As part of our self-proclaimed decade of travel, we decided to let the kids pick the family vacation destination in the year of their 10th birthday. We want to foster a love of travel in them and thought that involving them in trip planning would be a great way to do that.
Of course we had to set limits in terms of travel time and cost. RB immediately wanted to go to Japan and JB to Africa. While I would absolutely love to do those trips with them some day, I don’t think they are at the right ages yet. The thought of traveling that time and distance with an 8 and 10 year old is not very appealing (not to mention the cost). So we ruled out all of the “A” continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica) which still left them with some pretty incredible options.
RB quickly narrowed down his criteria to someplace with both jungles and beaches. After doing some research, he further narrowed it down to Costa Rica and Belize. Blair and I have already been to Costa Rica and although we would happily go again, RB wanted to pick someplace new to everyone. When he found out Belize also had Mayan ruins, he was completely sold.
I started researching almost a year before the trip and kept RB as involved as possible. I learned a few things pretty quickly: Belize is expensive compared to other Central and South American countries and although it is a small country, it is relatively difficult to get around. We had rented a car in Costa Rica and were not interested in doing that in Belize, especially with the kids. There is no train infrastructure like in Europe and we weren’t interested in public buses for long trips. (Belize public buses are decommissioned US school buses.) The remaining options were internal flights on small aircrafts or private drivers. We ended up doing a combination of the two.
We wanted to split our time between the jungle and the beach and figured it made sense to start in the jungle and end at the beach. This would give us time to really explore the jungle and do all the mainland activities we wanted and then finish with a relaxing few days at the beach. In the jungle, there are so many activities you can do – Mayan sites, cave tubing, zip lining, hiking, etc. I went through almost all of the possibilities and narrowed it down to a list of ones that worked for our ages and interests and then let RB choose the ones he was most interested in.
Tikal, Guatemala is a common day trip from Belize and the more RB read about it, the higher it moved up his list. I waffled on this one quite a bit, both for safety and distance/logistics reasons. Although many people do it as a day trip from San Ignacio, it takes about 2.5 to 3 hours in each direction, which leaves you only about 3 hours at the site at the peak of both crowds and heat. I kept reading that the way to get the most out of a visit to Tikal is to stay overnight. That way you can see both the sunset and the sunrise and explore the jungle at the times of day when animals are most active, temperatures are the lowest, and crowds are almost non-existent. But of course, that meant navigating our way to and from Tikal ourselves, crossing the border, and generally being on our own in a country where English is not widely spoken and safety has been known to be an issue. Probably not something I would have stressed about too much if it were just me and Blair, but kids obviously change the equation.
So I researched until I could research no more and eventually decided we would add on an overnight in Tikal. The logistics of this leg of the trip were the most complicated by far but I worked it all out and felt confident in the plans.
I did some similar waffling on how we would get to Ambergris Caye, although the concerns were different and had less serious implications. Basically our choice was to take an hour and a half water taxi ride to get there or a puddle jumper plane for a quick 15 minute flight. At first I was leaning towards the water taxi both ways because it would save a good bit of money. But I started to worry about it – it was such a long boat ride; I am prone to sea sickness and I read it could be really bumpy. And I had seen pictures of the boats packed with people so that it was standing room only. It didn’t sound very appealing. Then we added on Tikal, which meant that we would be traveling to Ambergris Caye from Guatemala, not from San Ignacio. That changed the equation quite a bit because it added about 3 hours of travel time onto the front of the trip. Suddenly a 15 minute plane ride seemed way more attractive.
So I started leaning towards doing the plane in one direction and the boat in the other. But then I did the math on the return trip – we had a 12:30 flight from Belize International and you are supposed to arrive 3 hours ahead of time. Backing into that with a 1.5 hour boat ride and then a 30 minute taxi ride from the ferry terminal to the airport, we would have to catch a 7:30 ferry, which meant leaving the hotel before 7. Ugh. We weren’t getting back into Charlotte until 11:30pm, which would make that a super long day. So… plane in both directions seemed like the obvious (though more expensive) choice.
Below is our final itinerary:
Day 1 – flight from Charlotte to Belize City through Houston, stop at the Belize Zoo on the way to the lodge, overnight at Black Rock Lodge outside San Ignacio
Day 2 – Xunantunich and the Green Iguana project, overnight at Black Rock Lodge
Day 3 – Barton Creek Cave Canoeing and swimming at Big Rock Falls, overnight at Black Rock Lodge
Day 4 – transfer to Tikal, sunset tour of Tikal, overnight at Jungle Lodge in Tikal
Day 5 – sunrise tour of Tikal, transfer back to Belize City, flight to Ambergris Caye, overnight at Coco Beach Resort
Day 6 – relax at Coco Beach, overnight at Coco Beach Resort
Day 7 – relax at Coco Beach and snorkeling at Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley, overnight at Coco Beach Resort
Day 8 – flight to Belize International from Ambergris Caye, flight back to Charlotte through Houston
