If we’d felt like sticky-sweet tourism was fantastically absent from our travels through mainland Belize, the boat station for the islands made up for that within minutes. One step through the gated entryway felt like entering an amusement park: little tourist shops selling cheesy gifts and kitschy postcards, overpriced bars with frothy drinks, and a waiting area so clean and well kept that it could be anywhere other than in Central America. It felt strangely enticing and horribly fake all at once. Luckily the fake luxuries of the waiting area was not a precursor to more of the same– once on the island everything seemed to mesh well into the Belize we’ve grown to admire and love.

Caye Caulker has that friendly Caribbean feel to it that we’ve come to crave. Sandy walkways and narrow roads used mainly by golf carts and scooters. Turquoise blue water, palm trees bending in every direction, simple little buildings housing family businesses, and tiny beachside restaurants with one or two dishes on the menu.

The smell of slow stewed chicken, spicy gingerade, and salty sea water fill the air. Locals and tourists walk the main promenade without shoes. The sky is a clear blue, the sun covers everything with color, and all around the vibe suggests you to relax, forget about everything else, and focus on only what’s in front of you. It’s a place heavily funded by tourism, but not ruined by it.

There are no huge hotels or corporate chains. The beachfront is scattered with little guesthouses and food huts. Kids play basketball in the local beachfront court, and signs all over promote the upcoming local election. Caye Caulker is just as real as it is dreamlike. It’s the type of thing movies are made of.

We’ve heard nothing but bad things about Placencia since arriving to Belize. People have told us it’s too touristy, that it’s fake, and if you are craving tropical beach life it is just better to head out to the islands. We would have had every reason to skip it if it weren’t for the D-Express: the high speed boat that leaves from Placencia every Friday for Puerto Cortez, Honduras. On a whim, we decided to get there a few days early, in order to see one more town of mainland Belize before setting off to Honduras. I am so glad we did, Placencia is nothing like what we’d heard. Unarguably it is busier than Hopkins was, but to call any town on Belize’s mainland ‘touristy’ is a dramatic overstatement.

Placencia is located at the very end of a narrow peninsula that jets out from the mainland just south of Hopkins. The bus ride out there offers quick glimpses of water from two different directions: you travel through little towns and thick mangroves and forested areas. Then out of nowhere comes two gigantic resorts split across either side of the road– we couldn’t help but wonder whether all the negative reviews we’d heard were true. But twenty minutes further the bus let us off in a town full of real charm– kids walking home in their school uniforms greeted us on the roadside, music from the little wooden open air restaurant overflowed into the street, and road signs that appeared to be created in an art class guided us to our guesthouse.

Placencia’s narrow peninsula offers a very unique natural growth boundary for the central district. On one side is the beach to the east, and a short 5-10 minute walk delivers you to the bay to the west. The waters are so clear, that simply sitting on a dock feels like an adventure in marine biology. It is, by far, the most impressive beachfront we’ve seen in Belize yet. Snorkeling right off shore one afternoon, we saw rays, crab, giant starfish, and schools of tiny blue fish that glowed amongst the sun beams.

Nice beaches, great snorkeling right off shore, little street carts selling caribbean chicken and fritters, live music from open air bars… Placencia has more activity then the last few places we’ve been. The little town center has painted storefront signs, sandy roads, little family run restaurants, and a beautiful beach with views of the reef in the distance.

Placencia has the presence of a lot of wealthy visitors, judging by the monstrous yachts sitting out in the bay. This may explain the negativity that gets focused on this town. It is additionally the most expensive of our stops in Belize so far, our guesthouse is running us $40 per night. It is therefore a stop that can only allow us very limited time, but we’re so glad we came to stay for a few days. Placencia is adorable– it’s quiet and relaxed, but it doesn’t feel fake in the way so many tourist areas can feel.

In Belize, hitch-hiking is sort of standard fare. Buses simply don’t run everywhere, and even the most well traveled roads don’t always have regular service. When we wanted to get from Dangriga to the little beach town of Hopkins, we were told that a bus could only take us to the main junction. Hopkins’ buses run very irregularly, and so at the junction our best bet was to hitchhike.

Our ride ended being in the back of a pickup truck. We squeezed in with one other backpacker, in between a coil of industrial rope and a spare tire. The bumpy, dusty road to Hopkins was uneventful, with the one caveat being that I was hitchhiking– something I have only come to do since being in Belize. The idea of hitchhiking always used to scare me– I watched one too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries with my grandparents growing up. But we were delivered to Hopkins without drama– safely and efficiently.

Hopkins, a beach community south of Dangriga, is a tiny, tiny little town with a slowly emerging tourist industry. Most roads are unpaved, there are no traffic lights, and most houses and guest rooms are wood framed buildings constructed in the simplest of ways. It’s a bit like going back in time, if it weren’t for the bizarre presence of really nice SUVs.

People come to Hopkins, it seems, as an alternative to the more touristy town of Placencia to the south. The beaches here are supposedly quieter, and just as sublime. Unfortunately, when we were visiting there was a lot of debris swept up on the shoreline. We could see blue water in the distance, but the color of the sea where it met the sand did not make for an attractive option for swimming.

Hopkins has a big population of people who have come to set up businesses in preparation for the upcoming tourist boom. There seems to be a concentration of new businesses under construction, a lot of foreign presence, and a focus on building. We heard that the main road into Hopkins is slated to be sealed over the coming few years, and this will certainly change the town dramatically. For now, Hopkins is very much in transition– we hope that the anticipated future boom doesn’t destroy too much of this tiny little Caribbean homestead.

We try the local beer in every country we go. Not ALL the local beer, just the most famous one or two that you see in every grocery store. We wanted a comparison of the Budweiser in the US, Modelo in Mexico..The big beers. So in each country, we’ve made a point to photograph, and to taste, the ‘national’ beer everywhere. It could have been a great regular post to write about, and I regret that we didn’t spend more time on this. But it should come as no surprise that after having a few beers, writing about said beer doesn’t seem nearly as enjoyable as just having another beer. So for a beer to be so good that we muster the energy to actually give it it’s own post, well, that beer must be pretty good. Congrats, Belize. Your local beer has accomplished this.

Belikin beer is everywhere here. You see billboards advertising it and little signs outside of convenience stores. As with many of Mexico’s beers, the company cleans and reuses each bottle, so there is a significant deposit attached to the beer to ensure you bring it back. There are a few different brews that the company produces, but the main pilsner seems to be the flagship. It’s tasty. It’s much more of a microbrewery style than most of the other national beers we’ve had. For us, this seems very appropriate for a country like Belize. Everything here seems to be small batch, secret ingredient, made from scratch, created-with-pride sort of food. The national beer does a fantastic job of representing that.