Belize: I visited a nature-lover's paradise with unrivalled reefs, rainforests, and ruins

But the foreign-looking constructs are really a nursery of sorts, housing precious fragments of growing coral that have helped pull the marine national park back from the brink of near-total destruction.

In 2001, the Central American country of Belize - long favoured as a haven for divers and snorkelers from across the globe - was hit hard by Hurricane Iris. Its magnificent reefs were largely reduced to rubble, just one of the storm’s many victims.

Today however, it’s a vibrant, thriving ecosystem once more. On the caye, surrounded by carefully fenced-off turtle nests, a spectacular white osprey surveys his hunting ground from on high. And once you enter the delightfully warm sea, you’re instantly surrounded by life.

A shy nurse shark takes cover under a stony shelf. Fish of every size and hue go about their business in their colourful home - barely paying passing snorkelers any mind as they make their way through clouds of tiny, harmless jellyfish that evoke a sense of paddling through pudding.

It’s largely thanks to a grassroots non-profit on the Placencia Peninsula called Fragments of Hope, which, after years of research and work ‘reforesting’ the region’s reefs, has helped to restore them to a semblance of their former glory - while also future-proofing them for the challenges they’re likely to face in a changing climate.

Our snorkelling guides that sunny afternoon were just one of many community and environmentally-minded groups we were introduced to on a recent trip to Belize, with its tourism board. But they certainly aren’t the only ones opening their arms, homes and hearts to visitors, especially those eager to play a part in its long legacy of conservation. Here’s a little of what we experienced - just a taste of what this spectacular destination has to offer.

Reef to rainforest

Belize’s Great Blue Hole - an atoll-encircled marine sinkhole more than a hundred metres deep - is perhaps its best-known destination for the aquatically adventurous. But there are many other ways to explore its vibrant coastal waters.

For the particularly courageous FINS is a stellar example, working with Reef Conservation International to offer keen divers the chance to hunt destructive and invasive lionfish by night. The initiative doesn’t let them go to waste either, crafting their orange-and-cream fins into striking jewelry that makes a perfect souvenir.

In the modern world, Belize is something of a marvel. Some 60% of the country is undeveloped from its natural state, and even on the plane ride in from the US, you’re treated to a sea of green - vast expanses of luscious rainforest and sparkling wetlands as far as the eye can see.

It’s not just the sea that makes the country appealing to nature lovers. Belize also contains vast tracts of the tropical Maya Forest, which stretches from southern Mexico to Guatemala. It is incredibly biodiverse, but some of the most sought-after animals to be found across its expanses are the famous five big cats of Belize; the ocelot, the margay, the jaguarundi, the puma, and of course, the jaguar.

We stopped in for a quick walk around the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Reserve in the Stann Creek District, one of the first of its kind in the country. It was initially created as a jaguar preserve, and as one of the rangers told us, you had about a 5% chance of spying one of the elusive felines there during the day. Intrepid guests could also stay overnight, with your chances of seeing one rising to about 50%.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see any big cats, with larger wildlife having a tendency to hide themselves away when it's wet. But we did see a lot of other nice things while walking one of the reserve’s 19 trails, the foliage especially lush after a rainy morning. Copper-bellied toads rested on beds of moss, as a dark-pelted squirrel preened itself in the branches above. Eventually we reached a glimmering waterfall tucked away in the forest, the tiny, curious fish that swirled around your feet as you waded in making every step of the journey worthwhile.

A taste of Belize

Belize has no fast-food chains, but good food can be found everywhere you go - with culinary offerings as rich and diverse as the cultures and people that call it home. Although there are many perhaps lesser-known delights on offer, like cooking fiery coconut curry (with a side of traditional drumming and dancing) in a Hopkins-based Garifuna community, most people’s minds likely jump immediately to Mayan cuisine.

And when you think Mayan cuisine, the first thing that comes to mind is probably chocolate. We simply couldn’t miss out on experiencing Belize’s millennium-long-old chocolate culture for ourselves. The Che’il Mayan Chocolate Factory - in the Maya Center village, Stann Creek - offers this in true farm-to-fork fashion, starting with a visit to a local grower.

Tropical cacao trees are native to this part of the world, but prefer to stick to the shady understory - making the farm look more like a forest. The fruits grow low, towards the ground, and you know they’re ready when the pods take on a golden-yellow colour.

As was typical in Belize, all of the harvesting and other work on the farm we visited was done by hand, the owner told us, just farmers and their trusty machetes. There wasn’t much culinary use for the shells, so these were cracked open to reveal the fruit’s fleshy white insides. There’s a trick to this, which involved rotating them whilst tapping firmly with a stick, “no machete required”.

The pulp, with a taste and texture not dissimilar to mango, can be sucked right off of the surprisingly savoury, nutty-tasting beans themselves. They then need to ferment for six days, before being sun-dried - a process which can sometimes take weeks - before the farmers sell them to the local factory to roast, imbuing them with their more recognisably chocolatey flavour.

“Growing up in a Mayan family, you’re surrounded by chocolate,” Che’il’s Robert Pop told us when we arrived for the next part of the tour. “The right kind of chocolate” is even good for your health, he said, loaded with supposedly anti-aging compounds, to “give you fine, glowing skin”.

The traditional way of roasting is on an open fire. The next step is to crush the bean to remove the shell, leaving you with cacao nibs. These are then ground using a mortar and pestle-esque hand grinder called a metate, with the oil-rich nibs quickly becoming a velvety paste.

Robert said they made their own sugar from sugar cane too, although this wasn’t a native plant. “If Belizeans wanted a little sweetener, they’d add wild honey,” he said. But the original beverage’s name meant ‘bitter drink’, and although it was to this day often flavoured with allspice and cloves, Che’il’s products kept the cacao’s characteristic flavour intact.

With a deft and practiced motion, he added a little sugar and kept grinding. If the mixture got too dry, he told us that they could put in some more chocolate oil (better known as cocoa butter). After a quick cooldown in the fridge, what resulted was a fine, bittersweet bar made up of about 80% cocoa - chocolate straight from the source, as it was meant to be enjoyed.

Of course, Mayan food culture was shaped by the land, and there’s a lot more to it than chocolate. We also spent an afternoon with husband-and-wife Jose and Hilda Mes, a Mopan Mayan family in the southern Toledo district who’ve opened up their home to visitors wanting to share a traditional meal, while exploring their farm and all that grows there.

Here, we were treated to a vegetarian’s dream, all harvested that day. Bitter wild chaya and leafy callaloo, sweet local bananas, native string beans, fleshy heliconia shoots, heart of palm, and starchy cassava root. Fiery habanero sauce and fresh tomatoes - grown with a deeply-rooted ethos of sustainability.

Jose told us he simply threw leftover okra seeds into his backyard; “whatever you throw in the soil, it grows.” The shells of snails, eaten in the rainy season, were burned to ashes, used to help preserve corn, while leftover palm leaves were used for weaving crafts. “Nothing goes to waste,” Jose added, with even the family stove built from ashes, patched up every now and then to keep it sturdy.

Belize, past and present

Every year, archaeological wonders and ancient ruins draw the curious to Central and South America. Belize is home to spectacular sites of its own, perhaps chief among them being Xunantunich - a Mayan city that continued to flourish even as much of the empire dwindled.

Xunantunich is home to a number of important religious and astronomical structures, its crowning glory being El Castillo; an intricately-carved stone pyramid that remains one of the highest buildings in the country. Scaling a collection of steep staircases will quickly get you to the top, where you can look out over the pristine jungles of Guatemala and Western Belize as far as the eye can see, following in the footsteps of those who stood there centuries before.

The wider city area was thought to have once been home to up to 15 thousand people, our guide Gershwin told us, and new things were still being discovered. But far from being all royal celebrations, and solstices, the ‘city of the stone lady’ is only its modern name - one that comes with a haunted history.

Since the 1800s, people stumbling across the site have seen the spirit of a woman dressed all in white, he said. She was often spotted around El Castillo, and some even dared to follow her up its perilous heights, only for her to turn away, disappearing into thin air.

But barely a stone’s throw from the ruins, you can find signs pointing to Belize’s bright future - one just as exciting as its illustrious and storied past. A prime example is the San Antonio Women’s Group in the Cayo district, which not only focuses on helping local women and young people learn traditional crafts like embroidery, pottery, and cooking, but has opened the experience up to travellers.

Here you can try your hand at pottery, in a studio where years of work have been put in behind the scenes to “revive our art”, recreating traditional pigments and glazing methods with the help of an archaeologist. Or you can try making corn tortillas from scratch for a mouth-watering sit-down meal cooked by some lovely local ladies (or just enjoy them fresh with a little coconut oil and salt).

But be warned; grinding and shaping your own flatbread isn’t as easy as it looks. “If it puffs up, that’s how you know it’s a good tortilla,” the group’s founder, Timotea, said, effortlessly flipping the purple disks on the hot clay stove - a manoeuvre that’d be sure to leave me with burns if I tried it.

She started the cooperative back in 2001, with the goals of both preserving the culture and empowering local women to become financially independent. Handicrafts are sold in a small shop onsite with the money going back to their creators, and the pottery is now making a splash at nearby hotels and restaurants.

It’s the very epitome of what makes Belize so special, and so worth seeing for yourself. A vibrant and beautiful place, as diverse in landscape as it is people, with a real focus on uplifting and connecting communities. A welcoming celebration of nature and history everywhere you go, from verdant rainforest, to ancient ruin, to sparkling sea.

Although there are currently no direct flights from the UK to Belize, you can get there easily by transiting through major US travel hubs. You can fly from London Gatwick, Heathrow, or City airports to Atlanta, Newark, Houston, or Miami, then on to Belize City. Return flights from London Heathrow to Belize City (via Atlanta), start from £571 with Delta. To book, you can visit their website here.