Belize: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

A small country of reef and rainforest

Belize is the only English-speaking country in Central America, and one of the least populous — a strip of Caribbean coast and jungle interior about the size of Wales, with fewer than half a million people. Its two great assets are the reef, which runs the length of the coast, and the jungle, which hides some of the largest Maya cities anywhere.

The ten below split roughly between the two. The cayes (islands) and the reef are reached from Belize City or Placencia; the ruins and caves cluster in the Cayo district around San Ignacio. The dry season, roughly December to May, is the time to go.

1. The Great Blue Hole

The Blue Hole is a giant marine sinkhole near the centre of Lighthouse Reef, about 43 miles offshore: a circular shaft of deep water, its rim marked by a ring of coral. It was made famous by Jacques Cousteau, who brought his ship here in 1971 and ranked it among the top five dive sites in the world.

Divers descend past the walls to around 130 feet, where huge stalactites hang from undercut ledges and reef sharks patrol. It is a long boat day from Ambergris Caye or Caye Caulker; non-divers can see the shape from a scenic flight.

2. The Barrier Reef and the cayes

The Belize Barrier Reef is part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the second-largest coral reef system in the world after Australia's — a 190-mile line of coral offshore, protecting a lagoon dotted with mangrove cayes. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (on the danger list from 2009 until 2018).

Ambergris Caye, with the town of San Pedro, is the developed base; Caye Caulker is smaller, cheaper, and famously laid-back, its motto "go slow" and its main "street" a sand path. Both are a short boat ride from the reef.

3. Hol Chan Marine Reserve

Hol Chan ("little channel" in Maya) is a small reserve built around a natural cut in the reef off southern Ambergris Caye, and it is one of the most popular snorkelling trips in the country. The channel concentrates fish, turtles, rays, and reef sharks; the adjacent Shark Ray Alley, where fishermen once cleaned their nets, is where boats stop to snorkel among habituated nurse sharks and southern stingrays.

Half-day trips run constantly from San Pedro and Caye Caulker. Coral bleaching and crowding are real pressures, so it pays to choose a careful operator.

4. Caracol

Deep in the Chiquibul forest near the Guatemalan border, Caracol was one of the great Maya cities — at its height around AD 650 it may have held more people than modern Belize City, and it defeated the superpower of Tikal in war. Its main pyramid, Caana, still rises above the canopy.

Getting there is an adventure: a long rough road through the Mountain Pine Ridge with its waterfalls and the Rio Frio cave. Most people make it a full day from San Ignacio.

5. Xunantunich

Xunantunich (the modern Maya name means "stone woman") is one of the most accessible big sites in the country: a compact ceremonial centre on a ridge above the Mopan River, its main pyramid El Castillo carrying a stucco frieze of gods and the tree of life, now shown as a replica cast over the original. The climb gives a view over the border into Guatemala.

It is reached from the village of San José Succotz on a small cable-drawn car ferry that carries a vehicle or two at a time — part of the appeal.

6. Lamanai

Lamanai, in the north, was lived in from about 1500 BC until Spanish contact and beyond — its name comes from the Yucatec Maya for "submerged crocodile". Its temples rise straight out of thick jungle beside a long lagoon, and there are two ruined Spanish colonial churches nearby.

Most visitors arrive by a fast boat up the New River from Orange Walk, a wildlife trip in itself — crocodiles, herons, howler monkeys, and bats.

7. Altun Ha

Altun Ha, an hour north of Belize City, is small and tidy — two main plazas of restored temples — but it was a wealthy trading town, and archaeologists found here one of the most celebrated carved jades of the Maya world, a head of the sun god Kinich Ahau weighing nearly 10 pounds.

Its size and closeness to the city make it the standard stop for cruise passengers, so go early or late for a quieter visit.

8. Actun Tunichil Muknal (the ATM Cave)

Rated by many as the best single day out in Belize, the ATM cave is a river cave the ancient Maya used for rituals and, it is thought, for human sacrifice. The tour swims in through the entrance pool, then wades and scrambles upstream to a dry upper chamber scattered with pots and the calcite-encrusted skeletons of 14 people, including the "Crystal Maiden".

It is physically demanding and visited only with licensed guides, and cameras have been banned since a tourist dropped one on a skull in 2012.

9. Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary

Set up in 1986 after research by the biologist Alan Rabinowitz, the Cockscomb Basin protects a large block of rainforest under the Maya Mountains that is one of the most important jaguar habitats in Central America. Sightings are very rare, but the reserve has a good network of trails, waterfalls and swimming holes, tapir and other wildlife, and many bird species.

The village of Maya Centre, at the entrance, is a Maya village that offers guides and simple lodging.

10. Placencia and the south

Belize's mainland coast is mostly mangrove, so its best beach town is Placencia, a former fishing village strung along a sandy peninsula in the south. It has a relaxed Creole–Garifuna character, a famously narrow concrete "sidewalk" as its main pedestrian street, and easy boat access to the southern cayes and reef, including the whale-shark aggregation off Gladden Spit in spring.

South of here, Punta Gorda is the base for the Garifuna coast and the little- visited southern Maya sites of Lubaantun and Nim Li Punit.

Belize is small and easily split in two: a few days on a caye for the reef, and a few in the Cayo interior for the ruins and caves, with the domestic hop between them taking under an hour.