Belize & its costs

As we cross the border into Guatemala we thought we would sum up our week in Belize I know not a long time here but we felt happy to move on with our adventure. A mix of emotions it’s been for both of us, and certainly not making it into our favourite country. After spending a brief time in orange walk, Belize city and San Ignacio we felt these cities didn’t offer a lot for us. I know we shouldn’t compare, but being spoilt by the European cities of architecture and history felt this was lacking massively. constantly being pestered by randompeople got tiring too, people would follow us for no reason, ask us to buy them something or try sell one of the hundreds of tours offered.

Belize does still offer a lot aside from the cities. The wild life and scenery was amazing, one of the worlds best reefs lies just off shore and follows the entire length of the country. To have a closer look, we decided to take a water taxi to one of the islands – Caye Caulker – where we spent half of our visit. Another half of our visit we spent inland swimming in the Mopan River and sightseeing Xunantunich, Mayan Ruins (a highlight here being able to climb all the way up to its 45 meter peak, which seems quite crazy as there were no safety of any sort. Here we had a 360 view on the jungle and surrounding villages, and also watched a storm passing through the valley.

Having quite a strong currency – 2:1 to American dollar, which we found interesting as the quality didn’t seem to meet the price in the slightest. I’m not sure that’s a good way for judging a country but there you go. Belize happens to be much more expensive than Mexico. Fortunately we were lucky to stay with two lovely couch surfing hosts half of our time and do a bit of hitchhiking, which isn’t so easy in Belize at all. Buses are funny here, converted from old America school buses (called here a chicken bus), they are massive, fast and really cheap – we paid $5 for 3 hour ride.

We ended up paying $30 per person a day. Most of our spendings this time were taken by entertainment as we decided to do a whole days snorkelling tour and visit Mayan ruins.