Things to do
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Actun Tunichil Muknal
Guided groups swim into a limestone cave mouth and wade upstream for about an hour before climbing into dry chambers holding Maya ceramics and the calcified skeleton known as the Crystal Maiden. Cameras have been banned since a visitor dropped one on a skull. Tour numbers are capped, and trips run a full day from San Ignacio.
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Barton Creek Cave
Canoes carry visitors into a flooded cave where a creek runs for kilometres under the Maya Mountains, past ledges that held burials and pottery. Only the first stretch is open, paddled by torchlight in about an hour. Rain upstream raises the water and closes the trip at short notice.
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Cahal Pech
A small hilltop palace complex on the edge of San Ignacio, occupied from around 1200 BC and once home to a ruling family, with tight courtyards and corbelled passages under heavy shade trees. It takes under an hour to walk and makes an easy start before the larger sites. Late afternoon is usually quiet.
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Caracol
Deep in the Chiquibul forest near the Guatemalan border, the ruins of a city that once outgrew Tikal spread across terraces, causeways and plazas, with the Caana pyramid still the tallest structure in Belize. The drive takes several hours on rough road, and convoys have run at times for security. Howler monkeys and toucans are as much the draw as the stonework.
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Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve
Granite hills covered in Caribbean pine rise above the limestone lowlands, a cooler plateau of waterfalls, red dirt tracks and swimming holes. Rio On Pools and Big Rock Falls draw swimmers, while Rio Frio Cave opens as a vast river arch. A high clearance vehicle helps, and the tracks turn slick after rain.
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Xunantunich
Reached by a hand cranked ferry across the Mopan River, this Maya centre is crowned by El Castillo, a pyramid rising some forty metres with a frieze of moulded masks on its eastern face. The climb gives a view into Guatemala. Morning visits avoid both the heat and the tour buses from the coast.