We had three nights and two full days on Ambergris Caye. We had one snorkeling trip planned but otherwise were just looking forward to some good, old-fashioned R&R.
We arrived around 6pm after a super long day of travel. The kids wanted to swim and the parents wanted to eat (and possibly drink). We checked into our room and the kids changed into their bathing suits. We grabbed a table in the pool bar, where the kids could conveniently swim in the adjacent pool or even float by in the lazy river that wrapped around the bar. They swam until the food came and then swam some more. We all finally got to eat. It was a great ending to a long day.
The next day was spent completely on the resort property. It was really exactly what we needed after an action-packed 5 days in the jungle. The kids got to be super active and had fun taking advantage of all the on-site activities. The parents got to relax. It was fantastic.
Coco Beach has two pools. The one closest to the beach had a volleyball net set up and the boys (young and young-at-heart) had a blast playing with other kids and families.
The other pool had a giant waterslide and rock structure to jump off of. It was not for the faint of heart. I jumped once and that was enough for me. It was high. Really high. But the kids couldn’t get enough of it.
I have to admit that the jump didn’t feel entirely safe to me. There was no platform or designated spot to jump off of. Kids just climbed up to the top level, found a place on the rocks where they could get a foothold, and jumped. The water was plenty deep but the launching point seemed like an accident waiting to happen. We told the boys which sections were ok to jump off of (some kids were doing crazy things like jumping off an inner wall or doing backflips off the highest point) and just made sure they were really careful about their footing. We never saw any issues but definitely held our breath once or twice watching some other kids.
The few times that the boys took a break from jumping, sliding and swimming, they found plenty of other things to do. The giant chess board and the ping pong table were two favorites.
We had originally planned to rent a golf cart for an afternoon to go into town. Blair used one of the hotel’s bikes to go explore the island a little and reported that the area surrounding the hotel smelled bad and was covered in garbage. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Since the boys were having so much fun at the resort and we had a snorkeling trip still planned, we decided not to rent golf carts and just let them keep enjoying the resort. In retrospect, I do regret not exploring San Pedro because I feel like it was a missed opportunity to expose the boys to another place and culture. While our experiences in the jungles of Belize and Guatemala were immersive, our Belize beach experience was definitely insulated. The resort could have been literally anywhere in the world and we wouldn’t have known the difference. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that; it’s just a different kind of vacation.
