On Wednesday this week, Dan and I returned from our week long trip to Belize for our honeymoon, and it was absolutely wonderful. I shared some of our photos on my social media pages earlier this week, but I’d like to share some more here. It’s going to be a bit of a long post, but it’ll be fun!

First, I’ve had a ton of people ask how long it takes to get to Belize. We drove to Sioux Falls and flew from there to Dallas, which took about two hours. From Dallas we flew into Belize City, which was another 2.5 hours. Since we didn’t stay on the mainland, it was another 15 minute plane ride to Ambergris Caye Island where we stayed in San Pedro.

The hotel we stayed at was called The Palms, and it was more like a mini condo than a hotel room. It had a little kitchen and a living room and everything.

The first full day we spent on the island we had no plans. We spent the day exploring San Pedro a bit and sitting in the sun.

The island is not very big and most people use golf carts to transport around instead of vehicles. We mostly walked everywhere since everything was pretty close by.

Day 2 was a long one! But it was super fun. We booked one tour on the main land, which was a jungle cruise to the Lamanai Mayan Ruins. We met at the guide dock at 6:30am to boat us over to the main land, which like I mentioned earlier was about an hour long ride. Once there, it was about an hour long bus ride to the jungle cruise, where we hopped another boat for another 25 miles.

We did see some wildlife along the way. They pointed out some of the birds and crocodiles and even some iguanas hanging out in the trees. We even saw a manatee! They get pretty spooked around people though and they’re surprisingly fast – we actually saw a second one on the way back but both times they moved faster than I could react to get a picture. For a big sea potato, they’re quick!

Once we arrived at Lamanai, our guide took us around to the various ruins sites and explained the history behind them all. It was actually pretty cool to hear how the Mayans lived and the significance behind each temple. We were also allowed to climb up any of the temples, so we got our steps in that day!

After we finished climbing all the temples and making the trek back to the island, we were pretty exhausted. Pretty sure we were in bed before 8pm that night. 😂

Saturday was by far my favorite day – and I think it was Dan’s favorite day too! Everyone we talked to about Belize beforehand said we needed to make time to go snorkeling. And I’m here to tell anyone else thinking about going: it’s a must!!

Belize is home to the second largest barrier reef in the world next to the one in Australia. They love to share it with people, but they are very protective of it. There are only a few locations people are allowed to snorkel near it and you have to have a guide take you.

So, on Saturday we took a day sail on a catamaran to the other island of Belize, Caye Caulker. Along the way, we were able to make two snorkel stops at Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley. They were AMAZING! We saw sharks, sea turtles, sting rays, so many different kinds of fish, and lots of coral. I think Dan and I could have stayed in the water all day. It was so cool.

We stopped for two hours on Caye Caulker to eat lunch and explore a little bit before sailing back to our island. If you can believe it, Caye Caulker is even more laid back! It seems like a bit of a younger crowd and there’s lot of music and places to just hang out and relax.

Some of our other fun adventures included a sunset sail on a catamaran on Sunday evening. Of course, the only storm we got all week blew through an hour before our sail, so it was still cloudy and there wasn’t much of a sunset haha, but it was still super fun to get back out on the boat for a bit.

On Monday, we decided to rent a golf cart and go exploring further north on the island. I was more than happy to let Dan drive and I played the anxious passenger princess. Even though they ensured us there weren’t really any big rules of the road, I was still nervous we were going to do the one thing that would get us in trouble lol.

We made lots of stops along the way so Dan could look for birds. We even ran into another couple who were out looking for birds too and Dan was geeking out pretty hard with them. It was wonderful to see!

We made our way north to Secret Beach, as we had several people, locals and tourists, tell us we needed to go.

One thing we discovered while in Belize, is that it is actually cheaper to eat out than it is to get groceries. Since our hotel had a kitchen, we thought we’d be smart, save money and cook some of our meals. We spent way more on groceries than we did eating out! So we ended up eating out more frequently lol.

Elvi’s Restaurant was one restaurant we heard from so many people that we had to check out. We got there on our last day, and it was a super cute spot. And the food was definitely tasty!

Just a couple more shots of our fabulous trip:

Overall, the vacation was so, so wonderful. We both had an amazing time, and I sincerely hope we can get back someday. We highly recommend Belize for anyone thinking of visiting. You will love it!

Until next time! 🙂

Megan Nelson