Preface to my latest book, Lan Sluder's Guide to Belize

By Lan Sluder

It's hard for me to believe, but I have been reporting on Belize for more than a quarter century. I know that's not a long time in comparison with some old Belize hands, but will you forgive me for a little bit of nostalgia? The Belize I first visited in early 1991 was a very different place than it is now.

Back then, there were only two half-way decent roads in the country, the Northern and Western Highways (renamed now, but I'll probably never stop calling them by their old names). The Hummingbird Highway was nothing but a long but scenic haul of potholes and broken pavement. The Southern Highway was so bad, so full of washboards, that it literally shook my Ford Bronco until the engine quit. In the dry season, when a tractor trailer came by the dust was so thick you couldn't see 50 feet in front of you. In the rainy season, the road to Placencia would swallow even four-wheel-drive vehicles in mud. I don't know if there was even a single stop light in Belize City.
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There were some good hotels here and there - I still miss Four Fort Street Guesthouse and Colton House in Belize City and Skip White's old Turtle Inn in Placencia, among other places long gone - but back then you could count the number of hotel swimming pools in all of Belize on the fingers of your two hands. Now some resorts have three or four. Outside of Belize City, air conditioning was rare and usually something you paid extra for. Over the years, I've stayed at probably 250 to 300 different hotels, resorts, inns, lodges, fishing camps, villas, condotels, B&Bs and guesthouses in Belize. I bet I've stayed in more hotels in Belize than anybody else. That's something for some obscure record book.
Probably the biggest change I've seen in Belize has been the rise in upmarket hotels. Can you believe that many resorts in San Pedro, Hopkins, Placencia and Cayo are now charging US$400, $600 or even $1,000 or more a night? These rates don't include meals or the 9% hotel tax, and many properties are now charging a service charge, usually 10%, and an increasing number are adding a resort fee or administrative charge of around 5%. Belize now has many beautiful resorts and lodges, but who can afford them? I can't.

As a travel writer, you naturally make enemies. Your readers have to come first, and sometimes that means pointing out problems at lodging or restaurants or attractions. I'm not naturally tactful, so probably I have said things I shouldn't have. Sorry. Belizeans don't quickly forget slights, so I have made more than my share of people who do not like me very much. I do regret that.

Crime in Belize City was bad even back 25 or even, I'm told, 50 years ago. No place in Belize was safe from killing and tiefing. But, somehow, it didn't seem as bad as it does now, when kids with guns kill their neighbors for a few dollahs.

A lot of the great characters in Belize that I knew or at least knew of have passed now. Some of them were expatriates, some Belizeans by birth or inclination. Skip White, I mentioned. Colin Howell, who built an island lodge and then Lamanai Outpost Lodge. George Bevier of Rum Point. The amazing Emory King, of course, who was Belize's most famous expat. Bull Headley, the Florida lumberman who bought a piece of the Mountain Pine Ridge. Ken duPlooy. Sir Barry Bowen, a Belizean of many generations back. Peter Eltringham, who I believe was the best travel writer who ever covered Belize. Of course, the Right Honorable George Price. And lots of others, many of whom sadly I never met or hardly knew.

Our kids grew up traveling around Belize. I still have a photo of our daughter, Rose, beside some scrawny chickens at Altun Ha, before the cruise ship daytrippers started coming there. She was a toddler, hardly taller than the chickens scratching in the dirt. Long ago, our son, Brooks, and I went from San Ignacio to Tikal and climbed Temple IV, dodging a swarm of Africanized bees.

I suspect that this will be one of my last books on Belize. I've written 15 books on the country, mainly about travel and retirement. I'm not exactly burned out on Belize, just tired of doing the same things over and over again. Maybe I'll do a history of British Honduras or profiles of great Belizean characters, or something else. I've done other books of late, on the game of bridge, on my hometown of Asheville, N.C., and on vintage Rolls-Royce and Bentley motorcars. I have several more books in the hopper, a cookbook and a book on private eyes.

The world moves on, and so does Belize. Thank you for so many good times in the Jewel.

/s/Lan Sluder