Belize

• The Whisk Factor - Argentina
• Tangoing in the Moonlight - Argentina
• Revealed, Rio's secrets - Brazil
• On Cloud Nine - Costa Rica
• A Revolutionary Party - Cuba
• More than Sex, Salsa & Cigars - Cuba
• Partying with Fidel - Cuba
• Journey to the Mountain of the Gods - Peru
• Blaze a trail to Belize - Belize
• The time traveller - Mexico and Cuba

IT'S IN THE CARIBBEAN but isn’t. You’ve got the hot weather and the lovely coast - but you also have Mayan ruins, jaguar sanctuaries, a virgin rainforest and the largest living reef outside the Antipodes.

What’s more, it’s a former British colony and boasts some of Central America’s best diving and most beautiful beaches. There are 200 white sand cayes, or small islands, on a coastline that equals anywhere on earth.

It’s also a place that likes to party. ‘You guys like rum punch?’ asked a bleary-eyed Belizean shouting at us over the distant beat of a reggae band, shortly after our arrival on a balmy Sunday evening. He gestured towards the barman. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, mon!’

A Truly Laid Back Feel

The measures of rum deftly poured over four large glasses at Big Daddy’s beach shack looked alarmingly excessive. But reggae, rum and top-notch sand aside, San Pedro gives off an ‘undiscovered’ demeanour.

San Pedro is the ‘capital’ of Ambergris Caye, the largest of the 200-odd cayes that dot and dash Belize’s coastline. It’s where Madonna set her hit love song, La Isla Bonita – and much like the rest of Belize, the low-key atmosphere has helped establish it as a haven for celebrities. Cameron Diaz, Robert de Niro, Harrison Ford, Heidi Klum, Francis Ford Coppola and Brooke Shields have all holidayed here.

Belize borders Mexico and Guatemala, with the Caribbean to the east. It’s a small country (about half the size of Wales) offering big experiences. The shallow cayes are a diver’s dream. They front dazzlingly turquoise waters and straddle a coral reef - second only in size to the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

Finding Nemo had nothing on the irridescent colours of the rainbow parrot fish and horse-eyed jacks during a snorkelling trip – though I hadn’t banked on sharing my patch of sea with sharks.

‘Don’t worry. They’re harmless nurse sharks,’ assured our boatman, chucking fish into the water. The flurry of snapping, albeit smallish jaws, didn’t convince.

Twenty-five miles long, Ambergris Caye was named in colonial whaling days after the waxy substance secreted by the sperm whale and used to make perfume. It was Belize’s first tourist destination and then, as now, a popular diving location.

Earlier that evening, children in coloured robes and gold crowns paraded the streets around the whitewashed sea-facing Roman Catholic church. The priest, on a beach buggy, was bellowing prayers through a megaphone.

This was the procession of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, explained Radiance, the cheery girl making milkshakes at the Sweet Life Dely Bar. For 12 days before Christmas, both children and priest visit different homes in San Pedro to conduct a special mass.

Midweek, and further down the coast in the south, we found even lovelier pure-white beaches. Placencia, with its village of candy coloured shacks, Dis ‘n’ Dat store, and small dive outfits offering tours for spotting manatee, a large aquatic mammal, and monkey watching, has a truly laid-back feel.

Film director Francis Ford Coppola established a luxury ecolodge, Turtle Inn, right on the beach here. Despite rustic touches, it strikes an oddly sophisticated note. But Coppola, who directed The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, knows how to create an atmosphere.

Bedrooms are thatch-roofed Balinese-inspired cabanas, decorated with well-chosen artisan crafted furniture. Yet as Kenny, self-styled ‘army brat’ barman at the beach-side Laughing Fish Bar explained: ‘Placencia used to be very much a let-your-hair-down, buzzing place back in the garrison days. Then, it was all drinking and partying down here. Now, it’s a bit more reserved.’

Eco-lodges are all the rage in Belize. Their rustic look and selfsufficient ethos blend well with the jungle. Which is just as well given that virgin rainforests cover more than 60% of the country.

Thatched Rooms Scale the Hillside

You can visit crowd-free ancient Mayan sites, and stay in comfortable lodges, sharing surroundings with possums, scarlet macaws, toucans, and hoarse-voiced howler monkeys.

Up in the west, among the fertile foothills of Belize’s largest national park, Mountain Pine Ridge, is Coppola’s Blancaneaux Lodge. Here, thatched rooms scale the hillside, and a market garden supplies food for the restaurant.

The area reminded Coppola of the jungle paradise he had enjoyed while shooting Apocalypse Now. And familiar objects from that film – the slow-whirring ceiling fan that Martin Sheen lay under, as well as photos of Brando – decorate Blancaneaux’s clubby bar. It’s well placed for uncovering Belize’s Mayan heritage.

Caracol, the most extensive site, is deep in the jungle. So too, Barton Creek Cave, a hugely important millennium-old sacred Mayan site.

Canoeing a velvety-dark route into the heart of this two-mile-long cave is an experience I shall never forget. As the cave narrows, and multi-hued stalactites skim the water’s surface by inches, you have to duck and deftly weave your canoe away from the rock face.

Absorb the Mayan Culture

Bats sweep above and fish trace a visible course through shallow green waters. There are shards of pottery and skulls too – remnants of sacrificial victims.

The rainforest was just as absorbing and redolent of Mayan culture. At Chaa Creek, five miles west, I walked a Rainforest Medicine Trail, set up to commemorate the region’s last Mayan bush expert, Don Elijio Panti.

As we made our way through tangled trees, Hilberto, my guide, explained: ‘Everything the Mayans need is right here, in the rainforests, but sadly bush medicine is a dying art.’

Hilberto pointed out Spanish Elder, a good cure for insomnia; wild custard apple, brilliant for head lice, and the Tapaculo tree, indispensable for diarrhoea. Like other plants, samples of this are being sent to Kew Gardens.

‘We need them properly classified,’ laughed Hilberto, ‘because though the name in Spanish is simple – it’s the clog-up-your-butt tree – and somehow that doesn’t sound very professional.’

Perhaps. But what’s not in doubt is that Belize is a proper destination, with a unique and serious culture – perfect for those of us who believe that holidays, nice as it is to sit on a beach sometimes, are for doing things.