On this short trip to Belize, we only spent 2 nights in San Ignacio and then headed to the island of Caye Caulker for 5 nights. In retrospect, 5 nights on Caye Caulker was far too many and we wish we had spent more time in San Ignacio.
San Ignacio
After leaving Tikal and riding in a local bus to the border with Belize, we passed through immigration and grabbed a taxi to the nearby town of San Ignacio. We only booked two nights in San Ignacio, so we had to pick only one activity while in the area. We chose to book a cave tubing tour in the Nohoch Che’en Branch Archeaological Reserve for our one full day here.
Both mornings we headed to the San Ignacio Market for breakfast. Here locals are selling fruit, vegetables, meat, etc. There are also a number of food options. We opted for a busy section making pupusas (as well as burritos, quesadillas, and fry jack). They were cheap, fast, and delicious. We decided to come back to the same stall the following morning as well.
San Ignacio seemed to have plenty of restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops. We spotted colorful birds flying around the town including a Keel-billed Toucan and a Collared Aracari. More importantly there are a number of activities in the area that would have been nice to check out. These included a few Mayan ruins, waterfalls, and some caving adventures. We could easily have enjoyed a couple extra days here.
Cave Tubing near San Ignacio
The tour company “Explore Inland Tours” took us on our cave tubing adventure in the Nohock Che’en Branch Archeological Reserve. We met our tour guide, nicknamed “Handsome” at 9 am at their local office. He was a great guide, telling us all about the towns, locals, and culture on our hour long drive to the reserve.
Once there, we were fitted with helmets and handed tubes before heading into the forest towards the river. As we walked through the forest, Handsome told us all about different plants that we passed. It was an easy, enjoyable walk.
The majority of tourists float through 3 caves when visiting. Since we were only tubing and not including a zip-lining experience that day, we walked a bit further and were able to float through an extra cave. We entered the refreshing river and leaned back into our tubes to enjoy the float. Our guide did any required steering while we relaxed.
The entrances and exits to the caves are beautiful. Once inside, the cave systems are very long and you soon are too far from an opening for any light to reach. We had headlamps to see inside the cave. At one point in the depths of the cave, we all turned off our headlamps to experience the complete darkness. As we floated along, our guide told us about the Mayan people’s use of the caves as a location to make sacrifices to the gods.
After concluding our tubing adventure, we had a delicious Belizean meal at a restaurant set up by the entrance. We then drove back to San Ignacio.
Bus from San Ignacio to Belize City
The next morning we sadly left San Ignacio. Since we wanted to both save money and experience real Belize, we took a local bus from San Ignacio to Belize City. The bus left from a little park in town and as we waited more and more people showed up. There wasn’t any sort of line, everyone just hung out. It seems that as a bus pulls up, they let people off and then whoever can push their way to the front gets to board until the driver says they are too full. Everyone else has to wait for the next attempt about 30 minutes later. We were lucky and fought our way onto the first bus to Belize City. As it pulled up a half block away, before we even knew it was the right bus, we ran over right behind a couple of knowing locals. Once next to the bus, we had to stick close to those ahead of us and block others from pushing in front of us.
I scored one of the last seats available while Dave had to stand in the aisle along with a number of other passengers. Luckily, he got a seat when some people got off at the next large town. A few hours later, we arrived in Belize City. We easily navigated our way to the ferry terminal using Google maps. There are actually a couple ferry terminals near each other, so we looked up which was leaving the soonest and made our way to that one. Once inside, we purchased our tickets and were in line to board within a few minutes.
Caye Caulker
The ferry took about 45 minutes to reach the small island of Caye Caulker. It’s so small that you are likely able to walk to your accommodation within 10 minutes upon arrival. Our walk would only take about 3 minutes, but we were hungry and thought it was a good idea to get into the island spirit right away. Within a block we found Bambooze Beach Bar and Grill. We sat ourselves on some swings by a bright yellow table and discovered it was happy hour! We picked out a couple coconut rum drinks and ordered a giant veggie burrito. We enjoyed this place enough to return later in the trip.
After lunch and rum, we checked into the Caye Caulker Beach Hotel. While nothing special, it had a comfortable bed, good air conditioning, decent price, and fit our needs well.
While on the island, we found there weren’t exactly a lot of options to fill our days. The options here are snorkeling, diving, a couple touristy shops, and hanging out at bars. It is also possible to rent kayaks, but just kayaking around the small island didn’t seem really exciting to us. There is a small beach at the Iguana Reef Inn on the west side where you can see stingrays and seahorses. The seahorse habitat has been constructed next to the dock. Stingrays come up to shore around sunset daily but unfortunately this is because they have been regularly fed to create this behavior. It was fun to see them, but sad that it occurs by interfering with their normal life.
Snorkeling – Caye Caulker
The one big activity we participated in while in Caye Caulker was a full day snorkeling tour. I had hoped to go on a couple snorkel tours while on the island, but every company was offering almost the exact same full day tour. Half day tours are also available, but they were the same locations, just less of them. We snorkeled with the company “Nautitime Tours”. Our full day snorkel tour was mostly a great experience and the highlight of our time there. The stops included the following:
- A location on the west side of Caye Caulker to hand feed Tarpon. These multi-feet long silver fish will jump out of the water to grab a small fish out of people’s hands. Many people find this very exciting.
- A location where sometimes manatees can be seen. We did not see any.
- Snorkeling at Shark Ray Alley. This is an area with lots of nurse sharks and sting rays. This is the one stop that gives me mixed feelings about the snorkeling tours. To ensure the tourists see lots of sharks and rays, the guides feed the marine life. This alters their normal life patterns and generally is not something I want to support. We were told that nurse sharks usually feed at night, not in the late morning when the tourists want to see them. We did see lot of sharks and rays due to this practice.
- The Hol Chan Marine Reserve. This marine reserve has plenty of coral and colorful fish. We also say a few nurse sharks, sting ray, and an eagle ray. I enjoyed these sightings of the sharks much more as they felt more natural and special. No feeding by tour companies occurs in this reserve.
- Snorkeling at Coral Gardens. This is another location with lots of shallow coral, making a great area to snorkel and see various fish.
- Snorkeling at a sunken barge. This barge was sunk years ago and you can see coral now growing on the old ship and fish that have made it their home. A cool spot but you don’t need a lot of time here. For us it was our last stop, which was perfect. It was something new but didn’t require a lot of effort at the end of the tour.
How we spent the rest of our time on Caye Caulker
I began most of the days with a nice, early morning run around the south half of Caye Caulker. A small section of the trail is surrounded by jungle. Beyond this, homes fill the island but for locals and expats rather than tourists. After my run, we spent our mornings grabbing some breakfast and then sitting on a nice dock and reading. A bunch of pelicans hung out nearby on wooden poles sticking out of the water.
After lunch we would pick a bar either with a view of or where we could sit in the water and enjoy a cocktail made from local coconut rum. In the evenings we tried a number of restaurants on the island. Between these staples of the day, we would relax by reading or watching a show on the computer.
While it was nice to have some down time while traveling, we had too much of it on Caye Caulker and found ourselves bored and ready to head out. If we were planning this Belize trip with what we know now, we would spend more time in San Ignacio and less on Caye Caulker. We would also either include a day trip to Ambergris Caye (another larger island nearby) or stay there instead and visit Caye Caulker on a day trip.
If you enjoyed hearing about Belize, you may want to check out my posts on Honduras, another Central American country with Mayan ruins, waterfalls, islands and much more.
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