Belize Itinerary | Ringing in the New Year

Scenic beaches with ropes to swing into the ocean, a beautiful resort with cabanas, hammocks, pina coladas, and an amazing snorkeling experience at the second-largest barrier reef in the world makes for a pretty killer New Year's trip. It was a perfect mix of vacationing and adventuring!

We stayed at the Jaguar Reef Lodge Resort (where Prince William and Kate stayed!) with a wonderful staff who cut coconuts every morning for us and fished out three phones, an Apple watch, and sunglasses from the ocean for us. The beach looked like it had been raked every morning and the waves were never overpowering.

Days 1, 3, and 5

During our free days at the resort, we would enjoy pina coladas in the multiple sitting areas on the beach (hammocks, cabanas, swings, anything!), use the free kayaking boats to take a closer look at jellyfish in the deeper waters and enjoy swinging off the ropes attached to cabanas into the ocean.

Day 2: Snorkeling in the Belize Barrier Reef

Another slay on the resort's part was they had a boat right outside of our villa on the beach ready to take us to our snorkeling destination (shoutout High Point Placencia Travel tours) at the second-largest barrier reef in the world! The first stop off the boat took us to a tiny land mass that we had to swim to before beginning. From there a guide took us in small groups over shallow waters to take a look at coral and fish! It was the most colorful scene underwater I had seen with bright blue and orange fish.

After the shallow snorkeling experience, we went back to our boats and went out to deeper waters. Here the water was still clear enough to see nursing sharks and crabs at the bottom as well as turtles swimming around us (and into us once, ouch!).

Day 4: Tubing in a cave

The only downside to this trip other than fracturing my rib cage was having to wake up at the crack ass of dawn every morning for some excursion. This time we were getting on a school bus to go to a tubing experience in a cave with St. Herman's Cave Tubing.

The bus took us on a scenic route of mostly lush green hills, trees, and smaller towns.

We were given a life jacket, a headband with a light attached, and a huge tire to carry through the forest where we saw bats and just a lot of bugs. Definitely don't forget the bug repellent here.

When we arrived at the cave we had to walk through the shallow water to a deeper area and from there we could let the current take us through while we sit on our tires right? wrong. It's a lot harder than it looks. The water will send you in random directions, it's pretty dark, and there are about tens of others trying to navigate at the same time. Luckily the tour guides are there to help when someone gets pulled away by the current. In reality, if you do get sucked away you just have to stand up and grab your tire. The water never really gets deeper than a few feet.

After the cave took us through the current we walked our way back to our bus and stopped at a beautiful waterfall with a swimming hole before officially heading back to our resort.

We rang in the New Year's at our resort with dinner right on the beach and fireworks and music to end the night. The crazy thing is that was probably the least eventful thing we did.