Belize

Belize is the first international trip I planned with my friends. I had such a great time and highly recommend visiting. See below for more details:

Flight Information
We took a direct flight to BZE out of YYZ on Air Canada. This was booked in October 2018, directly through the airline’s website during one of their sales, so we got a good deal at $492.55 CAD round trip. I have seen these flights going for as cheap as $350.00 CAD, but for a direct flight during Reading Week this is fairly reasonable – and worth it. The timing also works very well. We had an 8:35am departure and were scheduled to arrive at 12:25pm (4 hours and 50 minutes), just in time to enjoy the day.

Travel Visa
As a Canadian citizen, no visa was required for entry into Belize.

Currency
The Belize dollar (BZD) is the official currency of Belize, but they also accept USD. The conversion is fixed at a value of 2 BZD:1 USD. This made it easier to do mental calculations while abroad. If you are trying to figure out whether to convert from CAD to BZD or USD, I suggest going with USD. Even though it may seem like you are losing money, it is better than converting to BZD because:

1) It is harder to convert from BZD to CAD. For example, Scotiabank does not buy back BZD. If you have leftover USD, it is not as big of a problem. In Belize, you will always receive change back in BZD, and it is best to use this first before spending USD.

2) At the time, CAD:BZD was about 1:1.54 while CAD:USD was 1:0.76. With these rates, if you take $100.00 CAD and convert to BZD, you would get $153.68 BZD. If you take $100.00 CAD and convert to USD, you would get $75.93 USD, which equals $151.86 BZD. These are approximately equal. In fact, I remember that the exact rates at the time of my trip were in favour of converting to USD.

3) It is an easier reference point to compare CAD with USD rather than BZD.

Transportation:
The drive to our first stop, San Ignacio, was about a 2 hour drive from BZE. We had arranged a private shuttle ($150.00 USD) with Rumors Resort prior to our arrival in Belize, so we did not need to take a taxi this far. Note that the shuttle did not include wifi as stated, but they did have water to offer. Our driver Marcone was very welcoming and friendly.

Our hotel was about a 10 minute drive from the main part of the town. On the second night, we asked the hotel to call us a taxi. For safety, we ended up going with the same driver (Reuben) every time, and each trip cost $5.00 USD.

If you are going to one of the islands you will need to get to Belize City to take the water taxi, which is about a half an hour drive from the airport. This should cost about $25.00 USD. If you are coming from San Ignacio, it is about a two hour drive. Again, we had previously arranged a shuttle service with the hotel ($150.00 USD).

There are two water taxi companies. We went with San Pedro express, which cost $38.00 USD round trip to Ambergris Caye. The tickets do not expire and can be used at any time.

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Places to Visit: