sufing in Belize

My daughter and her husband are talking about moving to Belize - anyone know if there's any surf there?

http://www.wannasurf.com/spot/Central_America/Belize/index.html

Seems there are some spots.

But the pacific would certainly be better!

great for kiteboarding. Longest barrier reef in the atlantic, so you need a boat to get out there. additionally it is usually on shore and with a fairly small swell window so you don’t really get tradewind swell. I am sure it has it’s days, but I would not plan a trip there to surf. I love Belize, definitely an awesome place to go visit.

Belize is just like Cancun surf wise....you'll get waves but NOT very often, It's more of a rare treat, than the norm. You think Florida sucks for surf....just wait,   That barrier reef mentioned above is the the second largest to the Great Barrier reef. It basically starts at the Club Med in Cancun, and runs to Hounduras Bay.....something like 500 miles?  It's a live reef meaning it's got those stag horn and fire coral pungy sticks for end section close out barrels. Get scraped by that shit any your scrubbing the wound with Clorox, Acetone, Spic an Span, and a wire brush.  Combine this with maybe waist to chest high surf at best....and you got a trip to the ER.

Bring a fishing pole and some free diving gear, Belize is such a fantastic place for fishing & diving that you'll forget about surfing.   The inner bays are loaded with Snook & Tarpon, and just offshore they get everything from mahi, billfish, BIG Amber jack,tuna, and Grooooupa!

If they don't bite, put the camo wetsuit on..fins and a mask ...grab the spear and go kill something...........goodtime for all, except the fish.

Or drive over the hill...avoiding Contras, freedom fighting rebels, Drug Smugglers, CIA operatives, and religious geeks....and go surfing at  Santalotinous de la  para patenduturasitas bahia del norte.

Plenty to do...forget about surfing.

I was there in December and what everyone else has said is basically the deal.  Live reef and mostly wind chop.  I asked just about every local tour guide and fisherman I met about surfing there and every single one said, “Yah mon (they speak a creole style dialect/accent) plenty of waves but no where to land”.  We snorkeled out by the reef and as far as diving and snorkeling they have some of the best.  Of course my eyes were always drifting to the reef to see what it looked like.  Trade winds blow up maybe a waist high wave.  The guides told me it does get bigger.  After some more digging  I was able to find out about a key hole in the barrier reef and a dead section of reef that alow for a surf spot off one of the Cayes.  I beleive there is a resort on that Caye that brings their guest out there to kayak on the wave.  You have to remember though that these Cayes are only accessible by boat and they are far from each other.  There is a serious time and expense committment to searching out what few waves there might be.  What you find will likely not be worth the effort.  On a high note, what everyone else said is true.  Belize is beautiful, the people are very friendly, and there is plenty of other fun stuff to do there.  I highly recommend a stay on Caye Caulker or Ambergris Caye. And… it’s just a quick plane ride to some great Central America surf spots.  If you’ll have family living there you could always use it as a staging point to get to Nic, Costa, El Sal, Panama.

It comes down to, are there any hurricanes in the pipe.

 

 

Ahhh Belize . . . One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is how muddy, brown and nasty the water is on the mainland beaches.  A lot of rivers dump into the Caribbean there and the coastline is covered in trash, human waste, and dead animals of all types.  The beautiful Belize beaches in the catalogs are all island locations - some small, some not, but all accessible at a cost.  Essentials costs close to the same as they here in the states. 

Oh yeah, besides those live reefs and long boatrides in questionable craft captained some guy in his early 20’s who’s stoned out of his mind, there are huge saltwater crocodiles everywhere.  I got a very close look at one on Tobacco Caye while wading in the water chest deep fishing.  Couldn’t figure out why the snapper quit biting until I saw that floating log near me start to paddle and then dive! 

There are also guys that call themselves ‘rangers’ who hop from island to island after the commuter boats have dropped off all the tourists.  They carry plenty of firearms and demand $20 or so from each and every person on the island (except for the locals) for reef preservation.  If you don’t pay it you go to jail (or so they say).  If you’re caught walking on any reef, living or dead (dry and exposed). You get a mandatory $1500 fine.  Funny thing is,  all the dry and exposed reef I saw was not preserved at all and covered in trash of all types.  Those guys weren’t too amused when I pointed that out to them while grudgingly handing over the cash.

I hate to put a negative spin on the place, but those are the realities I experienced related to the beaches there.  The locals I met were all friendly and helpful.  The food was pretty good as was the local transportaion (old school buses).  The best time I had there was a couple weeks spent camping in the Cockscomb Jaguar Preserve.  San Ignacio was also a fun few days before crossing into Guatemala, which is a completely different world all together.  

They might want to check it out first - stay there for a couple months and see what’s up.  If they decide to just pick up and move there, they may want to invest in some of the locally available coping supplements - namely  da “Belize Breeze” mon, and mehbee a lil’ of dah “White Lightning”.   Don teef de reef mon!

 

 

Cockscomb and BEFREE if you can get in with a research group are AMAZING. I don’t know what you are talking about experiencing with having difficult access to the sea side of the reefs. The guides are incredibily knowledge and go through a fair amount of education, the know much more than the average american so unless you are a Dr. level in whatever field you are going to inquire about in their world, you will be impressed. firearms in Belize are not prevelent unless you are from the nutso state of California where BB guns carry a life sentence

No difficulty accessing the reefs, only having thugs with shotguns and automatic weapons robbing me.  They obviously were not legitimate guides, rangers, conservationists, etc.  Yet, when I asked the locals about them nobody wanted to say anything.  To me, any firearm is prevalent when it’s a determining factor in how I communicate with another human being.  If the guys weren’t packing I’d tell them they only get the $20 after they get their lazy asses out on that reef and load thier boat with those rusty refigerators, empty gas cans, random chunks of foam,metal and wood, plastic bottles, nets & rope, etc.