Belize Insider Articles Archives

If you’re planning your first trip to Belize it can be hard to decide what to do, given there are so many choices. Here’s a list of the top 10 activities to consider when planning your trip.

I can remember a time when my job as a home builder, designer, and retail furniture store owner had me dealing with endless paperwork, constant phone calls, huge crews, and super-long work days. As I crawled into the bed each night, I would say “one day” and fall asleep to the sounds of the ocean (played from a bedside speaker) as the snow was falling outside my window.

Belize offers expats the opportunity to live in picturesque ocean communities for a fraction of the cost they would pay back home. These locations house many expat communities and, as such, provide most of the amenities you’d expect to have in your hometown. Expats frequently live quite comfortably on a budget of $2,000 or more per month.

In Placencia village where I live you’ll see adorable cabanas lining the road, each painted a different color, hand-painted signs, cute beach dogs, friendly locals. You’ll find treehouse coffee houses, and beach bars with names like Barefoot Bar and Tipsy Tuna. There are gelato places, and local tiny wood shacks selling delicious, cheap food made from scratch.

Eileen Jamison has spent 20 years living on Ambergris Caye in Belize. She is from a small city in northwest Pennsylvania where she worked as a pharmacy technician and inventory manager. She and her husband, Dan, loved to travel and shared a dream of living on an island. They visited islands from the Eastern Caribbean to the Pacific, then looked to Belize in the Western Caribbean.

Although Belize is a small country, about the size of New Jersey, it has a wealth of “must see” natural resources and wonders.

The range of diving you can do in Belize, despite its small size, is one reason for its vast popularity, and it can vary depending on whether you are in the north, south, or outer atolls.

I found my paradise in the district of Toledo, on the southernmost coast of Belize. Members of my expat community here love the untouched, untamed area where we dwell, surrounded by thousands of acres of treasured jungle and centuries of tradition. We are among the free-spirited, proudly-independent occupants of “The Forgotten District,” sandwiched perfectly between the Caribbean Sea to the east and the wild lands and mountains to the west.

A walk down the beach usually follows my morning routine, with a stop at one of the numerous beachfront establishments for a lunch of stewed chicken, a local specialty. A heaped plate of chicken, potato salad, red beans, and rice for $7.50 is hard to beat. And there are no worries about exchanging your money, as Belizean and U.S. dollars are used interchangeably at a two-to-one ratio.

We began our search for a new kind of life in Costa Rica, Mexico, and Guatemala. However, when we thought about where we really wanted to live, we kept returning to the idea of making a home in Belize.