear clockwise from upper left: two Versa Boards, one new Current Design sea kayak, cruiser paddleboard, two race-style cruiser board, another Current Design sea kayak, expert-level paddleboard.

So it was basically a van swap. Victor pulled up to my house in Moab, unloaded everything, and then they loaded it all onto our new Belize Adventure Week van.

Every year we have other lodges in Belize wanting to buy our used equipment. Fat chance! We take very good care of our gear and use it for years. Some of our favorite sea kayaks go back to the old days on Northeast Caye, or even before when we used to kayak island-to-island out of Placencia, Belize.

This is why we have the best sport gear in the country of Belize. Each piece is hand-picked by Cully, driven down, and repaired onsite with parts we also drive down.

Every single life jacket, paddle, rudder cable, and surfboard fin is hand-carried by us to Belize.

Cully leaves on Monday! I’ll be posted more photos of the big departure.

And just what did he fit inside? A whitewater kayak for rolling lessons, another surf kayak, paddles, lifejackets, solar equipment, a new generator, more sails, booms and mast, kitchen utensils, office equipment, and lots of tools!

The completed load.