Belize trip report – San Pedro, Glover’s Atoll, Hopkins resort
May 29th, 2007, 12:29 PM
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Belize trip report – San Pedro, Glover’s Atoll, Hopkins resort
This is a copy of my original posting on Belize Forums, as I notice that there isn't a ton of info here on the Fodor's site on this country. As mentioned in other posts, the Belize Forum is very highly recommended to satisfy any curiosity you have on Belize travel. http://www.belizeforum.com/ubb/ultim...ubb=forum;f=10
My husband and I got back from our much anticipated (first, but not last) trip to Belize on Friday. 10 days of sun and fun. Below is a trip report that we hope others might find helpful. It’s 98% positive, but I added a few pointers at the end of each part of our trip which reflects what we gleaned from the other 2% of our Belizean experience.
Our main focus on this trip was scuba, sun, sand and beach bar attendance. We started with 4 days in San Pedro and were easily able to fill our days with Belikins, fantastic breakfasts at Estel’s (great banana pancakes! And eggs, and fry jacks, and potatoes, and…) and squeezed a few dives in there as well. That said, we didn’t do any day trips – we were definitely not into schedules, et al for this trip. We highly recommend our hotel, The Palms: excellent, friendly staff, great, very clean rooms (huge, with bedroom, additional sleeping nook, kitchen, living room and large waterfront terrace, decent A/C) at a good value ($138 + usual 19% tax per night), and great location (on the beach close to everything in SP town, since we didn’t want rent a golf cart, etc.).
We dove with ProTech, a nice bunch of guys. They let us store our dive gear there all week, rather than having to haul it all over the island. Did some lesser known dive sites outside the reef (into crevasses, etc.) that had great, healthy coral life and saw a nice variety of smaller uncommon fish. Vis was so-so at ~50 feet for most dives (compared to the 100’ plus Belize usually boasts) and we were told this was due to the full moon during the time we were there (which was on purpose, as we were on the hunt for whale sharks later in the trip), but lots of light came through even at 130 feet.
On diving Hol Chaan: maybe it was because of the poor visibility (much worse here than on any of our other dives – very silty) but I didn’t find this dive very impressive. Not much life out there the day we dove, plus there is a lot of reef destruction. Snorkeling would be more worth the $ (our max depth was 30’, and for only a short while). On the other hand, The Aquarium, a spot that fishermen clean their catches, was a fun quick snorkel: TONS of large roughtail stingrays and nurse sharks in the water. Shark Ray Alley was fun, too – saw a 9’ nurse shark there (ripping through the rope our dive master strung through with)!
Dining: Since we were on foot, we did all our dining in town. We found Blue Water Grill to be one of the best values (Lan lists it as expensive but we thought it was more in the moderate category). Great fish dishes and pizzas, and they have a really great frou-frou cocktail called the Naughty Monkey that I couldn’t get enough of (those Belizean bananas are really something). Excellent jerk chicken at Jambal Jerk, really fantastic dinner at Wild Mango’s – but the bill about knocked me off my chair (1 appetizer, 2 entrees, 2 Belikins, 2 cocktails, 2 desserts – okay, we did get a bit piggy here – was $100 including a 15% tip, our priciest of the trip). Elvi’s had great food – they have a truly special coconut shrimp appetizer, and the mains were tasty too. Also not cheap, but darn tasty. And very friendly staff. Finally, don’t forget the aforementioned Estel’s for great breakfast all day and friendly service.
Bars/Nightlife worth mentioning: we stuck to the beach for the breeze and ambience. Really enjoyed BC’s at night, although the expat crowd (late afternoon/early evening) can be a bit intimidating there. Cannibal’s has similar ambience but for some reason we found the expats there to be a bit more friendly. Tackle Box (on the same pier as the ferry): wow, what a cool spot. If the locals that hung out there were friendlier, I would have loved this place. Oh well. Fido’s: well, as everyone says, you end up there at some point. It is a really cool palapa bar and we had a fantastic time with the locals that worked and/or hung out there – in fact, it was the pretty much the only place we went where we were really able to interact with the locals, and they are great! (All the other places mentioned are run by gringos/expats).
General comments on SP which I've seen come up as questions in posts: the beaches are nice here - soft, white-ish fine sand that feels good on bare feet. Yes, if you want to swim in the ocean there is sea grass except for off Ramon's pier. When we were there the breeze was lovely so sticking to the beach was easy and cool-ish, while the streets behind it were darn toasty.
Only low-note of this segment of the trip: as mentioned in guide books & other postings, Island Supermarket (across the street from Ramon’s) is the most expensive market in SP. What you don’t hear is that on top of the prices you often (for us, 100% of the time, which we figured out belatedly when a few other travelers mentioned the same problem to us during our time there) get double and triple charged for your goods. There is no scanning system so the checker just (arbitrarily?) rings up in numbers. I’m not saying don’t shop there (they do have the best selection by far, and if you’re really hankering for some laughing cow cheese, etc., this is the only place you’ll find it) but be vigilant when they’re ringing up your goods and if you have a discrepancy on your bill, you must handle it in the store *before* you leave.
Last pointers: if you’re looking to stock up your fridge with beer, the distributor is right across the street from Island Supermarket. You have to buy by the case but we were told the savings was up to 70% of the prices at Island Supermarket (we found this out after we bought 3 6-packs. Oh well, they still tasted good).
Part 2: 4 days at Glover’s Atoll - Isla Marisol
What a gorgeous place! Well worth the hour and a-half bucking bronco boat ride from Dangriga. Eddie Usher is a great host and tries to make connections with each of his visitors – we appreciated the effort. Really amazing kitchen staff made wonderful meals (each one, even breakfast, had its own dessert, yum!) and went the extra mile on service (in the first day, they all knew my husband and my names, and on the last day they made a meal I had casually mentioned an interest in). Housekeepers were lovely as well! Cabanas are very, very rustic – not worth taking a picture of the interior (imagine summer camp as a kid, but no bunk beds – rather, pretty hard mattresses made out of I don’t know what kind of dense matter, pillows of similar stuff, plus bathroom and shower – which does put out great hot water, and the water in the sink is drinkable). We were beachfront again - with a nice bit of space between cabanas so privacy was good, and the views were majestic and sand was soft and light (as in San Pedro). Really, really a beautiful, special place. The bar was a great hangout – on a pier with tarpon swimming under it at night, and it was fun talking to Mora or any of the other guys that took turns tending bar.
The diving: Glover’s is really special, as mentioned in other posts. All dives are wall dives and the water is an amazing sapphire/purple-blue. If you are familiar with Humann and DeLoach’s Reef Coral Identification: Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas (often seen in a 3 book ‘reef set’) - we saw just about every coral and sponge in there – in lovely, healthy abundance (including black coral). Gorgeous! Also a very good variety of fish life – grouper, wrasse, etc., plus plenty of loggerhead and hawksbill turtles, rays, etc. Dive boats are fast and there are 8 divers to a master, so no crowding on the local stuff. We participated in the whale shark dives (nothing to write home about since it’s in open water - unless you see one… which we finally did on our last dive – along with 4 dolphins, AMAZING!!) and there are more people in the water for these dives but the masses of SCUBA bubbles are supposed to help attract the sharks (they think it’s snapper spawn), so no biggie. We’re glad we splurged on this, it was an epic experience.
The bugs: very aggressive if there’s no breeze or you’re off the beach (e.g., at the dive boat dock). I think they’re sand fleas but don’t know for sure – little black bugs that look like fruit flies and they leave a little dot of blood wherever they bite you. Very annoying. Can someone please tell me when they stop itching and go away?? We had no other bug trouble on our trip, but the few times we were caught without repellent on (e.g., coming in from a late afternoon dive), they slaughtered us. Some folks even had bites all over their faces…
Low note from this segment of the trip (I don’t count the bugs as they were a known commodity): if you choose to visit Isla Marisol (and it IS lovely, but do not expect your rooms to directly correlate to the hefty bill you are paying – this is mainly for the service and the fact that EVERYTHING but water must be brought over from the mainland), you will have a wonderful time. On departure, when you tip the dive masters, please do be sure to tip *each* master and boat captain separately/directly, as we befriended a visiting dive master who advised us that tips were not being dispersed, despite Eddie’s policy to do so. We believe the kitchen staff did get allocations of our tip for their services, but found out later that the big wad of cash that we gave our main dive master never left his hands (and he told the balance of the staff that we didn’t leave a tip at all). This was a real bummer for us to hear (let alone for the great crew that we intended to receive parts of our tip).
Part 3: Hopkins (24 hours+ - not enough time! But we were on air miles so schedules were set). Loved, LOVED our hotel, Belizean Dreams. What a great way to end a trip – very luxurious compared to our other stops. Gorgeous (I know I am using this word too much, but it best describes my perceptions of these places, I swear) rooms – polished dark wood floors, big soft-mattressed (finally! My first full night of sleep in Belize!) canopy bed with a view of the infinity pool (so refreshing – the local birds that played in on one edge of the pool constantly would agree I’m sure), beach and ocean, and large beautifully tiled bathroom and shower with new plumbing were a real treat (Isla Marisol was compost only – which is great, but as an American I do so enjoy actually flushing my TP). We could easily have spent another day or two here (just on the resort being lazy)! Tasty, somewhat light meals were served at the pool bar. Great shrimp dishes here.
One of the locals we got to know during our trip showed us around Hopkins, which was a nice treat. We stopped off to buy wood carvings for friends at David’s Wood Carving – he does beautiful work and offers wholesale pricing of sorts.
Low note from this segment of the trip: didn’t ruin this part of the trip for us, but check out did leave us with a bad taste in our mouths. 80% of our bill was overcharged – from the room rate to about US $100 in bar beverages that had no supporting invoices (and we were only there 24 hours). Management did clear everything up for us in the end, but it was still a bit frustrating. And by the way, transport is a big rip-off here (US $100 roundtrip to Dangriga… vs. plane tickets for 2 from Dangriga to Belize International for $108; we understand the going taxi rate is US $55 from Dangriga to Hopkins) but we had little choice but use them since we were dropped off from Glover’s at a port that was not near taxi access.
All in all we had a wonderful time and are so glad we finally got to visit Belize, finally. Next time we plan to come down when it’s a bit cooler inland and do some adventure touring (ATM, et al). That said, we really wouldn’t change anything about this trip (perhaps one day less in SP, one or two days more in Hopkins), but we were really pleased with our whole experience. It was pretty difficult putting on makeup and high heels for work on Monday (my husband made a similar comment about wearing underwear – he’d been living in swim trunks for 10 days)…ah island life!
If anyone has questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Cheers!
My husband and I got back from our much anticipated (first, but not last) trip to Belize on Friday. 10 days of sun and fun. Below is a trip report that we hope others might find helpful. It’s 98% positive, but I added a few pointers at the end of each part of our trip which reflects what we gleaned from the other 2% of our Belizean experience.
Our main focus on this trip was scuba, sun, sand and beach bar attendance. We started with 4 days in San Pedro and were easily able to fill our days with Belikins, fantastic breakfasts at Estel’s (great banana pancakes! And eggs, and fry jacks, and potatoes, and…) and squeezed a few dives in there as well. That said, we didn’t do any day trips – we were definitely not into schedules, et al for this trip. We highly recommend our hotel, The Palms: excellent, friendly staff, great, very clean rooms (huge, with bedroom, additional sleeping nook, kitchen, living room and large waterfront terrace, decent A/C) at a good value ($138 + usual 19% tax per night), and great location (on the beach close to everything in SP town, since we didn’t want rent a golf cart, etc.).
We dove with ProTech, a nice bunch of guys. They let us store our dive gear there all week, rather than having to haul it all over the island. Did some lesser known dive sites outside the reef (into crevasses, etc.) that had great, healthy coral life and saw a nice variety of smaller uncommon fish. Vis was so-so at ~50 feet for most dives (compared to the 100’ plus Belize usually boasts) and we were told this was due to the full moon during the time we were there (which was on purpose, as we were on the hunt for whale sharks later in the trip), but lots of light came through even at 130 feet.
On diving Hol Chaan: maybe it was because of the poor visibility (much worse here than on any of our other dives – very silty) but I didn’t find this dive very impressive. Not much life out there the day we dove, plus there is a lot of reef destruction. Snorkeling would be more worth the $ (our max depth was 30’, and for only a short while). On the other hand, The Aquarium, a spot that fishermen clean their catches, was a fun quick snorkel: TONS of large roughtail stingrays and nurse sharks in the water. Shark Ray Alley was fun, too – saw a 9’ nurse shark there (ripping through the rope our dive master strung through with)!
Dining: Since we were on foot, we did all our dining in town. We found Blue Water Grill to be one of the best values (Lan lists it as expensive but we thought it was more in the moderate category). Great fish dishes and pizzas, and they have a really great frou-frou cocktail called the Naughty Monkey that I couldn’t get enough of (those Belizean bananas are really something). Excellent jerk chicken at Jambal Jerk, really fantastic dinner at Wild Mango’s – but the bill about knocked me off my chair (1 appetizer, 2 entrees, 2 Belikins, 2 cocktails, 2 desserts – okay, we did get a bit piggy here – was $100 including a 15% tip, our priciest of the trip). Elvi’s had great food – they have a truly special coconut shrimp appetizer, and the mains were tasty too. Also not cheap, but darn tasty. And very friendly staff. Finally, don’t forget the aforementioned Estel’s for great breakfast all day and friendly service.
Bars/Nightlife worth mentioning: we stuck to the beach for the breeze and ambience. Really enjoyed BC’s at night, although the expat crowd (late afternoon/early evening) can be a bit intimidating there. Cannibal’s has similar ambience but for some reason we found the expats there to be a bit more friendly. Tackle Box (on the same pier as the ferry): wow, what a cool spot. If the locals that hung out there were friendlier, I would have loved this place. Oh well. Fido’s: well, as everyone says, you end up there at some point. It is a really cool palapa bar and we had a fantastic time with the locals that worked and/or hung out there – in fact, it was the pretty much the only place we went where we were really able to interact with the locals, and they are great! (All the other places mentioned are run by gringos/expats).
General comments on SP which I've seen come up as questions in posts: the beaches are nice here - soft, white-ish fine sand that feels good on bare feet. Yes, if you want to swim in the ocean there is sea grass except for off Ramon's pier. When we were there the breeze was lovely so sticking to the beach was easy and cool-ish, while the streets behind it were darn toasty.
Only low-note of this segment of the trip: as mentioned in guide books & other postings, Island Supermarket (across the street from Ramon’s) is the most expensive market in SP. What you don’t hear is that on top of the prices you often (for us, 100% of the time, which we figured out belatedly when a few other travelers mentioned the same problem to us during our time there) get double and triple charged for your goods. There is no scanning system so the checker just (arbitrarily?) rings up in numbers. I’m not saying don’t shop there (they do have the best selection by far, and if you’re really hankering for some laughing cow cheese, etc., this is the only place you’ll find it) but be vigilant when they’re ringing up your goods and if you have a discrepancy on your bill, you must handle it in the store *before* you leave.
Last pointers: if you’re looking to stock up your fridge with beer, the distributor is right across the street from Island Supermarket. You have to buy by the case but we were told the savings was up to 70% of the prices at Island Supermarket (we found this out after we bought 3 6-packs. Oh well, they still tasted good).
Part 2: 4 days at Glover’s Atoll - Isla Marisol
What a gorgeous place! Well worth the hour and a-half bucking bronco boat ride from Dangriga. Eddie Usher is a great host and tries to make connections with each of his visitors – we appreciated the effort. Really amazing kitchen staff made wonderful meals (each one, even breakfast, had its own dessert, yum!) and went the extra mile on service (in the first day, they all knew my husband and my names, and on the last day they made a meal I had casually mentioned an interest in). Housekeepers were lovely as well! Cabanas are very, very rustic – not worth taking a picture of the interior (imagine summer camp as a kid, but no bunk beds – rather, pretty hard mattresses made out of I don’t know what kind of dense matter, pillows of similar stuff, plus bathroom and shower – which does put out great hot water, and the water in the sink is drinkable). We were beachfront again - with a nice bit of space between cabanas so privacy was good, and the views were majestic and sand was soft and light (as in San Pedro). Really, really a beautiful, special place. The bar was a great hangout – on a pier with tarpon swimming under it at night, and it was fun talking to Mora or any of the other guys that took turns tending bar.
The diving: Glover’s is really special, as mentioned in other posts. All dives are wall dives and the water is an amazing sapphire/purple-blue. If you are familiar with Humann and DeLoach’s Reef Coral Identification: Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas (often seen in a 3 book ‘reef set’) - we saw just about every coral and sponge in there – in lovely, healthy abundance (including black coral). Gorgeous! Also a very good variety of fish life – grouper, wrasse, etc., plus plenty of loggerhead and hawksbill turtles, rays, etc. Dive boats are fast and there are 8 divers to a master, so no crowding on the local stuff. We participated in the whale shark dives (nothing to write home about since it’s in open water - unless you see one… which we finally did on our last dive – along with 4 dolphins, AMAZING!!) and there are more people in the water for these dives but the masses of SCUBA bubbles are supposed to help attract the sharks (they think it’s snapper spawn), so no biggie. We’re glad we splurged on this, it was an epic experience.
The bugs: very aggressive if there’s no breeze or you’re off the beach (e.g., at the dive boat dock). I think they’re sand fleas but don’t know for sure – little black bugs that look like fruit flies and they leave a little dot of blood wherever they bite you. Very annoying. Can someone please tell me when they stop itching and go away?? We had no other bug trouble on our trip, but the few times we were caught without repellent on (e.g., coming in from a late afternoon dive), they slaughtered us. Some folks even had bites all over their faces…
Low note from this segment of the trip (I don’t count the bugs as they were a known commodity): if you choose to visit Isla Marisol (and it IS lovely, but do not expect your rooms to directly correlate to the hefty bill you are paying – this is mainly for the service and the fact that EVERYTHING but water must be brought over from the mainland), you will have a wonderful time. On departure, when you tip the dive masters, please do be sure to tip *each* master and boat captain separately/directly, as we befriended a visiting dive master who advised us that tips were not being dispersed, despite Eddie’s policy to do so. We believe the kitchen staff did get allocations of our tip for their services, but found out later that the big wad of cash that we gave our main dive master never left his hands (and he told the balance of the staff that we didn’t leave a tip at all). This was a real bummer for us to hear (let alone for the great crew that we intended to receive parts of our tip).
Part 3: Hopkins (24 hours+ - not enough time! But we were on air miles so schedules were set). Loved, LOVED our hotel, Belizean Dreams. What a great way to end a trip – very luxurious compared to our other stops. Gorgeous (I know I am using this word too much, but it best describes my perceptions of these places, I swear) rooms – polished dark wood floors, big soft-mattressed (finally! My first full night of sleep in Belize!) canopy bed with a view of the infinity pool (so refreshing – the local birds that played in on one edge of the pool constantly would agree I’m sure), beach and ocean, and large beautifully tiled bathroom and shower with new plumbing were a real treat (Isla Marisol was compost only – which is great, but as an American I do so enjoy actually flushing my TP). We could easily have spent another day or two here (just on the resort being lazy)! Tasty, somewhat light meals were served at the pool bar. Great shrimp dishes here.
One of the locals we got to know during our trip showed us around Hopkins, which was a nice treat. We stopped off to buy wood carvings for friends at David’s Wood Carving – he does beautiful work and offers wholesale pricing of sorts.
Low note from this segment of the trip: didn’t ruin this part of the trip for us, but check out did leave us with a bad taste in our mouths. 80% of our bill was overcharged – from the room rate to about US $100 in bar beverages that had no supporting invoices (and we were only there 24 hours). Management did clear everything up for us in the end, but it was still a bit frustrating. And by the way, transport is a big rip-off here (US $100 roundtrip to Dangriga… vs. plane tickets for 2 from Dangriga to Belize International for $108; we understand the going taxi rate is US $55 from Dangriga to Hopkins) but we had little choice but use them since we were dropped off from Glover’s at a port that was not near taxi access.
All in all we had a wonderful time and are so glad we finally got to visit Belize, finally. Next time we plan to come down when it’s a bit cooler inland and do some adventure touring (ATM, et al). That said, we really wouldn’t change anything about this trip (perhaps one day less in SP, one or two days more in Hopkins), but we were really pleased with our whole experience. It was pretty difficult putting on makeup and high heels for work on Monday (my husband made a similar comment about wearing underwear – he’d been living in swim trunks for 10 days)…ah island life!
If anyone has questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Cheers!
Jun 13th, 2007, 02:33 PM
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Sorry for the late reply! Yes, they do have a pool bar type restaurant. Pretty casual, outside under a palapa. We liked the food there, prices weren't too bad for meals. And yes, it's gorgeous there!
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Mar 6th, 2015 05:39 PM
