Spent two weeks in January in Belize. The first five days were at Black Rock River Lodge. The lodge is on the Macal River about 2.5 hours of driving from BZE a few mile west of San Ignacio. The main roads in Belize are hard surface, with speed bumps the main traffic control device. The travel agent told us that Budget Car Rental will give us directions to the lodge. The directions were to drive past San Ignacio and look for the signs. Fortunately, I stopped at Cesar’s Place just prior to San Ignacio and was give detailed instruction on how to get through San Ignacio with its two one-way bridges and then a short description on the 6-mile dirt road to Black Rock Lodge. It had been raining all day, so the road was very muddy. We did not need to use 4-wheel drive, but did need the high clearance at one point to get through the recently dumped fill on the road. Except for that short stretch of thick mud, the road was just narrow and rough. It turns out that Cesar owns Black Rock Lodge and we were supposed to be told to stop there for final directions. I just lucked out and stopped because I had read that Cesar’s Place was the biggest souvenir shop in Belize, and we were hungry.

The lodge is rustic with 11-15 cabanas. All had private baths, except ours. We saved money by staying is the one “share-bath” cabana. It had to use an out house compost toilet and walk 60 yards to the solar shower. They are upgrading the cabanas, so that will be gone soon. The resort gets by on their own hydro-electric power and propane for heating water and cooking. So it is very quiet there, except for the sound of the water falls near by. We hiked to Vaca Falls about a mile away, tubed on the river from below Vaca Falls to the lodge, hiked to the top of a nearby mountain, took an all day 13-mile canoe ride from the lodge to San Ignacio (we were picked up there and drive back to the lodge), and took an all day guided tour to Caracol which included Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Falls. The river water was quite warm (about 78 degrees) which made swimming or tubing in the river easy. We just missed the peak season from Mid December to early January so it was not crowded. The most tourists we saw were about 15 of us playing in the river at Rio On Falls, enjoying the slippery slide and water falls as part of the tour to Caracol. The Caracol site was awesome; we climbed to top of the larges pyramid in Belize.

The water level on the Macal River varied based on a dam up river that would let out a lot of water at certain time. The last part of our canoe trip to town seemed to go quicker than we were told. It turns out that the dam was opened about 2 hours after we left the lodge which sped up the river and our trip.

There is really no way to make your own meals at the lodge, but you can order ala carte breakfasts and lunches. Everyone eats the same meal together at dinner, but they are willing to meet your needs if you have special needs, like if you do not eat meat. The dinners were just great, with mostly locally produced food.

As we were getting ready to leave for Ambergris Caye, I noticed that we were flying from Belize Municipal Airport, not the International Airport (BZE). So when I took the jeep back to Budget, the one employee at Budget had to drive us to the Municipal Airport. If I had told them that when I checked out the jeep, they would have had me go back to their in-town office near the airport. It worked out okay because the Budget Office had no reservations on the incoming planes.

We spent the last 9 days at Corona Del Mar about a half mile south of San Pedro. We had been there two weeks last year so we did a lot of heavy relaxing. We did take an all day bike ride to the northern part of the island. We got off to a slow start because we had to go to 6 different places to get a bike rental. Either the place was closed, out of business or would only rent to their own guests. Our best meals were at George’s Kitchen just across the street from the hotel. Local food and not expensive. Our only snorkel trip was a fishing/snorkeling/beach barbeque on the north end of the island. We caught fish for our own lunch, went snorkeling at Mexico Rocks, relaxed at the Costa Maya resort while the guide cooked the fish, and then snorkeled at Tres Cocos. The snorkeling was wonderful, with lots of fish. If you ever go to Belize, the first snorkel stop would be Shark Ray Alley at Hol Chan, but we did that twice last year so we did not do that this year. But these stops were great too.

We were stopped by a few locals trying to get us to visit one of the time-share resorts up north. They were helpful with other information but we do not like to do those sales tours, so we did not take them up on their offers.

Belize is a wonderful place to take a winter break. We do not scuba, but with the largest barrier reef in the Western hemisphere, it must be great. Some days our rush hour would be sunning on the dock around 9 AM and watching the boats come in to pick up divers or snorkelers for their trips.