In the heart of the highland area southeast of San Ignacio, 200 sq miles of submontane pine forest forms the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve. The sudden switch from tropical rainforest to pine trees as you ascend to the Mountain Pine Ridge – a broad upland area of multiple ridges and valleys – is a little bizarre and somewhat startling.
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
15.39 MILES
Set on a leveled hilltop, Xunantunich (shoo-nahn-too-neech) is one of Belize's most easily accessible and impressive Maya archaeological sites. Getting…
16.94 MILES
Once one of the most powerful cities in the entire Maya world, Caracol now lies enshrouded by thick jungle near the Guatemalan border, a 52-mile, roughly…
Green Iguana Conservation Project
15.92 MILES
On the lush Macal Valley grounds of the San Ignacio Resort Hotel, this excellent program collects and hatches iguana eggs, raising the reptiles until they…
11.87 MILES
Barton Creek rises high in the Mountain Pine Ridge and flows north to join the Belize River near Georgeville. Along the way it dips underground for a…
15.6 MILES
High atop a hill about a mile south of San Ignacio, Cahal Pech is the oldest-known Maya site in the Belize River valley, having been first settled between…
St Herman's Blue Hole National Park
23.25 MILES
The 575-acre St Herman's Blue Hole National Park contains St Herman's Cave, one of the few caves in Belize that you can visit without a guide. The…
12.04 MILES
The magnificent Belize Botanic Gardens, accessed from the grounds of Sweet Songs Jungle Lodge, hold samples of roughly one-quarter of the approximately…
10.49 MILES
The García sisters display and sell a wide assortment of beautiful black-slate carvings. These five sisters developed this craft, which is now widely…
Nearby Cayo District attractions
3.18 MILES
Just off Chiquibul Rd, 2.5 miles north of Douglas D'Silva (Augustine), Río On Pools is a series of small waterfalls connecting pools that the river has…
3.68 MILES
In Douglas D'Silva (Augustine), on the way to or from Caracol, look for the signed turnoff to Río Frio Cave, less than 1 mile away. The river gurgles…
5.92 MILES
The small but powerful Big Rock Falls on Privassion Creek are, for many, more impressive than the Thousand Foot Falls – not least because you can get up…
6 MILES
The pools at tranquil Five Sisters Falls are only accessible to guests or diners at Gaïa River Lodge. A cable tram can take you down and back up.
7.23 MILES
Ten miles off Chiquibul Rd, the Thousand Foot Falls are reckoned to be the highest in Central America, a ribbon of water cascading down a mountainside…
9.02 MILES
William Morales' dog was busy chasing down a gibnut (small, brown-spotted rodent) on his lush property one day in 1989, when the dog seemingly disappeared…
10.47 MILES
Pacbitun, a small site, 12 miles south of San Ignacio via Cristo Rey Rd, near San Antonio, seems to have been occupied continuously through most of Maya…
10.49 MILES
The García sisters display and sell a wide assortment of beautiful black-slate carvings. These five sisters developed this craft, which is now widely…