gnrbernstein

We are headed to Belize at the end of April. Here are the questions I have so far that I haven't been able to figure out from the guide books.

Tours:
All the books talk about "tours being arranged through your hotel" to the ruins or caving or river caving trips. I assume that this means you are hooked up with a local tour operator that will pick you up in a little minivan, making stops at other hotels until you are one large group. Is this an accurate assumption?

However, someone I know that stayed at a jungle lodge said that her tours were small groups - 1 to 3 people, led by someone from the lodge. If you stayed at a lodge, what was your experience?

Language:
Does anyone in Belize speak Spanish or is absolutely everything in English?

~gnr~

hightide

The tours we arranged through our hotel were just my husband, myself and the driver but don't know if that is the norm or the exception. Ask at the tour desk when you arrange it what the specifics are.

As for language, we found that most everyone spoke both english and spanish (in addition to a combination of mayan, creole and local dialects mixed in)

z

What lodges you have in mind? Maybe posters here can tell you about their personal expriences in some specific lodges.
<Does anyone in Belize speak Spanish?>
Do you mean at least one person? Sure

Pumpy

I'm going in June(not been before), but know that English is the "Official" language of Belize. However, knowing the regional influences, I'm sure a fair amount of Spanish is spoken.

PatrickMcC

Z had a good point. We stayed at Crystal Paradise in the Cayo and at Roberts Grove in Placencia. In both cases the tours went from these resorts, no stops at other hotels- they were run by guides assosciated with the hotel. There were some people on one tour from Cruystal Paradise who had been picked up at a hotel in San Ignacio. I know what you are afraid of from our experiences in San Jose Costa Rica. On one tour we were picked up at 6 A. M. and drove around San Jose until 8 A. M. Belize doesn't have the big hotels that Costa Rica (or other places)have so I don't think you have to worry. Spanish seemed to be more common in the Cayo than in Placencia.

gnrbernstein

Thanks for the replies. I don't have any particular hotels in mind, I'm just wary of group tours. The one described in Costa Rica is exactly what we went thorough in Thailand and I'm not anxious to do that again. But, both of the books and all of the reading I've done on this forum makes it seem like group tours are the norm if you want to do any activities.

We are planning to stay in San Ignacio - most likely a jungle lodge in that area but that's not definite yet. This is the area where we will need most of our tours. The rest will be on Caye Caulker, but I'm not as worried about those.

As for the Spanish, it's always more fun to speak another language on vacation. I was hoping people would speak Spanish, even though they all know English but would use the English only when necessary.

~gnr~

Katie_Valk

English is our lingua franca. Creole, Garifuna, Spanish, 3 Maya dialects, Low German (Mennonites), Chinese from Taiwan, mainland Hong Kong, Arabic. The only peple who get herded in large tour groups in Belize are those from the cruise ships. Conversations can include snipets of creole, spanish and english. Lodges offer small group travel and use regular 4wd vehicles or smal 8 passenger mini vans.