Belize beyond the Blue Hole

Tamara Hinson channels her inner Indiana Jones and discovers that there’s so much more to this Central American gem than its famous dive site

Belize has plenty more to offer than diving (travelbelize.org)

The one question everyone asked when I mentioned I was going to Belize? When (not if) I’d visit the Blue Hole, as if it was inconceivable I’d leave without checking out its famous dive site. In reality, the spots I had my eye on were ones most people I spoke to hadn’t heard of: Xunantunich, a Mayan archaeological site with plaster friezes, and the so-called Ceremonial Cave – an enormous cavern filled with evidence of human sacrifice. And bugs and minibeasts – the weirder, the better, in my view. I wasn’t disappointed.

On my first night at Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge, in the foothills of central Belize’s forested Maya mountains, I find a praying mantis waving at me from my toilet’s U-bend. A foot-long stick insect takes up position above my bed and, by night time, my patio is a minefield of multicoloured frogs, cooling their damp tummies on the wet concrete. I watch as a syrup-like swarm of ants devours what I thought was a leaf, but turns out to be a still-twitching katydid, an insect with an uncanny resemblance to a sprig of greenery.

St Herman’s Cave (travelbelize.org)