Through Belize

After leaving Bermudian Landing we headed to the Belize Zoo which is on the main highway about 50km from Belize City. The Belize Zoo has a reputation as being the best zoo South of the USA.

The entry fee is quite steep at BZ$30 each and they have a rule that you are not allowed a camera lens longer than 100mm. They actually check cameras for this. However if your camera is small enough they don’t care.

They Zoo has only animals that are native to Belize and the highlights are the Jaguars and the Harpy Eagles (which are extinct in Belize now but are being reintroduced by the zoo). The zoo isn’t that big but has very entertaining signs and lets you see a lot of animals that you probably won’t see in the wild.

After a couple of hours here we were thoroughly hot and determined to find a way to cool down. We headed for the coast and a campsite that we knew called the Cucumber Bay Marina.  We could camp here for only BZ$15 with electricity, water but more important access to their beach resort which normally costs USD10 per head. What a bargain.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out by the big saltwater pool and playing on the waterslide. We were the only people there.

The next morning we headed off to see some of the southern end of Belize. This involved driving down an unpaved road (the Manatee Highway) towards the coast. About half way along the road we were flagged down by a guy who had managed to drive off the road and was now thoroughly stuck. We offered to pull him out which was fairly short work for the Beast. We then had to jump start him from a spare battery before he could get going. He seemed pretty unphased by the whole experience.

We hit the coast at a place called Gale’s Point and went for a walk along a spit into the lagoon here. But we weren’t so enamoured so decided to drive back inland along the Hummingbird Highway.

We had hoped to stop off at a lodge called Caves Branch which allowed camping in their parking lot. We wanted to do a cave tubing trip with them however when we arrived we were told we couldn’t camp. Seems pretty short sighted because we were offering them business for the next day and all we wanted was to park overnight in their empty car park which you can’t even see from the lodge !  So from here we drove onto the main highway and to San Ignacio where we stopped off at a camping site called Inglewood.