Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

Every week we snorkel The Aquarium, just a 1/2 mile paddle from our island. It’s a shallow patch reef surrounded by bright white coral sand.

Last week we served lionfish on our Belize island. Our island is in a Marine Reserve, and fishing is prohibited by guests except for catch-and-release sportfishing. But lionfish are the exception. Lionfish are a Pacific fish and only recently got introduced to the Caribbean. They have no predators are are voracious eaters. They are a problem. We have blogged about this before: http://belizeadventure.com/2011/07/lionfish-an-invasive-species-in-belize/

We are doing our part, and dang it was tasty!

Our Belize vacation packages are all-inclusive; and we regularly put specific trip dates on sale. All of our prices are per person because we are selling a sports package, not just a room in a hotel. Our packages include just about everything except airfare, so when a specific date is discounted 10 or 15%, you will go from about $230/night to $195-205/night, which adds up to over $200 per person for the full package. You can see which Belize vacation deals we are offering at any given time by visiting our website.

If you can’t fit your schedule to our sales calendar, you also might qualify for a group discount. If you are traveling with one other person for example, all you have to do is find two more friends to join you. Our group discounts start at four persons traveling together, go up again at nine, and for larger groups there are even larger discounts. You can view our discount group travel rates on our site.

If you have kids, they also might qualify for a deal. Kids 11 and under receive discounts, see our family vacations page. Kids under 6 receive a larger discount than kids between 7 and 11. Sometimes, for a family of four, you might get a lower rate if you call your kid and “adult” to receive the group discount for all, rather than receiving the kids discount for only one member of your group.

The other piece of the puzzle is your air to Belize. We watch Belize airfares closely and update our Belize flights page weekly. When we see a great deal, we blog about it here, or post it on our Facebook page. So if you subscribe to this blog or “like” our Facebook page, you can stay updated when Belize flights drop in price: http://www.facebook.com/belizeisland.

One month ago tomorrow I turned 55. Somehow, the double number made a bigger impression on my psyche than even the big five-o did. That, combined with the fact that in the past year I’ve developed a few chronic aches and pains, got me thinking that maybe this was it – life was beginning to leave me behind, whatever new and exciting experiences I’d had in my life were now becoming things of the past.

Then I stumbled across this article in the Poughkeepsie Journal about this guy, James Curran, who discovered the sport of scuba diving as he turned 60 and in the three years since has made 167 dives. The article featured a picture of him diving off the coast of Belize.

James Curran dives off the coast of Belize, Central America on a recent trip. / Courtesy photo

That brought back memories of my last dive. It was eight years ago off Long Caye in Belize during a week’s stay at Adventure Island. We took a five minute boat ride from the rustic, island resort, out to a site they call “The Wall,” one of the top-rated Belize dive sites. We flipped over the side of the boat and suddenly, 40 feet below loomed one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen — an underwater cliff dropping 2600 feet into the depths. We cruised along the rim of the cliff exploring the extravagant corral formations and gazing out into the abyss as huge sea turtles swam into view. It was the dive of a lifetime.

Recalling that adventure reminds me that despite my age, new experiences still await if only I remain open to them. It’s never too late.

So you want to go to Belize? When someone signs up for a Belize adventure we always remind them that it’s a great idea to purchase travel insurance. Once we confirm a reservation, we don’t cancel; if our guide gets sick we have others who can take their place. But if something happens to you, you might not be able to go.

Many people say: “I’ve been traveling for years and I’ve never needed it!” That may indeed be true, but we have seen MANY unforeseen things happen to our guests, and the ones who did take our advice were so thankful that they did.

Our guests are active people, and by far the most common reason for trip cancellation is a skiing accident the week before they are scheduled to go to Belize. You can’t paddle a kayak or hold on to a windsurfer with a broken arm!

Other things that have happened to our guests on more than one occasion: illness of one of the members of the group traveling together, death or illness of a family member back home, and changes at work that make travel a bad idea at the time they planned to go.

In deciding whether or not to buy travel insurance, consider the investment you are making in your vacation and whether or not you could afford the loss if you did have to cancel.

Every travel company has a cancellation policy where they retain some or all of your payments if you cancel. If you expect them to do otherwise, you are basically asking them to insure your non-attendance at no cost to you. It is your outfitter’s responsibility to run the trip they promised you, no matter what emergencies may arise for them immediately before the trip. It is your responsibility to pay for the trip on which you reserved a space, and a travel insurance policy helps make your disappointment in missing your trip not be a financial burden as well.

The reason travel companies are unable to refund your payments is that as a trip approaches there is little chance they could fill your spaces, and they may have turned away others who wanted space on that date. By the time it is 60 days or less from your departure date, companies have spent considerable time and energy preparing for your arrival: confirming guides and drivers, making non-refundable hotel reservations, and planning countless other logistics. With a travel insurance policy you can also insure your ticket to belize in addition to your all-inclusive package.

We recommend Travelex travel insurance, a company we have been recommending to our guests for over 10 years. We have received no complaints about their service beyond a somewhat expected “it’s a hassle to collect” from just a few who purchased a policy from them. It is an extra step, but if something goes wrong and you can’t make the trip you signed up for, you will be VERY glad you purchased a policy. When someone makes a claim, a form is forwarded to us, which we fill out with the amount of money you have spent, date of trip, whether you attended at all or arrived late, etc. So we do help with your claim and provide all necessary documentation to the company.

Travelex has 3 policies to choose from, but we recommend you choose one of the two least expensive options: Travel Basic or Travel Select. At this writing a policy covering $2500 worth of travel expenses for a person in the 35-50 age bracket would cost $85 per person base rate for the Travel Basic plan and $132 for the Travel Select plan. Both policies include a “Ten Day Free Look” which means you can change your mind after purchasing for up to 10 days as long as you have not departed on your trip yet or filed a claim. Some of the differences between Travel Basic and Travel Select are:

Travel Select includes everything Travel Basic does. Coverage limits are higher with Travel Select for trip cancellation, trip interruption, trip delay, baggage lost or delayed, emergency accident and sickness medical expense, and emergency medical evacuation. Travel Select also includes:
-One child under 21 is free for each adult purchasing a policy.
-If you purchase the plan within 21 days from the day you confirm your Belize tour, all pre-existing medical conditions are eligible for coverage.
-Mandatory evacuation coverage

We recommend you imagine just what could feasibly happen to you, and then look those instances up in each policy to see if they are covered. Do you have a sick or aging parent that could worsen and interrupt your travel plans? Do you have a chronic illness currently in remission that could flare up unexpectedly? Is the company you work for rumored to be soon undergoing major reorganization? Compare the two policies for any eventualities that could happen to you.

We just finished an exquisite dinner at Ka’ana Boutique Resort, a truly lovely hotel just outside of San Ignacio, Belize. I’m not even sure what a ‘boutique’ resort is, and I think I’m supposed to know, because no one else asked, and they were nodding their heads like they understood… but maybe it means the best of everything, because that is obviously what they are shooting for here.

It has everything you would expect a super high-end resort to have with a few surprises: perfectly tended grounds, spacious rooms complete with small sitting area, a glass-block window in the shower, iPod docks in each room, wifi everywhere, and the swimming pool has two levels and a waterfall spilling from one to the other.

Their intimate spa uses only Belizean products for the masks and scrubs (coffee, cacao and sugar), and each room has a flat-screen TV (although why anyone would want to watch TV in a $400/night room is beyond me), welcome air-conditioning, delicious smelling lotion in the bathroom, and a deck on both ends of our casita. Our room also has an espresso machine, but sadly neither myself or my roommate know how to operate it. The room has a safe, although their staff is so good I would fall over in shock if anything were missing. And possibly the nicest touch of all, our back deck has a yoga mat sitting there in a basket waiting for you; a very thoughtful touch.

I loved my dinner, we had a choice of four entrées, all provided as part of the tour. I had the Garifuna Sera soup. WOW, fantastic. Our gracious hostess, Joanna Evans, born and raised in Dangriga, Belize, told me she would send me the recipe (!) Now THAT’S service. And for dessert I had corn gelato. Yes you heard me right. It tasted just like corn on the cob. It was kind of strange, although delicious. Ryan Kalous of The Mark Travel Corporation ordered the berry flavor, a fruit name I can’t remember, and he let me taste it. That is what I should have ordered, had I been smarter.

I just asked my roommate what a boutique resort is. Yvette Restrepo works for a luxury travel agency named BigFive.com. A boutique resort is a small resort, and there’s only one – as opposed to a chain. It’s high luxury, like a boutique clothing store, which only sells a few of each item, and each item is superb.

I’m going to Belize in 2 weeks! I have been invited by the Belize Tourist Board on a “FAM” trip. This is travel industry lingo for “familiarization”. I, along with a bunch of other travel industry professionals, are going on a somewhat insane itinerary: we will visit 27 hotels in 5 days! I wouldn’t call that fun, but many of these are places I have heard of for years but never gotten to, and I am looking forward to seeing them. We will be staying in San Ignacio, Mountain Pine Ridge, Placencia, Hopkins, and San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. I’ll be posting more about the trip when I get there.

But anyway, this has prompted me to start thinking about why I want to go. I talk about Belize all day, every day; but what makes it special? Here are my top reasons for traveling south to this wonderful Central American country:

1 Belize is cheap and easy to get to. That is huge. If you have ever been on a 14 hour flight to Australia, you will know what I mean. Belize has all the exotic qualities of Tavaraua, Fiji, but it takes 70 hours to get to Fiji, and costs about $3000! Your flight to Belize is 2.5 hours from Houston, Dallas, or Miami, and it will cost about $6-800, depending on where you start out from, and what time of year you plan to visit.

And because of #1, we get to #2: You don’t have to take as much time off work because you can get there easily in a day!

3 It’s not crowded in Belize. Even though almost everyone has now heard of Belize (which wasn’t the case when we first started kayaking there in 1986) it remains relatively little-visited. Visitation numbers to Belize don’t come close to Cancun or Costa Rica, and there are many places like our island that strictly limit guest numbers. Just don’t visit Belize by cruise ship! Then you arrive with 5000 others all wanting to do something during the same 6 hour period,

4 The weather is great in Belize when it is lousy in the US and Canada. During the peak tourist season in Belize (November – April) the weather is balmy. Temperatures in the mid 80s to low 90s, slight breezes of 12-15 mph, sunny with scattered clouds, and the ocean is 82 degrees! It’s truly everything you think of when you say “Paradise”. To find out more about Belize weather, visit our website.

5 You get to live your Gilligan’s Island fantasy: Beach huts, palm trees, white coral sand, neon-turquoise, crystal-clear ocean water, and tiny coral islands surrounded by colorful fish. If you visit our island when Charlie is working, you will also get to meet The Professor himself!

6 Belize is an area steeped in culture. History lovers are in seventh heaven. The Mayan culture, both historic and modern, is easily accessible. You can stay with a Mayan family in a small village, or visit one of many Mayan ruins: Caracol, Lamanai, Xunantunich, Nim Li Punit, Altun Ha, Cahal Pech, and Lubaantun to name a few. And unique to Belize are the Mayan caves. Tours are offered daily to Actun Tunichil Muknal, Che Chem Ha, and Footprint Cave, or the more adventurous can visit Chiquibul Cave.

7 English is the official language and US dollars are accepted everywhere. This makes traveling in Belize very comfortable for American and Canadian tourists.

8 You won’t be subjected to 14 hour chicken-bus rides! Belize is small, only about the size of Vermont, so even though there is a huge variety of things to do in Belize, you don’t have to spend hours between activities. In one week it is easy to raft an underground cave system, surf a Caribbean wave, climb a Mayan ruin, snorkel amidst colorful angelfish, run a jungle whitewater river, windsurf in your shorts across 80 degree turquoise waters, hike into a Mayan ceremonial cave, and learn to roll a kayak. In fact, we have a trip just like that, it is called Belize Adventure Week.

9 You get to eat lots of fresh fish. Belize offers the opportunity to enjoy fresh-caught lobster, grouper, snapper, and hogfish. There are excellent restaurants all over the country taking advantage of nature’s gifts from the sea.

10 You also get to drink Belikin Beer, the beer of Belize! Yes, Belize has it’s own beer, and it’s good! Come to Belize and join us on the island where we have a fridge permanently loaded with unlimited Belikin! This is the only beer I know of with a Mayan ruin on the label. You’ll love it!

What do you do for vacation when you work on adventure island? You think up the most obscure plans for yourself and friends throw in some ridiculous elements and whamo! Epics are born. Most of these plans happen over a drink. I think that part is similar for everyone. Then something happens, I decide it must be done and there is no changing my mind. For the last two months, in between trips at slickrock, I have been traveling around Central America on a motorcycle carrying an inflatable stand up paddle board, a surfboard, river gear, and camera gear. My companions were my brother, and a two man dream team film and sound crew. After a couple thousand miles on the bikes, great rivers paddled and some amazing surf sessions the trip is officially over and now it’s just a matter of editing the raw footage down to a short film. Film debut is scheduled for June 3rd at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, CO. Look for the Deflated web premier coming out around that time at www.danielrichardmyers.com.

The creation of this blog is long overdue. There are so many amazing things that I have always wanted to communicate about our Belize travel company: photos of new kayaks and surf boards being delivered to my yard in Moab, hilarious photos guests send us from their trip, hot tips from our staff of other cool places to visit in Central America, more about how to choose the perfect snorkeling fins… all of this I have thought about posting but felt that they didn’t really fit within the format of our regular website. With this new blog I hope to give a more complete view of all that goes into running private island adventure tours in Belize.