We had Pacz pick us up in Santa Elena at the Aguada where we were staying. There are 2 places to stop at the border - out of Belize and into Guatemala and passports are needed both places. Guides can sometimes wait in a different line or sneak through to the back. I was a little disconcerted when our driver heading from Flores to Belize City took our passports and headed through the door past the lines and desks but he resurfaced after 5 minutes with everything in order; he had us waiting in a long line just in case and it barely budged during the time he was away - saved us a half hour or more.

volcanogirl, we didn't pay anything close to that with CC booking our ATM tour. It was more like $100-$120 pp. I meant that we could have saved a few dollars booking ourselves, not hundreds! That just CAN'T be right! If so, what a rip off!

http://www.chaacreek.com/rates/thespa-copy-copy-copy/ is the price list that they gave me - am I reading it right?

Looks like $308 per group of one to four, thus $154 pp for a couple, $77 pp is you can find another couple.

Sorry, that is "IF you can find another couple."

Plus $30 in entry fees as well if I'm reading it right.

Those prices are why the package deal that included the tours worked out much better in our favor. Including the meals and tours saved us hundreds of dollars in the long run. Even had we booked our tours directly with the tour companies - just the fact that their package included the airport transfers, taxes, 2 full day tours a half day tour and all meals saved us a lot of money. We found quite a few people not going on any tours because they couldn't find other couple to share in the cost with them - seeing the prices were for 1-4 people - if they could have found 2 other people for the same tour for the same day they would have saved a lot of money. But several people had packages so it didn't work out for the people without the packages. Also going with a package in Ambergris, the price of the transfer to Ambergris (the flights and tranfers there) was included as well, we just didn't get one where all meals were included. We got one where breakfast, one dinner and a couple of excursions were included, as well as the transfers.

I found the pricing to be tricky, but in the long run -for us the packages saved on the tours.

Shell, are the dinners there communal? Or how do people go about finding out if other people want to tour with them?

No you eat at your own table. It's not like BDC. But the pool is pretty much the social gathering place from what we found. We went to the pool every afternoon after coming back from our tours - until we went to dinner. There were always people hanging out there. And on the days we didn't go anywhere, or if we did the half day tours we were at the pool relaxing and there were people there in the morning as well. That's seemed to be where people would talk. It was never crowded though.

People kept to themselves at dinner, other than a friendly "hi"!

The bar area was fairly quiet for the most part it seemed, except right before dinner one or two of the nights we were there. It defitely was not a late night place.

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate all the help.