Backcountry Belize

In a new article on NYtimes, Dwight Garner talks about the hidden beauty of Belize, and how the hidden gem is a back road secret. Aldous Huxley once wrote that it seemed like the end of the world. Today, however, Belize is becoming a hot spot for tourists. Here’s a selection from the article.

Belize’s still largely untrampled beach areas are filling with tourists for good reason. The country has the largest continuous barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, one that’s lined with hundreds of beautiful small islands, or cayes. The scuba-diving and snorkeling are world-class.

But there is a different Belize that we — my wife and I and our 7- and 9-year-old children, Harriet and Penn — set out to find: its lush interior, thick with rain forests, Mayan ruins, tiny villages, intense wildlife and (most happily, for the kids) intricate cave systems that can be explored by floating on inner tubes, while dodging bats.

We weren’t disappointed when we visited early in May. Moving through Belize’s backcountry feels like travel, not tourism, and the country is fiercely intent on keeping it that way. National parks and nature preserves make up almost half of Belize’s 8,800 square miles. You can truly become lost here, in ways both good and bad.

Read the rest of the article at NYtimes.com