Our family summer vacation took us to Belize this year. Of course there was some fishing mixed in so I’ll put up a report of a mix of family and fish. Being a family of 5 is not cheap so sometimes we use other airports as a jumping off spot. This time had us leaving out of Orlando for a total saving of about $1200 even after hotels on both ends of the stay. Orlando-Miami-Belize City then a puddle jumper to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. A 30 second car ride to a boat and then 10 minutes up the “beach” to our resort at CoCo Beach. Planes, trains and automobiles at its finest.
Most of the travel is done by golf cart and the main road from town was just paved for 3 miles of the 22 mile Caye. San Pedro itself could be viewed as a quaint left over hippie town or a dirty 3rd. world hole waiting to be cleansed by the next hurricane.
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The resort was nice but not well staffed for the off season. Food took forever, no towels at the pool most of the time, etc… you know, the little stuff that makes you crazy and keeps you from focusing on the beauty of the area and time with your family. There was a great pool feature that the kids could slide and jump from when we weren’t out exploring the dirt roads and secret beaches.
I had booked a few days with Laminar Fly for some flats and reef fishing. There were also some wading opportunities along the beach fronts. We set out to explore in our buggy and made friends with plenty of toothy critters in the mangrove ditches around the island.
The first flats day had us sight casting to tarpon. We saw well over 100 fish and had our shots. I lost 5 on topwater and my boy lost 2 on the fly. Plenty of cudas around and a big permit to spice things up. I think the only ting that made it to the boat was some more cudas.
We were well entertained and of course enjoyed the change of scenery.
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My son caught a case of food/water funk and had to sit the second day out. Wind was blowing and some rain made it dirty and sight fishing was tough. I switched to a sinking stickbait and still had a good day with 5 or so tarpon bites and a couple of jacks. Lots of fun on the light gear.
I had planned 1 day of reef fishing since there is an insane dropoff right there but the weather never really allowed for it. We spent another 1/2 day walking some flats on the inside of the Cays and throwing flies at little snapper and cudas.
A few things they don’t tell you. The wind blows all the sea grass onto the beach. It smells…bad. The road ends at 3 miles and is dirt for the next 15 miles. You need to take a boat or plane to get to the Caye and that adds cost, significant cost. I can’t imagine the place in the high season since it seemed they could not keep up in the slow season. There are quite a few “off the grid” folks living there. It is sort of like a hippie ship crashed there and no one left. On the whole it was dirty. I travel quite a bit, to a lot of 3rd world countries and this to me was a bit different. It seemed that no one really took pride in where they lived. There is a difference between poverty and cleanliness, you can have one without the other. Belize has not figured that out yet, IMO.
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