Cayo Espanto – Ambergris Caye

This place is over-the-top luxury for Belize. And easily makes this list, even if it covered the whole Caribbean. If you want the ultimate place to relax, with some of the best service in the Caribbean, and the ideal trailhead for ultimate sea adventure, Cayo Espanto is for you. Did I mention it’s a small private island to boot? Adventure is moments away at Cayo Espanto when you don your scuba or snorkel gear to explore the world’s second-largest barrier-reef system. The reef is right out your back door. Three miles from San Pedro, off the coast of Belize, Cayo Espanto is truly a spectacular and private retreat with spa services too. World class snorkeling, scuba diving, amazing food, attentive staff, and massages all await you at Cayo Espanto. As a note: the whole staff meets you when you pull up to the dock…“(the plane, the plane.)”

Chabil Mar Villas – Placencia

On the Placencia Peninsula, next to the famed Turtle Inn, is the Chablis Mar Villas Resort, our pick for the place to stay in Placencia. This place is just very tastefully done, including beautiful landscaping from the front gate to the beach. Chabil offers different types of luxury villas ranging from on-the-beach oceanfront and great ocean view villas with both one and two bedrooms. They have a very cool and romantic honeymoon suite too. Almost all the villas have great sea views or views of Placencia’s whole bay. You can get spa services right on your private  balcony with a great view. This little slice of paradise also sits on the best beach on Belize’s mainland. And the staff, from the front desk gals to the in-suite waiters, are welcoming and very friendly. In-your-suite room service offers you some of the best food in Placencia without leaving your suite. Great place to stay whether you a couple or an entire family.

Turtle Inn – Placencia

Regardless of whether you think Turtle Inn is the best on this list, it’s a fact that Turtle and Francis Ford Coppola single-handedly helped make Belize tourism what it is today and put Placencia on the map. It also didn’t hurt that the resort shared both his big name and his big-name guest list. From the moment you walk into the lobby you are transformed to a different place. Belize, Bali, Thailand? Not sure but it has a great feel and totally changes your paradigm. The natural Belizean hardwoods, the front desk carving brought by Coppola from Bali, and the raised floor above a mock jungle setting is perfect. The rooms (with no air) are far eastern in their look and feel, and most sit right on the beach allowing for fresh Caribbean breezes and the gentle rolling waves off the sea. Coppola’s personal suite is available too but will set you back over a grand a night. It’s very private, with over-the-top panache and a private beachfront pool. The other rooms and suites are unique and well-appointed and all come with great Belizean service.  Two really good restaurants make this a great stay for those willing to shell out a few extra bucks…and then there is his other gem…

Blancaneaux – San Ignacio

I feel (and many others agree) this place is more amazing and I think a better experience than even Turtle Inn. Set in the Mayan Mountains at the foot of a beautiful river are a dozen amazing cabanas spread out on a lush tropical landscape that instantly puts you at-ease with nature. Although there a few different styles and sizes of these luxury thatched cabanas, each is made with rich Belizean hardwoods that just give them a rich and luxurious feeling. You have a sense of lush jungle everywhere but you’re in the middle of a pine ridge forest. Like Turtle Inn, the food is excellent and the service is very good and very personal. There are couples’ decks spread around the rocks along the river for napping or reading a great book.  It’s s-o-o-o-o quiet and so peaceful here that it makes for a truly amazing experience. Frankly you can take a dip in the river as well if napping isn’t your thing. The available adventure tours in the mountains are much different than those you’ll find out on the coast. So, step-up and get one of the larger cabanas, sit out on your deck and enjoy.

Belizean Dreams – Hopkins

If you’re in the Hopkins area there are two cool places to stay. Belizean Dreams is one of them. Here, the accommodations are well-appointed two- and three- bedroom villas, with a great second-story master suite for views of the Caribbean. Service here is personal and the small palapa restaurant by the pool and right on the beach offers really good food and drinks. They have a sister resort about a mile away offering more of the same, really nice villas on the beach including some real estate for sale within the resort. This feels more like a second home than a hotel or resort.

Jaguar Reef – Hopkins

Also in Hopkins is Jaguar Reef Lodge located next door to Belizean Dreams. Both are situated on a nice beach within easy reach of a quiet and unspoiled part of the beautiful offshore reef.  Watch the sun come up over the ocean from your room or suite and enjoy the sunset over the Mayan mountains from your back veranda. The accommodations are roomy thatched units, pleasantly rough around the edges, all surrounding a beautiful lodge with good food and friendly service. This place has one of the best menus for adventure tours in the country.

Kanantik – Stann Creek

If you want a quiet place on a very nice private beach, Kanantik is for you (last time I was there they didn’t allow kids). Feels like your own private resort. There are only 20 or so very cool, private, tasteful beach cabanas with indoor/outdoor baths. The landscape and grounds are manicured to perfection and the service and staff are perfect, too. For the most part it’s all-inclusive but don’t let that fool you.  This is a very custom experience and the food and drinks are great. Roberto, the owner, a divemaster, has one of the finest diving operations in the country with a beautiful dock system and two really nice boats. If you are looking for a beach hut but don’t want to rough it too much I highly recommend this place. Oh, and it has enough real estate for its own private airstrip.

Turneffe Island Resort

To start with this is an intimate resort on an island located off the coast of Belize situated in one of the three large atolls. It’s a pretty spectacular setting for sure. Unlike a lot of places you’d stay, this resort’s cabanas (the most desirable accommodations), ring the island so each gets a view of the white sand beach and the azure water.  The Deluxe and the Superior suites in the main house are very well-appointed and offer all the exotic feel you need to disconnect and unwind. As a diving and fishing launch point it may be the best in Belize. If isolation and white, white sand is your thing, this is paradise.

Chaa Creek – San Ignacio – Maya Mountains

A pioneer in eco-lodging, this secluded 365-acre nature reserve is perched above the banks of the Macal River in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, and offers an unspoiled ambience like few resorts in Belize. Chaa Creek caters to the traveler looking for both physical and intellectual challenges and its programs and activities revolve around the environment, culture and archaeology of Belize. The cottages and suites are mostly thatched roofed with an inviting rich jungle theme with lots of pretty hardwoods. Try the new Treetop Suites, very cool. And, don’t miss the spa here, it may be the best in the country. They also just invested in a great new pool to take the edge off at the end long day of adventure.

Victoria House, San Pedro – Ambergris Caye

Talk about casual luxury. No shoes required, great staff, great Caribbean food. The kitchen will cook your catch, the bartender will make ceviche while you shower and change for dinner (again no shoes)!  Rooms range from plantation rooms and casitas to a three-bedroom plantation house with a breathtaking oceanfront veranda. All well done and appointed. The secluded Rainforest Suite, just 50 feet away from the Caribbean, is a favorite of honeymooners featuring a wraparound front veranda, floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors.

Why Belize Now?

The answer is simple. You know Mark Twain’s famous quote “buy land, there not making it any more”? Well, they’re is a lot of truth to that especially in Belize. Keep in mind this little English-speaking speck on the map is only 170 miles long and 60 miles wide, barely. It’s just not very big to begin with, and much of it is rainforest and jungle that fortunately can never be disturbed by development. And frankly, the northern section above Belize City is not exactly the paradise most want own a vacation home or to retire to. Flat, a bit barren and hot.

Belize is less than half the size of Costa Rica yet has all that has made that country a famous destination, and a bit more. Don’t get me wrong I love Costa Rica, but I can’t speak Spanish (or read the Spanish contracts), it’s a longer flight to C.R., the beaches and snorkeling are OK at best, it doesn’t have the second longest barrier reef in the world (doesn’t have one at all), and the weather is not as good year-round as Belize. Dry season in Belize is very green, C.R. very hot and brown (at least in Northeast Guanacaste) and both have beautiful rainforests. But as far as real estate is concerned Belize is at least a 30 to 40 percent cheaper if you’re comparing apples to apples.

So when clients ask me to compare living in Belize to Costa or other Caribbean islands, I just say “dollar for dollar, adventure to adventure, easy to easy, Belize is a runaway winner.” And don’t tell anyone, but we sell in Costa Rica too. The value and fun for the buck is definitely in Belize. But what you’ll quickly see when you come down here and get to know the lay of the land, is that the best places to hang your hat and flip flops and hammock in Belize are going to be gone within the next two or three years as each year more people find out about just how cool this place is. The good stuff will never be cheaper than it is today.

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.

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.