“Sustainable seaweed farming, reef restoration, invasive lion fish initiatives and beach plastic recycling bins… during Covid, these community conservation efforts in Placencia really took off,” explains Patricia Ramirez, aka Miss Patty, founder and co-owner of Splash Dive Centre (splashbelize.com), a banker-turned-diver and watersports legend in Belize.
After a morning snorkelling in Belize’s famed Laughing Bird Caye National Park with Fragments Of Hope (fragments of hope.org), a coral restoration project with propagation nurseries around the Placencia Peninsula, Miss Patty is walking me around the village of Placencia. This charming Creole beach town in southern Belize has magically retained its bohemian vibe despite an influx of wealthy Canadian and American retirees and the development of some upscale hotels — the nicest being film director Francis Ford Coppola’s long-established and eco-minded Turtle Inn (thefamilycoppolahideaways.com).
Miss Patty steers me into Fins Belize (finsbelize.com), where orange-and-black lion fish-fin earrings are displayed, the prettiest part of a new and vital industry dedicated to reducing the number of invasive lion fish in Caribbean waters. Co-owners Abby Porter and Willie Zaldivar explain that while Belize has one of the most comprehensive and conservation-minded fisheries policies in the Caribbean, spearfishing non-endemic lion fish has been actively encouraged since lion fish were first spotted in Belizean waters in 2008, wreaking havoc on the native fish population and Belize’s precious coral reef, second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Lion fish fins are a beautiful material for jewellers to work with – and every pair of earrings can represent the saving of around 70,000 native fish
Fins takes inspiration from local jeweller Kadisha Assales, whose successful Belizean brand Kaj Expressions (kajexpressions.com) first fashioned accessories from the fins of these carnivorous marine creatures. “Lion fish fins are a beautiful material for jewellers to work with, and every pair of culled lion fish earrings can represent the saving of around 70,000 native fish,” explains Kadisha. “For me, creativity isn't just about making things look good — it's about solving real-world issues and having a positive impact, so yes, I feel a responsibility to respond to challenges like the lion fish issue because this allows me to use my skills to create solutions.
”I tell Miss Patty how heartening it is, as a tourist, to find community-driven projects and pioneering local businesses working collaboratively rather than competitively. I also love that many are helmed by women. Jalima Gold is president of the Belize Women’s Seaweed Farmers Association (www.bwsfa.com); Lisa Carne founded Fragments Of Hope coral nurseries; our snorkelling guide Monique Vernon established Mr Goby & Friends (@mrgobynfriends), a plastic-recycling beach initiative providing marine animal-themed recycling bins around the beach to encourage young people to recycle. Miss Patty nods. “All these ambitious women were working in tourism, and suddenly our jobs vanished, so we asked ourselves what else we could be doing to protect our environment," she says.
I smile, my shoulders slacken, and I’m reminded why I hunt hard for travel destinations like Belize, where our tourism dollar goes towards something good. As an ocean-loving traveller who tries to travel responsibly, for many years I thought the Caribbean wasn’t for me. I detest big, bland international-chain beach resorts, and all-inclusive resort models where virtually no tourism revenue reaches the pockets of locals who’ve often had their beach snatched from them.
The Caribbean ranks badly for ‘leakage’ – this is the Caribbean country that changed my mind
The Caribbean ranks badly for ‘leakage’ — where revenue is siphoned off into international owners’ pockets, estimated at around 30 per cent in 2019. But in 2014, I visited Belize… and this is the Caribbean country that changed my mind. (Dominica is another former British colony that has bolstered my faith in responsible tourism in the Caribbean, and I keep eyes on Costa Rica, where they’ve long been actively developing tourism around sustainability principles.) I’ll always be grateful to Belize for persuading me that non-posh and conservation-minded travellers like me belong here. It’s a ravishing part of the world to belong in.
On this long-overdue return visit to Belize, I find more to cheer the guilty adventure traveller. For a small nation, Belize offers a spectacular diversity of experience – unlike other Caribbean countries marketed exclusively as fly-and-flop beach destinations, which makes them vulnerable to notoriously fickle tourism market fluctuation. And there’s more to a country than its beaches. Belize’s tourism, happily, never rested on its beaches. Travellers can visit the remarkable Mayan ruins of Altun Ha, Xunantunich and Caracol (blissfully free of the crowds you’ll encounter 400km north, in Mexico’s Tulum). Belize’s rainforest is a biodiversity hotspot, and an overnight stay at Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary offers one of the world’s best chances to see jaguars in the wild.
I am haunted by the flashy all-inclusive resorts of long-ago assignments, so on this visit, it’s a joy to discover Belize’s network of charming, affordable nature lodges. Many are Belizean-owned, or at least owned by lifelong migrants from Britain, America, and India who now have Belizean citizenship. My first night near Belize City is at The Lodge At Chaa Creek (www.chaacreek.com), a longstanding hotel and conservation project, graced with royal visits over the years, including Prince Harry. Under British rule, Belize secured independence in 1981, but relations remain relatively warm, something I will always consider a gargantuan act of dignity on the part of Belizeans. (I’m from Belfast, I have first-hand experience of independence not going so smoothly.) Chaa Creek is a remarkable jungle property where I canoe downstream and catch sight of howler monkeys reintroduced to the rainforest by Chaa Creek rangers in a successful repopulation programme.
It’s botanicals, rather than beasts, that are the stars of the show at the beautiful all-teak Tropical Magnolia, a new eco-lodge on the much-loved Spice Farm (belizespicefarm.com) in Toledo District. We meet the owners, retired anesthesiologist Dr Thomas Matthew and his wife, Tessy, both from Kerala, and get a tractor tour of a garden where black pepper, vanilla and nutmeg flourish in the shade of huge hardwoods. “Things just grow here,” says Dr Matthew, laughing. “It seemed crazy not to try and grow the spices I’d seen farmed back home.”
Before I leave Belize, I travel back to Placencia. Willie and Abby take me to Tom Owens Caye, a small island now owned by marine conservation nonprofit ReefCI (reefci.com), I join a group of international volunteers, keen divers who prefer to dive with purpose, paying around $1,000 a week to be trained in scuba spearfishing. Together, we learn how to humanely cull those beautiful yet harmful invasive fish (rather than spike our own feet or other volunteers), how to fillet the fish, and preserve the fins we’d most like to see dangling from ears. I’ve been a diver since my early twenties, mostly in southeast Asian waters, where lion fish are native, have many predators, and numbers are kept at bay.
There is a direct correlation between warming water temperatures and lion fish range; here, as an invasive species, they have been able to spread at a rapid rate, with no natural predators. Killing a lion fish would have been a no-no at most of the centres I trained in and dived with, so feeling OK about killing a marine animal requires adjustment. But a reason to travel is to learn, perhaps even to have our minds changed. With its community-driven and conservation-based tourism, I now know we can rely on Belize to blow our minds.
HOW TO BOOK
The Lodge at Chaa Creek, San Ignacio – the Cottage Collection room prices start from £302 per night (one adult, breakfast included) chaacreek.com
Tropical Magnolia at Belize Spice Farm, Golden Stream Village – double room with garden view prices start from £101 per night (one adult, breakfast included) booking.com/TropicalMagnolia
Sea Spray Hotel, Placencia – cheap and cheerful beachfront rooms start at £75 per night. seasprayhotel.com
Flying to Belize – although there are currently no direct flights from the UK, you can fly from London (Gatwick, Heathrow, City) via US hubs such as Atlanta, Newark, Houston and Miami, then onto Belize City. Return flights from London Heathrow to Belize City (via Atlanta) start from £571 with Delta.
For more info, visit www.travelbelize.org
