The first time you see them, it’s hard to believe they call them ruins. Fact is, the Mayan descendents that function as your tour guide when you hike through the ancient ruins of Belize do not like them to be called ruins at all.

Carocal on the Belize mainland was not the Belize I’d imagined. My friends all showed me photos of their Belize trips…the usual island vacation stuff…blue water, palm trees, incredible diving, the fishing and all the flowery drinks and seaside hammocks you associate with Jimmy Buffet and Jerry Jeff Walker’ anthems.

Mostly, my friends never went to mainland Belize, where I am now. And as we start to ascend the Mayan temple deep in the verdant jungle, I can’t believe my eyes…and feet.

My shoes are traipsing over ancient stones, some of the steps raise up over knee high, and it is a bit of a grunt to get to the top.

But my breath is stolen for a different reason: I have ascended the tallest man-made building in the entire country of Belize: A 15-story Mayan pyramid that soars to 140 feet above sea level!

A friend on the trip summed it up best:

“It’s surreal, you’re walking through dense jungle, and it opens up and you see monkeys running around among all these huge rock structures built by hand without modern equipment.   How did the Mayans get these huge rocks up 140 feet to the top of their temple?”

The aura is astounding. You almost expect to see Harrison Ford burst from a tunnel pursued by brightly painted native warriors with blowguns.

The part of Belize I have grown to love, the central coastal region of the country, has all that same island vacation tropical paradise stuff, plus another world of wonders in the form of volcanoes, whitewater rivers, preserves where wild jaguars roam and of course the remains of Mayan civilization.

And a whole lot fewer tourists. There is plenty of room to roam, and to be alone doing it. In fact, 41 percent of Belize is nature reserve managed by the government or other organizations, and 70 percent of Belize land is still covered by some kind of forest.

Overpopulated Guatemala has depleted it’s natural resources, but Belize remains pristine…and full of mystery.

Around the ruins where we hiked, there are lots of structures still uncovered in the complex. Mounds of earth and ancient relic reclaimed by the jungle remain untouched because there is no funding to come dig them out. How much amazing architecture that was wa-a-a-ay ahead of it’s time remains hidden in the jungle here? No one can say.

On the temple, arches and rounded entryways boggle your mind, as you see first-hand where heavy stones were somehow fit together in a complex pattern to become solid, without mortar or cement. Holes in certain parts of buildings correlate with the sun angle at certain times of day – really advanced stuff.

Stuff you will not find on any of Belize’s wonderful, touristy islands nor any of the small private ones. I cannot wait to see what else the mainland holds!

I didn’t worship at the Mayan temple, but I think my heart started to worship this incredible little country a little.

Sometimes, the best way to appreciate a place is to go somewhere else.

In a back-to-back trip last year, I left Belize after an awesome week spent snorkeling, exploring rain forests and catching lots and lots of fish. My next stop: the much more famous Costa Rica, where I looked forward to more of the same.  After all, Costa is the place with the great long-established reputation for eco-adventure, pristine environments, super-friendly people and gorgeous countryside.

I found the people all right. Hundreds of them. Seemingly everywhere I went. I wasn’t in the most touristy part of the country, but it didn’t matter, it’s just not that easy to get away in Costa anymore.

The people were as friendly as billed, overall, though they were definitely used to seeing gringos.  But I could not communicate with them very well in my broken Spanish, and it made me miss Belize, where everybody speaks English, even if it takes some sorting out…sometimes in Belize the beautiful rhythmic Caribbean accents of the ultra-laid back locals can be a little tough to catch the first time around, but their accents are so lyrical you will want to ask them to repeat themselves just to hear them speak anyway.

The tourist brochures bill Costa Rica as a place where almost everyone speaks English, and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s just not true, only the young people, and only those tied into the tourist trade for the most part, consistently speak English.

In the touristy towns like Tamarindo in Costa Rica, I had that feeling often that the locals were sizing me up, the way they used to in Mexico, where they look at gringos mostly as money. Friendly is one thing, sincere is another. And nobody in Belize offered to sell me drugs, another bonus.

I did do some fishing in Costa, too, after hearing about the great snook and snapper action around river mouths, or at least reputedly decent inshore fishing. I plied the shoreline hopefully evening after evening with my flyrod, even breaking out the spin gear to cast spoons in desperation. What I saw in the roily inshore Pacific waters of Costa Rica was a lot of nothing, and my flies went ignored. I saw far more people than fish, that’s for sure. I watched, sadly, as a local hauled in a big beautiful moray eel he hooked deeply on a handline, cut it open to retrieve his five-cent hook, before kicking it back in the water, dead.

Too many people. I thought what it would have been like to see that eel while snorkeling. Later, I snorkeled on a sunset sail cruise and saw few fish in the marginally clear Pacific waters, absolutely nothing like the epic reefs of Belize.

I know Costa has some good offshore fishing and terrific tarpon around certain river mouths on the Caribbean side, but good fishing isn’t widespread and easily accessible almost everywhere like it is in Belize. And guides are lot cheaper in Belize—my friends have gone bonefishing in Belize for as little as $50.

In Belize I had seen sea turtles cruise by and investigate me as I wade fished in water clear as triple-distilled vodka, great shoals of fish shifting and moving around me, sometimes fighting each other to chase my fly.

Sigh. Costa Rica is a marvelous country with great places to go well off the beaten path, but that genuine exotic adventure experience I seek is not easily available everywhere, you have to really dig to find it anymore.

Still, I do like Costa Rica and will go there to surf. But if I’m going to buy a vacation home, it’s not much of a contest for me: Belize will be it. Everyone you talk to looking for property or a house in Costa Rica has the same complaint:  that properties are generally higher than most of the U.S. anymore.  Yes it is paradise in terms of climate, but the waterfront and near-ocean properties in Costa—at least the ones close to any kind of amenities, stores, airports or restaurants—are now at higher than U.S. prices, mostly.  Granted, most of the U.S. is not 80 degrees in the winter, but still, most gringos come down hoping for the great prices that have not existed for over 15 years.

Those days are long gone for Costa Rica. I feel fortunate to have discovered Belize while it is still like Costa Rica was a few decades ago, in the eighties, where real estate prices are roughly a third to half as much. The cost-a Costa is simply too much for most folks anymore, and you don’t have to learn a foreign language to get by in Belize.

With the waves of Boomers coming, it surely won’t last forever, but for now, Belize is closer to how Costa was more like 20 years ago than it is now.