Belize City, the Cayes & the North

The Maya settled the north early. Cuello, near Orange Walk, was a farming village with a long history, and Cerros, on Corozal Bay, was a Late Preclassic trading town with painted masks on its temples. Lamanai, on the New River Lagoon, was occupied for some 3,000 years, and Altun Ha flourished in the Classic period as a trading centre near the coast. Santa Rita, beneath modern Corozal, is thought to have been part of the Postclassic Maya province of Chetumal.

Spanish friars built mission churches at Lamanai in the 16th and 17th centuries, but the Maya resisted colonial control. From the 1600s British and Scottish Baymen cut logwood and later mahogany along the Belize River, using the labour of enslaved Africans, and made St George's Caye their first settlement before moving to the mouth of the river, where Belize City grew. In 1798 the Baymen repulsed a Spanish fleet at the Battle of St George's Caye.

From 1848 refugees from the Caste War of Yucatán crossed the Hondo River and founded or enlarged Corozal and Orange Walk, where sugar cane became the mainstay. In 1872 Icaiche Maya fighters attacked Orange Walk. A hurricane levelled Belize City in 1931 and Hurricane Hattie in 1961 led to the capital moving inland to Belmopan, though Belize City remained the commercial centre. Mennonite settlers founded Shipyard and Blue Creek in Orange Walk from 1958. Guatemala's long-standing claim to part or all of Belize is now before the International Court of Justice, to which both countries voted to send it.

Belize City is the heartland of the Creole community, and Kriol is spoken on every street. Creole music includes brukdown, played on guitar, banjo, accordion and percussion that can include a donkey's jawbone, and the city's clapboard houses on stilts, verandas and churches recall its colonial past. The September Celebrations, from St George's Caye Day on 10 September to Independence Day on 21 September, bring parades and a carnival road march through the city. Crooked Tree and Burrell Boom are old Creole villages inland.

Orange Walk and Corozal are largely Mestizo and Spanish-speaking, with close ties to neighbouring Mexico. Families cross the border to Chetumal for shopping, and Mexican music and food are part of daily life, alongside English at school and in government. San Pedro on Ambergris Caye began as a Mestizo fishing village, and its fiestas still reflect that heritage.

The Mennonite colonies of Shipyard, Blue Creek and Little Belize keep their own ways. The more conservative wear plain dress, speak Plautdietsch, a Low German dialect, and travel by horse and buggy, while more modern colonies run large mechanised farms, mills and businesses.

Belize City, with around 60,000 people, is the country's largest town, port and commercial centre, where cruise passengers come ashore and most businesses, banks and newspapers have their headquarters. Its canal-crossed centre and neighbourhoods contrast sharply, and poverty and gang violence weigh on parts of the Southside.

The cayes live from tourism. San Pedro has grown from a fishing village into the country's busiest resort town, and Caye Caulker keeps a smaller, backpacker scale. Fishing for lobster and conch continues under seasons and quotas.

Orange Walk Town and Corozal Town are the market towns of the sugar belt, where cane from small farms goes to the Tower Hill factory near Orange Walk for processing. The Corozal Free Zone, at the border near Santa Elena, draws shoppers and traders from Mexico. Mennonite farms supply much of the country's poultry, eggs, dairy and furniture. The pace is slow, with mornings starting early and many shops shutting at midday.

Belize City's Creole kitchen is at its best at breakfast: fry jacks, puffed fried dough, and johnny cakes, small baked biscuits, served with beans, eggs and cheese, alongside fresh bread from the bakeries. Boil up, of fish or pig tail with boiled eggs and ground foods such as cassava and plantain, is the classic Creole dish. Coconut and cassava go into puddings and tarts sold on street corners. Across the region, rice and beans with stew chicken is the everyday midday meal, and Creole dinners add fish, conch, game meats such as gibnut and ground foods such as cassava and plantain.

The Mestizo north cooks the food of Yucatán. Chimole is a soup seasoned with recado, and salbutes, panades, garnaches and tamales are everyday food.

On the cayes, lobster, conch and snapper dominate, grilled, stewed or cooked into conch fritters and ceviche. Crooked Tree holds a cashew festival in May, where cashew wine and cashew fruit preserves are sold, and Mennonite cheese and bread appear in shops across the north.

The reef is the region's great draw. Ambergris Caye has San Pedro, the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley offshore, and Bacalar Chico National Park at its northern tip. Caye Caulker offers the Split and reef snorkelling. Further out lie the Turneffe atoll and Lighthouse Reef, where the Great Blue Hole, a marine sinkhole about 125 metres deep, and the seabird colony of Half Moon Caye Natural Monument are visited on long day trips.

Belize City has the hand-cranked Swing Bridge over Haulover Creek, St John's Cathedral, built by enslaved labour in the early 19th century, the Museum of Belize in the old colonial prison, and the Fort George lighthouse. Inland in Belize District are the Belize Zoo, the Community Baboon Sanctuary, where black howler monkeys live on private farms, and the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, a wetland known for its jabiru storks.

The Maya ruins cover every period. Altun Ha lies north of Belize City; Lamanai is reached by boat up the New River from near Orange Walk, with the High Temple, the Mask Temple and a small museum; and the Corozal sites of Cerros and Santa Rita lie around Corozal Bay. Corozal Town, its bay and the fishing village of Sarteneja, known for its boat-builders and the Shipstern Nature Reserve, round off the north.