Visiting Central America's Outlier Nation - Belize 🇧🇿

I am on the very south side of Mexico and I'm about to cross this border 20 kilometers to the south to go to this country that I've never been before. On the mainland of Central America, in the heart of Latin America, there is a country that doesn't quite fit in with its neighbors. Instead of Spanish, the official language is English. Instead of a country full of Latinos, you see a lot of Caribbean people of African descent. The prices don't make sense compared to the region and Queen Elizabeth's face is on the currency. And the interior is full of Mayan ruins. I'm talking about Belize, the smallest country population-wise in Central America and one of the more interesting ones. In this video, I explore this outlier of a country for the region and show you my first impressions of this fascinating nation. So it's 8 20 a.m right now and I'm actually in Bacalar, which is a very touristy city in Mexico, but I barely got to saw it because I got here yesterday evening. I had a lot of issues with the first place I was staying with getting locked in and I changed places to this other hostel. I just went out for a few drinks with my new friends and went to bed and I woke up and my bus is supposed to pick me up in like 20 minutes and we're headed to Belize. So apparently there is a shop nearby where I can get some snacks for the road. Hopefully this works out. Man, it is such a misty morning. The shop is closed, so I guess I'll have to be hungry for a few hours. So we traveled for an hour to the border, got stamped out of Mexico where we had to pay a hefty exit visa fee, got stamped into Belize, got in the van and drove for two more hours to get to Belize city. We're officially in Belize and the border crossing was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I didn't have to pay like any of the extra fines that I was afraid I would have to pay and then we crossed over. A lot of things changes when you come in. You're definitely in the Caribbeans. Everyone's playing like Caribbean music everywhere. The second thing you notice is that every bus here looks like a retired school bus in the U.S. And the third thing, most important, is that all the signs are in English because this is an English-speaking country. So let me try my best to sum up the story of this country real quick to explain some of these facts. Maya civilization spread across what is present-day Belize around 1500 BC and it flourished until 980. When the Spanish took over the Americas, the conquistadors declared it as part of the Spanish empire. But they failed to settle the territory because of its lack of resources and because the tribes of the Yucatan Peninsula were defending their land. At this point, English pirates were sporadically visiting the coast of what is now Belize and using it as a shelter region from which they would go out and attack Spanish ships and loot them. The first ever British permanent settlement was founded here in 1716. The Spanish eventually granted these independent British settlers the right to occupy the area that's Belize in exchange for their help in suppressing the piracy that was affecting the Spanish ships. During the 18th century, these settlers established a system of using enslaved Africans to cut the logwood trees and that part explains why there are so many people of African descent in this country. And this logwood industry was at the core of the country's old economy. If you look at Belize's flag, the two men on either side of the tree actually represent the logwood workers. So initially the British government did not recognize this settlement as a colony because they didn't want to piss off the Spanish. But then in 1836, all of Central America was emancipated from Spanish rule and the British officially claimed the right to administer the region. In 1862, the UK formally declared it a British crown colony. In 1964, the colony was finally awarded the right to govern itself under a new constitution. Then in 1981, it was officially granted independence. So we've arrived in Belize city and now we're gonna take a ferry or a water taxi, as they're called here I believe, to one of the more popular islands for slow travelers and backpackers like me. Looks like we're in a souvenir shop where we're sorting out the tickets for the water taxi. At the ticket office, turns out the people working here are from Bangladesh. So this Bangladesh is literally everywhere. So I got my tickets but now I have to like check in for the next water taxi. Write your name right here for me. You're gonna be at gate number two. Gate number two right there? Okay, all right. Thank you. So right now we're going for a little bit of a walk around this part of Belize city because we have an hour and a half to kill until it's time for our ferry. And Belize city has definitely some areas that are not too safe and we don't even know what is safe and what's not safe. But this part probably is because we're like in the tourist area. So hello. So like yeah some police officer said hi to me. Not right now but thank you. Hair braiding seems to be a big thing around here. People are offering me to braid my hair. We found some place that we think we'll have food. We're at our restaurant. We see the gorgeous Belize water right in front of me. This is so hot. It feels like so much hotter than Mexico. And I barely moved but I'm wearing all black in jeans which is not as fun as me. We left that restaurant because that was way over our budget. $18 for blocks and chip. It's like LA prices. So we're trying to find something cheaper. The street art here is like really pretty in this area. We found a... I'm good for that. I found a food place that's like cheaper but it's not that cheap still. Time to try the barbecue chicken rice. Chicken's pretty good. This dish here cost 10 US dollars. 20 Belizean dollars. Found some Bangladeshi people who recognized me and they got me some Gatorade and a free ticket back to San Ignacio. It's always nice to meet Bangladeshi people. Okay I see the boats in front of me that we're about to get on right now. We see a lot of fishermen here on their boats which is like the Belizean national activity. So I've arrived to the island of King Kalkar and now I'm gonna have to go get my other bag. To the left we got our bags. Now we're walking to our hotel in the piercing sun. Thankfully I have the same hotel. Not thankfully. I booked my hotel because the guys in front of me booked that hotel and I just booked this earlier this morning when I was about to cross the border. So the check-in for our hotel seems to be in a supermarket. So I guess this is what you get for 88 US dollars a night and this was literally the cheapest hotel in the whole island. Honestly not the worst. Bathroom doesn't look bad but it's very expensive. So it's too hot outside to go like exploring and filming so I'm just taking a break in a coffee shop. This really cool coffee shop actually where they let you pick out your own one. One of the cool things I love about this island or just this part of Central America in general is that you can always hear these loud birds around you all the time. So when you're getting food and beverages from foreign countries especially when traveling to a new country it's kind of important to be very careful about where that food is coming from because the last thing you want is an upset stomach. Over the years I've had plenty of issues with food poisoning while I've been traveling and I've traveled with people who have even ended up in the hospital because of these issues. So my best advice to you guys is to eat carefully wherever you're eating and to have good travel insurance with you in case you do need an emergency trip to the hospital. I personally prefer using Safety Wing and have been using that for more than a year because it allows me a pay-as-you-go subscription and it allows me to pick a clinic of my choice. It also covers me up to $250,000 in over 180 countries and it's got a zero dollar deductible plan which means I can be covered for even small issues like having food poisoning. They also have an electronic theft coverage add-on which means that if your electronics get stolen at least part of the value can be covered by Safety Wing which is why I feel comfortable traveling to all these countries with like my cameras and lenses and drones in my backpacks. They also have an adventure sports add-on which I personally like to use because that covers me when doing certain extreme sports such as scuba diving and skydiving. It's always good to have a good insurance plan just to feel more secure in your trips and just to have you covered if anything bad were to happen. Okay so right now I'm on Kikakor which is a tiny little limestone coral island that is about 20 miles or 30 kilometers northeast of Belize city which is where we came from. The only way to access this island is by high-speed water taxis like the one I took or by small airplanes. There's actually an airport on the other side of the island somehow. This tiny island is roughly five miles or eight kilometers from north to south and only like a mile from east to west which is like one and a half kilometers so when I left the ferry earlier and I started walking towards my hotel I could basically see the ocean on the other side of the island. This has become recently a lot more popular than it used to be and I mean very recently like seven eight years ago when I was making videos in Guatemala, Tikal, not too far from here my friends who were here said there's MT just a couple of backpackers. Now when I'm coming here at peak season every single hostel is booked like weeks in advance that's why I had to get a hotel so it's really blowing up in popularity. Although the population of this island is only 4,000 people so obviously you can get around the island by walking but a lot of people use like golf carts. I think some people rent it out or there's like taxis. Some people rent it out for the day like golf carts or is it always like someone driving it from from here? What some people do is get a tour and they go around the island. But no one rents it out like a personal taxi? That's also possible? Yeah they rent carts. How much does that cost for a day do you know? That's the same price I'm telling you but this one I know where to go. So it's $75 for like a taxi ride. Can I show you? Apparently I have to pay to show them so I can't show you the taxis. So it's 75 Belizean dollars but like I don't have that kind of budget so I'm not gonna go on a taxi I'm just gonna walk around. So there's this basketball court right next to the beach which has to be the most gorgeous basketball court I've ever seen in my life. It's like literally right on the beach next to the blue or turquoise waters. I wish there was a ball here I don't see anyone playing here. I just asked someone if there's balls and they said people only play in the evening so maybe I'll come back in the evening to shoot some jump shots. I grew up playing a lot of basketball so it's always fun to like shoot around a bit in different places. I see a lot of people using golf carts so I didn't want to say it in front of those guys but like there's no planet on which I'm gonna pay $40 to take a golf cart around an island which takes 30 minutes to walk from end to end. Now if you have that kind of money you should definitely do that. I'm sure those guys can show you some local spots with crocodiles you mentioned. Now it's easy to come to like a very touristy island like Key Cocker and think that the entire economy of Belize is based around tourism but that is not the case. So Belize mostly has a private enterprise economy that is based on agriculture, agro-based industries and merchandising. Sugar still is the biggest exports which rounds up to around half of the country's total export and the banana industry is the largest employer in this country. Belize is also a producer of industrial minerals, crude oil and petroleum and more recently tourism and construction has been taking up a bigger and bigger part of the economy. So it looks like I found a gym literally next to the ocean with dumbbells made out of wood and I haven't properly worked out for the last couple of days and I've been putting on some weight because I spent two weeks in Mexico eating nothing but tacos. So this is probably a great time to get a quick workout down in the middle of the vlog. I don't think I've ever done pull-ups with a better view in my life and I can see why all the influencers love these gyms. I was lifting like 50 pounds earlier but if you just looked at the dumbbells without realizing they're made out of wood you'd think I'm lifting 200 pounds so it definitely makes people look stronger. So that gym that I was just at the daily pass was 12.5 US dollars which is essentially five times what I was paying and even touristy areas of Mexico like Bacalar. The food here is basically the same price as the US. I got some like peanut butter and bread earlier and the hotels here like literally double the price as like the touristy parts of Mexico like Bacalar and like Playa del Carmen. That's one thing you got to realize about Belize is that the prices here are gonna be nothing like the rest of Central America which is like relatively cheap compared to this. Now it's still probably cheaper than like going on vacation in the US but it's not really cheap cheap. And one of the reasons for that surely is that how many tourists actually come here and it's not hard to see why so many tourists come here when you just look around the place. And one reason why everything is so expensive is because we're on an island everyone has to bring stuff here but on the mainland even that rice and beans and fried chicken I had wasn't cheap either. I'm not sure how legal this is but it looks like if you can't find accommodation at least you can like pull out a hammock and sleep here. Don't take my advice I don't guarantee the safety of your belongings if you do that. So I figured the best way to explain why tourism is so big in Belize is to do it from somewhere like basically right in the ocean but this is a pretty precarious position with lots of holes. I'm hoping I'm not gonna drop my phone or camera or something. So you have to remember that Belize has a really low population and it has a land area of around 23,000 square kilometers or like almost 9,000 square miles which makes it the ideal place for over 5,000 species of plants and over hundreds of species of really cool animals like armadillos monkeys or even the jaguar. It's out of all the land mass in Belize around 37 percent of it is officially protected in one way or the other by the government or some other agency making this one of the most protected areas in all of the America. Around 13 percent of Belize's coastal waters that fall under its jurisdiction are also protected and that includes the Belize barrier reef which is a UNESCO world heritage site and is the second largest barrier reef in the whole world after Australia's Great Barrier Reef. So basically half the tourists that come to Belize come here to see these water attractions come here to snorkel and scuba dive to see some incredible structures like the great blue hole. So on a different day I did actually go swimming in the Belizean ocean and we saw a lot of animals we saw turtles we saw stingrays we saw a lot of manta rays and then after lunch we saw nurse sharks again just like my leaves but there the camera had better video quality but let me show you the best part we're supposed to feed these tarpons and you can see how I feel about being close to fish this is the funny part I couldn't do it because I was too scared so he told me to stand up on the and hold it up and told me that a fish is going to come from down and get it are you guys videoing because this is going to happen that was so unexpected so in 1971 this huge hurricane hit this island and split the island like literally in half and the place where it split is non-ironically called the split and it's a popular place to hang out and there's this cafe and bar here called the lazy lizard which is apparently the place to be over here from what I read on the internet and it's a friday so I'm pretty sure it's gonna get wild here I see like two-for-one rum offers on the menu but it's not even 5 pm so I'm not ready to get wild so I'm just like sipping on some coke zero eating some chicken burritos all right I don't know how much you can hear me because they just turned up the reggaeton here but this this burrito looks delicious okay just a heads up even though the other side doesn't look that far away you definitely don't want to swim across it there's strong currents so I'm back in the basketball court and it looks like people are actually playing basketball now that it's not super sunny anymore it looks like the dog wants a piece of the action as well which is hilarious and I just want to reflect on this country and what I've seen so far because this is such a unique place I've never seen anything like this it's kind of like mostly Caribbean probably because I'm on the islands I hear it's like more Mayan on the western side near Tikal near Guatemala now when I went to Jamaica this feels a lot like that more than it feels like Central America but it's not just Caribbean it's a combination of Caribbean Mayan and like Latino as well you hear like Caribbean music in places you see people kind of braid my hair but you also hear reggaeton and you also see tacos and burritos like the delicious one I just had it's kind of like a very nice mix of everything and it's like nothing I've ever seen before people are speaking English people are speaking Creole people are speaking Spanish to each other in some places but it's like pretty cool I would recommend visiting Belize if you can afford it that is it for this video if you want to watch more videos like this feel free to follow me or subscribe to my channel if you want real-time travel updates feel free to follow me on Instagram hope to catch you guys in the next video from I'm not sure where