Belize
- swaggertherapy
- Feb 26
- 13 min read
I am neither a travel guide nor an expert on Belize. This article is designed to inform the reader who wishes to visit Belize with an off-the-triangle, eyes-wide-open mentality.
The Boil-Down: As with any country, your experience as a visitor will vary based upon the activities you choose in the time and place you choose them, as well as the mentality you bring with you on the trip. In Belize, experienced the weathered smiles of people with hundreds of years of persecution and adversity behind them, corruption, crime, poverty and environmental assault (among other contemporary challenges) around them, and grueling uncertainty in front of them. Those very human beings also embodied tolerance, community, fierce pride in a widely varied collective heritage, and an ancient sweat-stained yet vibrant celebratory spirit that kept them alternately toiling and dancing through the struggle.
The Details: When I visited Belize in 2025, I found a country that is small in size but surprisingly complex. Belize sits on the Caribbean coast of Central America between Mexico and Guatemala, with a population of only about 415,000 people. Despite its modest size, the country contains tropical forests, barrier reefs, small islands, and agricultural regions that give it an outsized ecological importance.
Belize is unique in Central America because English is the official language, though everyday life is multilingual and multicultural. The population includes people of Maya, Creole, Mestizo, Garifuna, and European descent, creating a mix of Caribbean and Central American cultural influences. Daily life often feels relaxed and informal, and the economy and social rhythms are closely tied to the sea and the land.
Economy and tourism. Belize is still a developing economy with limited industrial resources and a heavy dependence on tourism, agriculture, and fisheries. Tourism alone accounts for roughly 12 percent of the country’s economic output and continues to grow, bringing more than half a million overnight visitors in recent years.
This reliance on tourism creates both opportunity and tension. Tourism provides jobs and income but also concentrates development along the coast and on small islands, sometimes straining infrastructure and local resources.
Problems in Belize. In an article written by Jo Morgan a month after my visit to Belize, the author cites major problems with poverty and income inequality, environmental degradation, corruption and governance issues, a crime and security crisis (with emphasis on gang violence), economic vulnerability, problems with healthcare access and quality, education system challenges, climate change adversely affecting agriculture, and land rights and disputes.
CBS news cited a 12/30/24 travel advisory by the U.S. State Department, warning that "Violent crime – such as sexual assault, home invasions, armed robberies, and murder – are common even during the day and in tourist areas." This quote appeared in a 2/25/25 story about three American women found dead in a hotel room in Belize City the week that I was soaking up the sun offshore on Caye Caulker. (Reports that all three young adults had carbon monoxide blood levels of sixty percent did nothing to dissuade my own suspicions of violent foul play. Last October, five women were violently killed in Belize in a twenty-day span.
Chila. The front end of my story of interpersonal experience in Belize was immediately colored by a long conversation with Chila, the roughly sixty year-old host of my AirBnB. A younger, more business-savvy version of my maternal aunt, Chila was rurally raised, disciplined, devout and family oriented. She had "one rule" for my stay--no one else was allowed in my room. Her modest language only thinly veiled the issue; she feared that I would use my sleeping quarters to pander to sex trafficking--something Chila hinted was a prevalent and growing problem on Caye (locally pronounced "key") Caulker, which is considered far safer and more laid back than the urban environment in Belize City. This businesswoman's reputation commanded local respect; she owned the building where I lodged, as well as the cafe and the ice cream shop on either side of the gated alley, and the equally narrow ocean-front park on the other side of her little street. Every structure within the bounds of Chila's domain was clean and neatly painted the same shade of pink with white trim.
The intended thrust of this article is a patchwork of stories about people I encountered in Belize, like the no-nonsense entrepreneur mentioned above. For me, such rich and authentic passing connections with individuals like these have far more value than anything that could come from a sterile Club Med experience, or even a largely homogeneous group tour or vacation getaway with extended family and friends. My grateful and respectful reflections on this small gallery of human characters with myriad life experiences continue below.
Avram. The first memorable human encounter on my trip to Belize was with Avram, the ground shuttle driver. Avram was married with small children and big aspirations to open his own shuttle business. His storied origins were modest and his presentation was humble and very genuinely polite. He almost immediately opened up about the smaller and more superficial frustrations of his day, soon after making noticeably deeper disclosures about his adult life. Avram front-loaded me with thoughtful intel about tourist safety from crime, and from the occasional wiles of shuttling to the Cayes via air and water. Whether his story about one water taxi company's tendency to find its boats out of gas twenty minutes into its forty-five minute journey to Caye Caulker was motivated by capitalism or gossip was unclear; I concluded that Avram was earnestly trying to help me manage risk during my vacation.
The chocolate shop workers. The business which I frequented most on Caye Caulker was a small shop owned by a local chain called the Belize Chocolate Factory. I never learned the names of the mother and daughter team who ran the shop. However, I came to know quite a bit about cacao while falling in love with the iced tea made from the dried hulls of roasted cacao beans. From talking to the teenage girl who was most often at the register, I came to understand that they had no ownership of the shop, that their pay was meager, and they relied heavily on tips to subsist. The mother and daughter kindly and laughingly supported my temporary delusion that the bon-bons I bought and consumed daily had plenty of micronutrients and beneficial compounds (not untrue!) and virtually zero calories from sugar (untrue).
Charlie the "barker." On a map, Caye Caulker looks like a bottle opener hanging upside down. The bustling village in Zenones Unidos south of a canal called "The Split" is barely a mile long north to south, and on its north end, only three parallel streets wide. Cars are not allowed; only golf carts and bicycles are permitted. Pedestrian tourists are greeted as often as every thirty feet by entrepreneurs, many of whom live hand-to-mouth. Merchants can benefit greatly from an affordably hired "barker" with a clear loud voice and charismatic personality. Hands down, the best barker on Caye Caulker was Charlie, whose ethnicity I understood to be Garifuna.
The Garifuna originated in the eastern Caribbean, especially on the island of Saint Vincent, where Africans--many of whom survived shipwrecks or escaped slavery and intermarried with Indigenous Carib and Arawak peoples, over generations forming a distinct Afro-Indigenous culture with their own language, music, and traditions. (In the late 1700s, the British Empire, in a typical power-hungry act of narcissistic entitlement, defeated the Garifuna and forcibly exiled thousands of them from Saint Vincent in 1797.)
Charlie was young and fit with ragged shorts and a bright, unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt. His eyes were bloodshot for reasons he did not hide, and his breath smelled of liquor as he compelled passersby to invest in his employer's wares--doing so with style, poise, and charisma. Working for several merchants up and down the main street parallel to the eastern shore, Charlie would stop during a lull to talk with me about how he was doing, but he never stopped selling an angle until his shift was through.
Ernest. On a bright-hot Belize afternoon, I took advantage of a lull in the crowded din of sunburned partying tourists to wander up to a deserted beer garden just south of "The Split"--the aforementioned canal dividing Caye Caulker into north and south sections. As I found some welcome shade at a bar table with a parasol, I was approached by a man in a navy and orange tye-dyed t-shirt, who instantly struck up a low-key twenty-minute conversation about his life and how things tend to be on Caye Caulker. Eventually declaring that he was hired to secure and keep up the area near the bar and beach, Ernest quickly endeared himself to me...and needed to maximize his day's earnings. His calm, gentle demeanor was a counterpoint to Charlie's, even though they were in commensurate need of the same thing. He was in possession of a single wooden, hand- (machine-?) carved "singing frog." His asking price was ten Belizean dollars (equal to five American dollars). I told him the conversation alone was worth ten American dollars and took the frog with me for that price.
Hatch and Murray. When the boat for my Friday snorkeling tour never showed at the designated pick up location, I wandered up Ernest's way, northbound, until I found another shop offering guided snorkeling expeditions: Wanderlust. The thick-necked salesman who proclaimed origins in the South Pacific was smilingly disarming and engaging, if only as a business habit; it was easy to picture him bouncing drunk hooligans out of a bar. But Hatch went above and beyond to get me booked; his first pitch was to the young woman he worked with who ran the counter inside their shop. However, she knew their Saturday tour was full and that adding even one more person would be a code violation. She could not be convinced. So Hatch got on the phone for a minute, and then gave me directions to the office of their competitor, Mario's. The salesman, Murray, was a very personable Hawaiian man in his fifties, with a voice akin to a friendly Marvin the Martian. His interpersonal style was neighborly and he sat and chatted with me as if it was the only thing he had to do that day, which the disarray on his desk shouted was not the case.
The "Catamaran Vibes" club. Murray may have created an expedition out of thin air. He spoke as if I might be the only person headed to Hol Chan Marine Reserve the next day. However, the following morning Murray had scored five walk-up customers from Europe. Caroline was from Germany; the other two women, Shauni and Tiffany, had arrived from the Netherlands separate from Barry and Alex, who were also Dutch. To get to the reserve meant taking the catamaran through a pretty serious rain shower, so we all went below deck, at which point Shauni, the most precocious and social member of the group, organized a card game referred to as klootzak, a Dutch word literally meaning "scrotum" or "ball sack" but which Shauni figuratively translated in English as "asshole." Whoever lost a given round of cards had to wear the vulgar title through the next hand.
The rain stopped moments before arriving at the snorkeling spot within the reserve. As the guides concluded their tutorial, we readied our gear in preparation for entering the water with a school of about a dozen eight-foot nurse sharks. Internet sources had reassured the reader that the bite of a nurse shark was generally harmless and felt like a sandpaper scrape. Then I noticed that Shauni, a seasoned snorkeler and scuba diver, was visibly daunted, trying to screw her courage up. This adrenaline junkie was also a physiotherapist in full awareness that I treated trauma for a living; Shauni quietly admitted to me her surprise at the triggered presence of some posttraumatic stress. Then in front of everyone, she pointed at the scar circumscribing her arm at the elbow. In shocked, dissonant unison, they all asked "How in the world did you get THAT??" That's when she calmly admitted she was bitten by a nurse shark, rebounding with enough rediscovered fascination to grab her phone and quickly pull up the pre-surgical photos of her wound. We all instantly felt the rising stakes of entering the water.
Our worst fears were left unconfirmed on this day however, as the sharks interacted peacefully with all of us. We moved on to a second location where the snorkeling revealed pristine coral reefs teeming with fish, as well as turtles and rays. After drying off on the sunny deck of the catamaran, we finished the complimentary rum punch, posed for group pictures, and exchanged WhatsApp (the messaging app apparently used by most humans around the world) numbers--primarily so we could all reap the benefits of Alex's underwater GoPro footage. (Shauni labeled our WhatsApp group chat "Catamaran Vibes.") The fun coincidence of hanging out on such a tiny "island" is that after our goodbyes, we quickly ran into one another again. A number of us decided eat dinner together at Reina's (five stars), sing karaoke that evening, and meet up to wander around the next day.
Old-Timer, the wood carver, and Netty the barbecue queen. Existing as a Caye Caulker street merchant must be akin to fishing for one's life in a very small pond. I tell myself that such a life would require prep the night before, then waking in many cases before dawn to carefully pack your tools, materials and finished products for transport to a booth--sometimes across the water on another body of land. The care taken to prepare and display wares with a history that may reach back through hundreds of years and many generations of family is a loving sacrifice most tourists are unlikely to understand or appreciate. And with so many lines cast into the same puddle of water, you have to make certain that your booth stands out in order to make enough money just to break even that day.
Old-Timer had come to Caye Caulker from somewhere else by boat that morning, still napping against a log when I walked up. His appearance went way beyond a mere tribute to Bob Marley; island hygiene being the phenomenon that it is, it is only a functional exaggeration to suggest that this old-school Rasta hadn't showered since Marley's death. He was peddling clothing including T-shirts bearing the slogan Drums Not Guns--a movement started by Emmeth Young designed to use Kriol drumming and art to combat gang violence in Belize. Old-Timer spoke with somber, dreamy passion about the greater movement of peace through music, which like himself, predates Drums Not Guns.
On the streets of Caye Caulker, wood carvings were being sold in several locations; however, there was one booth at which one could watch the craftsman at work. Surrounded by an array of finished works, he would labor on a new piece for what appeared to be more than an hour at a time between sales, producing name plates, small statues, key chains and other trinkets before the eyes of passersby. I almost felt a disappointment for this wood carver and merchants like him when they would respond to customer "no's" by sharply dropping their initial asking prices.
Almost every hot food vendor was offering barbecued meat, grilled fish and a local staple known as "stew chicken" with sides like rice and beans. While I had ample opportunity to try the delicious food at several locations during my stay--including locally well-known places like Ester's--the cook who made herself available to talk while she worked was Netty, the self-declared "barbecue queen." Netty was working off family recipes, having taken over the business years ago, she said. Moving busily and skillfully as she spoke, she acted as though is was not a well-kept secret what goes into stew chicken (garlic, recado, herbs, and sugar, among other ingredients) or her barbecue sauce. Netty proudly stated that she does not tire of cooking outdoors day after day, showing a loving care for the food she prepared and a maternal nurturance for the customers she served.
Sophia the veterinarian. Perhaps the most exceptional encounter of my trip to Belize occurred at the tail end, as I shuttled back to Belize City. It was not the first time I'd run into someone on a two- to six-month holiday; in Costa Rica back in 2021 I met a twenty-something female medical student from Switzerland on a six-month hiatus. She spoke four languages but English was not one of them, so I was paying attention when she seemed not to ingest the La Fortuna tour guide's warning to keep one's distance from the small but highly venomous eyelash viper we found sleeping on a sapling branch. As she moved her camera phone within inches of what some consider the third deadliest snake in Costa Rica, I touched her arm to coax her away to a safer distance for some kind of clearer explanation. Caroline from Catamaran Vibes was on a three-month walkabout holiday from Germany, and sisters Shauni and Tiffany were on a similar jaunt across Central America.
Sophia was a veterinarian from Canada, nearly six feet tall and fit if lanky, with a palpable "left-brained" intelligence and a very "granola" presentation--well-worn hiking shorts, sleeveless shirt and no evidence of makeup or toiletries--and more power to her! She had given temporary notice to her employer before taking a year off to head for Belize, where she volunteered at a rehabilitative sanctuary for manatees and endangered primates. In doing so, Sophia was following her mother's lead. She had so much to say about her impassioned concern for planet Earth, her love of animals culminating in an ongoing life's work, and the importance of volunteering significant amounts of time to causes--whatever matters to a given person. Sophia was also a vocal proponent of long holidays; she urged me to promise myself that my next vacation would be no less than two weeks in length.
What You Can Do: For starters, you can travel to Belize, taking basic grown-up care to manage your own safety in the process. I did not feel unsafe during any moment except one, and it was brief (the first night on Caye Caulker, a drunk tourist pounded on the wrong AirBnB door--mine!--at 2am, shooting me straight out of bed but only half out of my sleep-wake stupor). That situation resolved quickly. While you are visiting, you can choose to increase you self-awareness, taking care to exude empathy for everyone you meet. Make it clear to yourself and others that you are not better than anyone else, not entitled to be uncouth toward or look down upon others, because they are not less than you; there is so much diversity in the world that YOU are more probably the minority. Others will look different, sound different, carry a different scent than you, possess different belongings and monetary assets than you, behave differently, and are unlikely to agree that you are supposed to be given deference or treated like you are in the center of the universe. Be kind, live with full respect, and try saying the word "respect" out loud to others. On Caye Caulker, that was how I followed up with aggressive merchants when saying "no" to their products and services--with a smile, an extended hand, and an expression like "all love!" or "full respect to you, though (sister/brother)!" It worked very well, probably because I was sincere.
You also have the option of supporting political activist groups in Belize. While I cannot guarantee what level of involvement non-residents would be allowed, consider looking into any of several groups. They include Belize P.E.A.C.E. Movement (anti-corruption), Belizeans Justice Movement, UNIBAM (health and human rights, with LGBTQ-led policy), Empower Yourself Belize Movement (EYBM, a LGBTQ advocacy NGO), Women for Peace, Justice & Equality, National Women's Commission (gender equality & rights). In addition, the Maya Leaders Alliance, the Toledo Alcaldes Association, and the Julian Cho society all fight illegal incursions against indigenous land. Finally, you can support Drums Not Guns, or any of several wildlife sanctuaries including WildTracks Rehabilitation.
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