You can't visit Central America and not make at least some effort to see the monkeys. That's just wrong. Monkeys are way too cute to be missed.

Like Costa Rica, and other countries in this region, Belize is also trying to brand itself as an ecotourism destination.

The Community Baboon Sanctuary, a conservation project in which over 200 private landowners in Belize have voluntarily pledged to conserve their land for the protection of the Black Howler Monkey (called 'baboon' in the local Creole dialect) habitat, is well-worth the trip inland. It's only about an hour drive from Belize City.

But, there is a but.

Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes.
Before I begin talking about how cute the monkeys are, I am going to say this: I had never, ever before, seen so many mosquitoes before visiting the Community Baboon Sanctuary (CBS). Anywhere.

The closest I had ever come to this kind of mosquito infestation was in Venice. (Camping outside a city built on a swamp is not a good idea, note to self.)

Isn't this heaven? (Sorry if these photos find you in the middle of cubicle hell.)

I took these pictures last week in Caye Caulker, one of the northern islands off the coast of Belize. Most people opt to go to the bigger Ambergris Caye, which is a bit more family friendly, but also more expensive.

Caye Caulker is smaller (about 5 miles x 1 mile), cheaper and hence packed with backpackers. The last time I saw so many backpackers in one place was probably Yangshuo, China. These are the kinds of places where you literally see more backpackers than locals. Kind of defeats the point of adventure travel, doesn't it.

There are a few great things about Caye Caulker, though:

Greetings from Belize.

I took this photo just a few days ago from the plane (hence the quality), during one of my island-hopping trips between Belize City and the island of Ambergris Caye.

Check it out. Some guy built a house on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean several miles of the coast of Belize.

I think that qualifies as "wanting to get away from it all."

Can you imagine bringing all the wood and building equipment here on boat? What happens when the hurricane season comes? I know hurricanes are not too frequent in this area, but still. A big storm could probably blow this house right in the ocean.

I'd love to meet this person. I picture him looking like Robinson Crusoe. I would be very disappointed to find a white-collar dude trying to create his own personal tax haven. (God knows Belize attracts those people.)

Greetings from Belize.

If you come to Belize, chances are you'll stay on one of the islands, not mainland. Not only is it easier to find nice beaches on the islands (cayes), but it is much closer to the Barrier Reef. And if you are visiting Belize, you simply must see the reef. Even if you don't dive, the ocean is shallow around here and the opportunities for snorkeling are plentiful.

If you're not sold on the idea of island vacation and decide to stay inland and spend time in the jungle instead, you should at least visit the islands for a day or two.

Flying tips
If you arrive in Belize by plane, you will most certainly land at Belize City International Airport. The most convenient way to get to the islands is to fly straight from here.

There are two local airlines that operate all those island-hopping routes: Maya Airlines (owned by Belizeans) and Tropic Air (owned by American expats living in Belize). I have flown both and I couldn't really tell the difference in quality or service between the two. Both use the same planes and operate efficiently. Tropic has more planes than Maya.

Greetings from Belize.

Those of you who have been to Belize before might not find these surprising, but this is my first time here and they surprised me. Here is a brief laundry list:

• The U.S. Dollar is widely accepted. With the Belize Dollar pegged at 2:1 to the U.S. Dollar, it's not surprising. Guess where you should be traveling when the U.S. Dollar is practically worthless? Where they accept dollars, of course! Although Belize is pretty expensive comparing to other Central American countries, the cheap dollar makes it affordable.
• English is all you'll ever need. While guidebook after guidebook tell you people speak Spanish or Creole, Belizeans almost universally speak perfect English. It's the official language, don't forget.
• It's not all jungle. While the UN pegs forest cover at 79% in Belize and the country itself claims to have 44% of its land under some legal land-protection regime, there are whole sections of the country that are open, rolling hills and farmland.
• It's not just the Blue Hole. There's great diving all up and down the world's second-largest barrier reef. The terrain is varied, and so is the wildlife. I can tell you that first hand, as I squeezed in 5 dives in 2 days off two different islands.
• There's a surprising level of development. Literacy is above 75% (depending on the source). The economy is rapidly growing. While the UN's human development index generally puts the country at about number 80 of 177 countries studied (in terms of education, GDP per person, etc.), life expectancy here is in the top 40 worldwide.
• The population density is one of the lowest in the world. With 300,000 or so people in an area the size of the state of New Jersey (which has almost 9 million folks), and 1/3 of people living in Belize City, it's not surprising, really.
• The rainy season (May-November) is quite pleasant here, especially if you stay in the north. We are in the middle of it right now. It rains about once a day, if that, for a while and then it's sunny again. The benefit over the dry season? It's cheaper and there are hardly any tourists.
• People are really friendly, helpful and pleasant. The islands have a Caribbean feel, while the inland is more Spanish-influenced.

I give Belize two thumbs up.

Greetings from Belize.

Yesterday, I made one of my life-long dreams come true. I dove the Great Blue Hole, a submarine cave about 45 miles off the coast of Belize. They say after diving it, divers are usually either utterly disappointed or absolutely blown away. I found it absolutely amazing.

The Great Blue Hole is circular, over 1,000 feet (330 meters) across and 400 feet (120 meters) deep. It was formed as a limestone cave system during the last ice age. As the ocean began to rise again, the caves flooded, and the roof collapsed.

The trip

To get to the Blue Hole, we booked a diving with the operator Aqua Dives Belize. They offer a $199 per person special now, which was the cheapest deal going, from what I could see. It includes the boat trip out there, breakfast, lunch (on a tiny caye on the same atoll) plus yummy rum punch (after diving), purified drinking water, 3 tanks and weight belts.

(We'd tried Ambergris Divers earlier, and found their staff friendly and competent, but we preferred Aqua Dives and their newer equipment.)

You start out at 5:30am, and make a 3-hour boat ride from Ambergris Caye to Lighthouse Reef. After a total of three dives, they get you back at 5:30pm.

Greetings from Belize!

In San Pedro, "the big town" on the Belize island of Ambergris Caye, the preferred form of transportation is a golf cart. (Most of the roads are not paved and the main inhabited part of the island is only a few miles long.)

Although golf carts don't have seat belts, there are some rules associated with using these things.

Most importantly, the first two weeks of each month, you are supposed to park them on the right side of the road. The second part of each month, they should be parked on the left side. It's only fair to those who live on those streets, I guess.

So far, I have seen a golf cart used as a vehicle for:

• grocery shopping
• place to conduct cell phone calls while driving (with a toddler or two on one's lap)
• doing "donuts" in sand
• place for local youngsters to kiss
• a way to distribute "sticky green" to those interested
• and, of course, preferred form of transportation for lazy tourists who can't walk a full mile into town.
  

Greetings from Belize!

Something just dawned on me today while walking through "downtown" San Pedro, Belize: you can judge the "development" of an area by whether or not it has soymilk readily available in grocery stores. Sure, I'm waiting for a flurry of criticism on this post, but hear my logic first.

I'm not lactose intolerant, but a lot of my friends are. Seems like everyday, I hear about someone, or their child, being unable to drink milk.

The generally accepted idea is that early Europeans developed enzymes to digest cows milk, which helped get them through tough northern winters. Much of the world doesn't have this ability. Why? They don't drink cows milk. Babies drink mother's milk, and there it ends most everywhere.

In the West, you see milk everywhere there's refrigeration. And most people drink at least some. But now, it seems, more and more Westerners are developing allergies, and developing intolerance to milk. So, they switch to soymilk...if they can afford it.

And where did it all start? Probably China, where soy has been widely used for many centuries...but not generally as a soymilk drink. From what I can find, the first soymilk factory was founded in Paris around the turn of the last century by someone of Chinese origin, and some production followed in the U.S. and elsewhere. It took off in Hong Kong too, where it beat out Coke for a while.

But the big production of soymilk didn't come until the 1990s, and it seemed to start only in the most affluent, urban areas. (A ten-fold increase occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.) Where did I see it first? San Francisco, then Seattle and Portland, then Manhattan. It followed in most other cities in the U.S., from what I can tell. (You want to test me? Ask for it in every Starbucks outside major metro areas.)

Hence my "soymilk development index": where you have Westerners with the most money to burn and increasingly discerning tastes, you'll find soymilk.

Can you find it on Ambergris Caye (the most touristed area in Belize)? You bet, two brands.

Hello from Belize! What a beautiful little country this is.

I have wanted to come here forever, being a diver and all. As you probably know, the Belize Barrier Reef (stretching from Yucatan all the way to the coast of Guatemala) is the second largest reef in the world, after the Great Barrier Reef.

We took our first dive trip today, right off the Ambergris Caye island. It was just a shallow dive with a bunch of snorkelers who desperately wanted to "see some sharks." This part of the reef is know for its abundance of nurse sharks, pretty harmless types of sharks who eat by suction (hence the name). Still, they are sharks, aka beautiful creatures.

The dive instructor threw in some bait (an enormous fish head) and a few minutes later, a bunch of sharks (I saw five, the largest at least two meters long) and sting rays (the largest was over a meter across) came by for the feast. It was an incredible sight.

I don't know how I feel about the whole "petting the shark and sting ray" aspect of the whole thing. The instructors caught a couple of the sharks by the fin and let everyone in the group touch them. Same with the sting rays. I felt a little bad for them. I can't be good for them to have a hundred people a day touch them, right?

Belize has been on my "places to dive" list for years. At the same time, I get anxious every time I think about diving in Belize. Years ago, I knew somebody who died while diving the Blue Hole, the infamous collapsed limestone cave more than 400 feet deep. She was an experiences diver, but panicked. Ever since then, the Blue Hole has sounded a little scary to me.

After reading this USA Today article, it sounds like I should get over myself and finally go there soon because Belize's coral reef is vanishing quickly. A potent mix of coastal development, tourism, overfishing, pollution and climate change has apparently damaged an estimated 40% of the Belize reef system, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Western Hemisphere's largest barrier reef, that attracts more than a third of Belize's 850,000 annual visitors. Ouch.