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Princess Hotel & Casino Belize

Princess Hotel & Casino (Newtown Barracks, Belize City) — The casino at the Princess Hotel is an informal and fun place to try to boost your budget, with roulette, poker and blackjack tables, plus hundreds of slot machines and a floor show with dancing girls kicking up their heels at 10pm. You need to show ID such as your passport or driver’s license to enter (minimum age is 18).

The complex is also where you will find Belize’s only eight-lane (or any-lane, for that matter) bowling alley. The two-screen movie theater shows first-run Hollywood films, though usually a bit later than their U.S. release dates.

Placencia (Beach) Belize

Placencia (Beach) (Stann Creek District, Belize) — One place on the mainland that boasts excellent beaches in Belize is Placencia, a peninsula about two-thirds of the way south along the Belizian coastline. The barrier reef is much farther offshore at Placencia, but this doesn’t affect the nature of the beach here… long, white, gently sloping into the gentle, lapping waves. This is truly a tropical beach paradise.

Many travelers who come for the country’s beaches come here sooner or later, making this a major tourist (beach) destination. The drive to Placencia village down the narrow 4-mile-long peninsula is quite pretty. There are some lovely resorts of varied price ranges on the east-facing beach, and mangrove swamp on the western side. But open land on either side is disappearing at a fast clip as lots are bought up for development, both for upper-end resorts, and for private homes being sold to Americans and Canadians looking for their own slices of heaven in tropical climes.

Orchid Bay (Beach) Belize

Orchid Bay (Beach) (Corozal District, northern Belize) — Orchid Bay isn’t technically ocean beach. It’s on the huge, calm, sheltered Bay of Chetumal that Belize shares with Mexico, where their borders meet. Orchid Bay is an ambitious multi-use development across the bay from the town of Corozal, and the developers have widened and improved the native beach…so much so that it rivals Belize’s natural beaches for beauty and tranquility.

Diving Belize

Diving: for visitors interested in diving (as well as other nautical activities), by far, the country’s cayes (pronounced “keys”), located off of Belize’s long Caribbean coastline can’t be beat. As much as 70% of foreigners visiting Belize are likely to visit at least one caye during their time in the country. The most popular cayes are: Caulker, Ambergris, St. George’s, Half Moon, and Lighthouse.

Along with these cayes, Belize also boasts some amazing atolls, such as: Glover’s Reef (the country’s southernmost atoll, this is a ring of gorgeous coral reefs that are 80 square miles long), Turneffe Islands (located near Belize City, these islands have a number of dive sites, such as The Elbow, and Gales Point), and Lighthouse Reef (located 50 miles southeast of Belize City). One dive site within that area, known as the Blue Hole, was made famous by Jacques Cousteau.

A number of diving outfits can get visitors to these and countless other destinations, such as: Ambergris Divers (http://ambergrisdivers.com), Belize Diving Services (http://belizedivingservices.net), Robert Grove’s (www.robertsgrove.com/belize-dive-resort), Scuba Diving Belize (www.scubadivingbelize.com), and numerous others.

Getting There Belize

Getting There: Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary is located off the Southern Highway, approximately 20 miles south of Dangriga. The entrance is at Maya Center Village, where the Maya Center Women’s Group collects the entrance fees to the protected area. From here, the actual park is six miles down a dirt road. Visitors can drive, hike into the park (roughly 2 hours), or hire a local taxi from the village (US$12.50 one-way).