Ambergris Caye is the biggest island in Belize, an hour by boat or fifteen minutes by small plane from the mainland, and the second longest barrier reef on earth runs half a mile off its beach. Families come for a week and rent a golf cart, because that is what everyone drives.
San Pedro is the town, sand roads, wooden houses on stilts, a hundred restaurants and a pier every fifty meters. Stay north of the bridge for the resorts with pools and calm water, or in town for the walk to everything. Four nights minimum. A week is easy.
Hol Chan is the snorkel trip. A marine reserve at a cut in the reef, twenty minutes by boat, with rays, turtles, groupers the size of a child and a garden of coral in ten feet of clear water. Shark Ray Alley is the second stop, where nurse sharks and stingrays gather around the boats and the guide feeds them while the kids float above. They are harmless. The kids do not believe that until they are in the water.
Days on the island
Secret Beach on the lagoon side is the swimming beach, shallow warm water and picnic tables in the sea. The beach clubs along the front have loungers and a dock to jump from. A day trip to Caye Caulker, the smaller island, for the Split, a channel through the island where everyone swims.
Manatee watching in the lagoon, a fishing trip where the captain cooks the catch on a beach, and the Belize zoo on the mainland if you fly back through the city.
The reef is the reason. Rash guards for everyone, reef safe sunscreen, and a mask that fits before the first boat. Then the jungle half of the country, a fifteen minute flight away.
Planning Belize with kids? Start with the full Belize family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.
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