Ramon’s Village Resort
CITY GUIDES
The Belize Travel Guide: Where to Stay, Eat, and What to Do
By Eric Barton | Feb. 10, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Belize is a Central American country, technically, but it doesn’t really behave like one. Its neighbors to the west and south feel like they’re facing inland, toward mountains and old stone and the gravity of history. In my travels there, I’ve found that Belize keeps turning its chair toward the sea, insisting—politely, with a smile—that it’s Caribbean.
It shows up in the food first, in a way that feels less like a “scene” and more like daily life: stews and rice, heat and citrus, things cooked low and patiently, plates that make more sense after a long, salty day. Then there’s the music—rhythms that drift out of shops and bars like they’re part of the weather—plus a friendliness that isn’t performative, the kind that makes a stranger’s small talk feel like an actual conversation.
And then, of course, there’s the color. Belize has a shade of impossible blue hugging the sandy beaches on the coast and around the cayes. It’s the visual signature of the place, but it also explains why this is a stretch of Central America that feels far more like an island.
The other difference is the one that changes everything for a traveler: English is the official language, which means the logistics feel unusually smooth for this part of the world—fewer translation hiccups, fewer little frictions, more time spent doing the good parts.
Here then is my guide to this corner of the Caribbean: where to stay, what to do, what to eat, and how to get to Belize.
How to Get There
Spirit’s New FLL Flight
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The easiest new hack for getting to Belize is the Spirit Airlines nonstop from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to Belize City, which runs three days a week and takes a lot of the friction out of the trip. Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport in Belize is small and refreshingly navigable, except for the immigration line, where the energy can get a little hectic before it settles back down into Caribbean time. But luckily I flew in Spirit’s Priority seats, where the chairs felt like they were ordered from a big-box furniture store’s recliner aisle and the snacks arrived often.
Where to Stay
Falling Leaves Lodge
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Falling Leaves Lodge is a hilltop base in San Ignacio that makes it easy to do the inland Belize thing without feeling like the trip turned into a logistics exercise. It’s a secluded patch of quiet in the middle of the city and also close to several significant Mayan sites, which is a nice bonus for a lodge—coffee, then ancient stones, then back to the pool. It reads as relaxed and unfussy, the kind of place that quietly rewards early mornings and dirty shoes.
Ramon’s Village Resort
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Ramon's is the version of San Pedro that a lot of people picture when they say they’re going to Belize: palm-thatch cabanas, tropical landscaping, and the sense that the beach is the main lobby. The styling is Polynesian without ever feeling like a theme park, with sandy paths between buildings and talisman rising up from the center of the winding pool. It also has its own top-notch dive operation on site, which makes the water-centric part of the trip feel easy.
What to Do
Dark Night Cave Tubing Adventures
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Dark Night is the classic Belize adrenaline day, done with enough structure that it still feels like a vacation. The main event is floating through cave systems on inner tubes after a jungle hike, with add-ons like zip-lining for anyone who likes their nature with more velocity. And while walking the rope bridges and the zip lines are a whole lot of fun, it’s the caves that’ll become the day’s highlights: a 30-minute float through caves cut by the river over millennia, leaving behind smooth rock walls full of stalactites, bats, and the kind of darkness that’ll encompass you in another world.
Xunantunich
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Exploring Xunantunich scratches the “Belize has history older than anyone’s vacation plans” itch, and it does it without requiring a PhD or a survival pack. The approach includes a hand-cranked ferry across the Mopan River, which feels like a tiny bit of theater before the real scale of the site kicks in. El Castillo is the centerpiece, the kind of structure that makes the surrounding landscape feel suddenly organized around it.
Great Blue Hole Flyover
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A flyover with Tropic Air is a $260 splurge that makes sense because the Great Blue Hole is one of those things that’s simply better from the air. At 60 miles off the coast, it’s an all-day boat trip typically taken only by the bravest of divers willing to sink 400 feet into the cave. The two-hour, there-and-back flight, meanwhile, frames the ocean sinkhole inside the larger geometry of the reef, which is the point: it’s not just a circle in blue water, it’s Belize’s whole marine world laid out from above.
Belize Food Tours
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The San Pedro walking food tour with Belize Food Tours is how to understand the island beyond golf carts and beach bars. The route moves through downtown, stopping at small local spots and “mom and pop” kitchens, with the guide using bites to explain the country’s mash-up of cultures better than any museum placard ever could.
Where to Eat
Belize eats like a country that refuses to choose one identity and is better for it: Central American foundations, Caribbean ingredients, and a mix of influences that shows up in stews, rice plates, seafood, and street snacks. The best part is how unpretentious it all is: good food that isn’t auditioning for a camera, just feeding people who live near very blue water. For the full list of standout restaurants across the country, read this.
The Best Belize Restaurants for Fry Jacks, Pibil, and Beachfront Seafood
A road trip across Belize—from Guatemala’s western border to sandy islands—led to these restaurants worth planning around.
