Not only are Hollywood stars drawn to holiday in Belize, but the likes of Leonardo di Caprio and Francis Ford Coppola already own celebrity property in the nation – and if you buy in, you could literally be rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous.

As stated, the actor Leonardo di Caprio has real estate in Belize – in fact, he owns an island off the nation’s shore called Blackadore Caye where he’s currently planning the construction of a luxurious hotel and eco property based project that will be operated by the Four Seasons group. As the island cost a mere $1.75 million dollars for over 100 acres of prime, tropical land in the Caribbean Sea, you can see that relatively speaking land and property in Belize are affordable or even cheap.

Of course, you may not be in the market for an island, but even if you ‘only’ want a modest home in Belize you will be buying in a nation where the rich and famous love to holiday in style yet also anonymously. Not well known as a playground for the rich and famous, the country is absolutely the perfect hideaway for those who like to get away from it all – which was precisely the driving factor behind Francis Ford Coppola’s decision to buy real estate in Belize too.

Other reasons that may sway your decision include the fact that Belize is one of the most beautiful countries in the whole world. It is blessed with white sandy beaches, with topical rainforests, dramatic mountain peaks, rare yet abundant flora and fauna and stunning ocean views. Thanks to these reasons the country is growing as a tourism destination and growing slowly wealthier as a result. This has the knock on effect of infrastructure and amenity improvements that benefits those with properties that they reside in or let out in Belize.

Belize has been protected ecologically speaking and environmentally so it remains a pristine paradise. The celebrities who have bought in such as di Caprio are working with the nation to ensure this status remains the same. The tax status in Belize makes it very attractive, as does the fact it is an affordable place to buy, it has a stable currency, is a democracy and has a legal system based on the British.

In addition to all of these favorable factors supporting the purchase of a property in Belize, you have the fact that Belize is highly accessible from the US, the US is highly accessible from the UK, and the British pound still goes quite a long way in Belize’s real estate market. So, if you want to find a home in paradise in 2009, take a closer look at the property landscape in Belize and join the celebrities buying homes in this beautiful Central American country.

The bottom line: If you are thinking about living and playing in Belize, you would be well advised to do it while the market is flat. The Celebs and a better economy will make this place very pricing very soon. But for now, deals in paradise.

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.