Scott,

I have not stayed on mainland Belize, but I bet that's what you are after, inland is the rainforest/jungle, plantations, mayan ruins, then there is the ocean and you can take a ferry out to Ambergris Caye or Caye Caulker to walk around for the day. Go out on a boat to Shark/Ray alley and snorkle/dive on the reef with Sharks, Rays and tons of fish and coral. It is really great down there.
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I'm feeling it, Mike. It sounds awesome.
Dom is going to send me some books he has on Belize, hopefully I can find a place. Hamanasi is on the pricey side and it's not at all posh for the premium. The rooms are real nice, but we seldom see the inside of our room on an entire vacation. That kind of makes any room adequate.
I looked at a couple 11 acre island deals and stuff like that, but the reviews were all over the place. I'll find something even if we have to stay on Ambergris. Lisa might enjoy the shopping and dining part, but I'd rather visit the island than stay there.
I also found a couple well-equipped dive-oriented mainland places. I'll eyeball them some more later.
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http://www.hedonism.com/ :-)
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Cool Scott, I love it and I have been alot of vacation places. Cozumel, Dominican, Costa Rica, Bahamas it is a great laid back place :-)
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Mike reminded me that I had kind of abandoned this post.
I picked Belize. You guys talked me into it and Dom sent me tons of info, and that pretty much sealed it up.
I'm guessing we'll stay on Caye Caulker. I think it'll get us the authentic flavor we're looking for, and I should be able to get locals to hook us up on day trips snorkeling, diving, fishing, whatever.
I'm hoping to go around the end of January. We might even hold off until the first week of February. Lisa has surgery on her hand tomorrow and that should be fully healed in 6-8 weeks, so from the 3rd week in January on we should be good. I want to wait until everything is definately okay before I book, so with rates and flights and all, it might push us out farther into February, but that's fine by me.
If worse comes to worse we can go for a weekend in Key West to hold us over. :-)
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Caye Caulker is great, small and quaint :-) I may be on Ambergis in Jan. sometime, how awesome would it be to hook up and herf in Belize :-)
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That'd be sweet, Mike. :-)
It looks like we might be going early February now. It all depends on how well Lisa's hand heals up from surgery. I almost bought our tickets the night before her surgery, it's a good thing I didn't. She may not even have the cast off yet.
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When I went to Belize I did a cave tubing trip with http://www.cave-tubing.com/. We all had a blast!
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