I was hot, and impatient, and growing more so by the minute. It was June 2005 and my first time in Belize, and I was waiting at the airport for a friend who was in Belize to fly fish and look at real estate.

I’m not the most patient fellow and neither is my friend, less so if anything. A tall, hard-charging sophisticated big city guy, he’s a born salesman who loves life in the fast lane. In the four years I’d known him at that time I don’t think I’d ever seen him without silk slacks and high-dollar dress shoes.

We’d crossed signals and were late to reconnoiter, and I could imagine what kind of mood he was in; the two of us would be a real pair until we could get somewhere out of the heat and relax.

So imagine my shock when a rental car pulls up in front of me, and out steps a guy who is a dead ringer for my tall friend, except it can’t be him. The guy is wearing sunglasses, a mostly unbuttoned Tommy Bahama shirt, board shorts and flip flops.

I know Mike couldn’t possibly even own flip flops, but to my shock, he waves me over with a big, casual grin, a cheery greeting to match the smile and fresh suntan.

He’d only been there two days before me but it was enough to make my hard-charging friend looked as relaxed as if he’d stepped out of one of those Jimmy Buffet novels.

His chill vibe was contagious and I very quickly forgot about how hot and impatient I’d been.

I have come to call this transformation “The Belize Effect.” It generally goes something like this:

DAY ONE: (early in the day)…”Where’s my hotel? Damn it’s hot. Is that a mosquito? Good grief these people talk slow….

(later in the day)…”Wow. I didn’t know they have mountains here. Look at that blue water. I didn’t know that color blue existed.”

DAY TWO: (early)… “Fish, scuba dive, hike…look at real estate…we’ll never get to do it all. What are we gonna do? I gotta budget my time…”

(later)…”Man, the air here is soft. How is air soft? But it is. Must be the ocean breeze. This place is like nowhere in the Caribbean. Look at that friggin’ palm tree. Wonder if I could climb it? I wonder how tall they grow? Maybe I’ll climb it after just one more pina colada….”

DAY THREE: (early)…”Look at that sunrise, man. Why do fish have to bite so early in the day? Where the heck is that other flip flop?”….

(later)…”I came here to slay bonefish but I’m starting to think a hammock beats a boat hands down.”

DAY FOUR: (early)…”Is it bad to drink before noon on a weekday? No way, relaxing is never bad for you…”

(later)…”During the weekday? Huh. What day is it anyway? I keep asking people but no one seems to be sure…”

DAY FIVE: “I’m getting a place here.”

…to be continued

Chaa Creek – Situated on this very cool 365-acre eco-resort above the Macal River, the Spa at Chaa Creek offers one of the best spa menus in Belize. The therapists are wonderful and friendly and have the fingers of an angel. The massages and facials were some of the best ones I have ever had. Don’t miss the butterfly farm.

Jaguar Reef, Butterflies Spa – Next door to the famed Jaguar Reef, the new Butterflies Spa offers a welcoming environment and dozens of different treatments to choose from. Wonderful facial and enjoyed the hydrotherapy too.

Cayo Espanto – Truly one of the most beautiful places to stay in Belize, Cayo Espanto’s whole vibe and ambience plays host to a small but well-orchestrated spa experience.  The best treatments are done in your own villa: private, unobtrusive and relaxing. Some treatments come with the room package (so does the cuisine). The spa treatments were amazing and the accommodations were out of this world.

Maruba Resort Jungle Spa – A different kind of place, an oasis of charm and grace with a hint of wildness. This is not your traditional spa. The resort was conceived and created to blend various Mayan, Creole, and African designs side-by-side within a jungle setting, creating a relaxed and exotic feel. The spa offers all-natural treatments derived from ancient techniques that incorporate natural products produced from Maruba Therapy and the surrounding jungle environment. They specialize in mud treatments using all-natural Mood Muds. Fun to get dirty here.

Ka’ana – Located poolside, the treatment rooms at this boutique resort in the Cayo district help make Ka’ana a great place for a day at the spa. Therapists use a variety of local calming and revitalizing ingredients in all massages, skin and body treatments are all performed by a terrific and friendly staff. The spa area is inspired with sensual Landero original Maya artwork and soothing aromas, that relax you as soon as you enter and hear the calming music.

With the way we anticipate Belize growing and new eco-resorts coming online with announcements every month, I’m sure the next time we feature the top spas in Belize we’ll have plenty of new spa experiences and options to talk about, each with their own unique way of capturing that special ambience of Belize.

You know as much as I love the Caribbean Sea and the wonders of the reef and living on the beach, each time I go into the mountains of Belize my paradigm begins to shift. Maybe it has permanently. Don’t get me wrong, I love to head out to bang the shallows for bonefish and permit or dive a new cut in the reef or hang out on a little Gilligan’s Island type retreat (there are hundreds) but for me the Mayan Mountains are just as amazing and strikingly beautiful as it gets. Steep green tropical peaks meeting the powder blue sky give such an amazing contrast of colors it’s breathtaking. Staring off at the sea just doesn’t have that same striking visual impact that the mountains of Belize do.

The mountains along the Hummingbird Highway from Belmopan almost to Dangriga looks just like parts of Hawaii. Lush, tall, Jurassic-Park-style mountains. You don’t have to travel far (unless you’re on Ambergris Caye) to drive to a totally a different Belize, a more beautiful Belize. One with 3,000-foot mountains carpeted in huge palm trees with wildlife and birds everywhere. First-time visitors to Belize who ride with me to Placencia from the International airport—friends or clients alike—are all amazed at the beauty in the mountains of Belize.

And the tropical pine ridge forests outside of San Ignacio are very cool too, filled with tons of eco-activity options and vast views. No wonder Copolla built Blancaneaux Lodge, it’s a different Belize than Turtle Inn in Placencia. The waterfalls of Belize, and there are hundreds of them, are equally beautiful, including Big Falls, 1,000 Foot Falls and the ones in Cockscomb Jaguar Preserve. They are a must see (and swim).

There are view places in the world you can dive a barrier reef and cast a fly rod for bonefish before lunch and then hike into a rainforest, swim in a crystal clear pool below a 50-foot waterfall and still have time to shower and hit the deck for adult beverages for the sunset.

Anyway, don’t come to Belize and miss the tropical paradise hidden in the rainforest. It will change your paradigm too.

Saltwater fly fishers, we have some great news; you no longer have to wait ’til you’re dead to go to heaven.

If you’ve fly-fished much you’ve probably read that Belize is your best shot at a “flats slam,” a hat trick of catching a tarpon, bonefish, and permit in one day on the fly, and that Belize has some of the bar-none best inshore saltwater flyfishing in the world.

Many places have good action for tarpon, or bonefish, or snook or permit. Belize is unique in that it has superlative quantities of all four.

But what ultimately makes Belize stand out is the rarest, most challenging ghost of the flats and the ultimate saltwater trophy: the big long-finned reel-busting bruisers known as permit. Belize is widely regarded as having the highest concentrations of large permit in the world.

To give you an idea, I spent five months in the Florida Keys in the late ’90s, living and working but mostly fishing. The Keys are famed for flats fishing, and the very first time out, to my utter shock, I ran right into a big permit while wading the flats alone. An enormous, spooky, solo fish that ghosted away as soon as I pitched my crab pattern its way. This is not going to be as hard as they say, I thought to myself.

But that was it. In four more months, that is the ONLY permit I saw in dozens upon dozens of expeditions in the Keys.

Fast forward four years, to the Stann Creek District in Central Belize. Up with the sun on a clear beautiful morning, we head out with a guide and run only 10 minutes in the boat. The guide turns the skiff around an island point, kills the motor and points to the shoreline. In the dawn light, there are two groups of ripples in the water, and as he poles us closer, my stomach starts to knot up. The ripples take shape and start moving around and I know it can be only one thing, exactly what my eyes are telling me it is: two schools of five or more permit…and they are big, big, fish.

To anglers, this is what is known as nirvana. Belize is super-famous for incredible diving, vacationing, island hopping, and general tropical paradise stuff…but those are all things that you can in fact find elsewhere. Maybe not as great as Belize, or all in one place like Belize, but you can in fact find them elsewhere on this wonderful watery planet of ours.

But there is simply nowhere on earth where you are going to see permit like that.

An hour after that initiation ritual, we headed out to a reef in Belize where the flats meet slightly deeper water and we started to wade along a ridgeline of coral as the tide rushes over it. We have to wade, my guide says, “because there are too many fish to use the boat.”

Dunno about you, but, um, that is NOT a problem I have ever had before!

But I soon see he is right, as we encounter school after school of permit shifting back and forth across the reef, their tails sparkling like sword tips in the sun sticking up to six inches out of the water as they root around the bottom for crustaceans. If you were poling along in a boat, you would be bumping into fish right and left and scaring them: wading gives you a much lower profile in the water.

In several surreal instances, I witness the most elusive trophy of the flats actually competing to eat my fly! In one unforgettable moment, I am unable to breathe as two cookie-sheet-sized permit race each other to chomp at my crab pattern right as it reaches my rod tip.

Despite the hype, and the fact that I’m a lifelong obsessed angler, I was still unprepared for what I would experience. Most anglers I know personally came back from Belize with photos of small permit, dinner-plate sized fish they scored while chasing bonefish or other species. I thought permit in Belize were numerous but small, like the big schools of small bonefish that frequent the northern islands.

The reason for my friends’ smaller fish is simple. They had mostly fished out of Ambergris and other islands while on vacation, and therein lies the difference. The central part of Belize is another ballgame entirely—the permit run as big as they do anywhere in the world. It’s a habitat and forage issue quotient that creates the size, and it is probably also tied to fishing pressure, too. Unlike tarpon and bonefish, permit are fabulous eating, so people who aren’t high-minded fly fisher types are eager to take them home.

Seeing isn’t always catching, even in Belize, as I would find out the next day. Permit are permit, and almost always a challenge, even when abundant. The next day, we saw nearly equal numbers of fish and had thrilling stalk after stalk but instead of fighting over my fly, they just won’t bite. They are big brutally strong fish on a fly rod, with a body built for leverage, and catching more than a few a day will wear a flyrodder out. My rod arm was still stiff from the day before—the only other time I’ve had that most pleasant of unpleasantries is fishing a sockeye run in Alaska, where the river had more fish than water.

On that second day—and this is not a typo—I saw as many as 80-plus permit finning along a shallow stretch of reef in the morning sun, fins glimmering in schools of two to ten fish in water just a few feet deep.

I thought back to the one fish I saw in six months of fishing the Keys, and giggled. This little country has an awful lot of magic swirling around in it, I thought to myself.

No, there is not another place in the world where this is possible…at least it has not been discovered yet.