Belize- Caye Caulker Part One

In January 2008, we were sick of the Michigan cold, ice and snow. On a whim, we scouted where we might be able to go with frequent fliers. to our surprise and delight, we were able to get tickets to Belize for my wife and I and our friend Mary, all for the base rate of only 35,000 miles!! This was 3 weeks before travelling.

After some rapid research, we settled on 5 days on the island of Caye Caulker and 5 days on the peninsula that stretches south into the Caribbean at the bottom of Belize. You can find it by searching for the small village of Placencia at the tip.

We wanted to do a little time in the jungle, but we were not able to figure out what areas were safest and most interesting. After discussions with other travelers as well as locals, we plan to visit San Ignacio on our next trip to Belize. Not to insult your travel IQ, but we learned a lot about Belize and will pass some of it on to you, before we describe our travels. If you want to skip this, just head on to the next post in the Belize category. The small country of Belize is located just south of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. We expected it to be another Spanish speaking Central American country. Not So!! Belize was attached to England until only recently. One of the main ethnic groups is the Creole, which are decended from British pirates and their African slaves that logged mahogany and harrassed the Spanish trade ships. There are also Mestizos (Native American/Spanish mix), Garifuna (decended from African slaves that escaped and migrated from the islands) and German Mennonites that still produce a good portion of the countries produce. The main language is English. Although culturally diverse, the different groups do stay somewhat separate and one group tends to dominate depending on what part of the country you are in.