Jaguar.; Shutterstock ID 317025812; Your name (First / Last): Alicia Johnson; GL account no.: 65050; Netsuite department name: Online Editorial ; Full Product or Project name including edition: Belize

Shutterstock / Yatra

Belize Zoo

Top choice


If most zoos are maximum-security wildlife prisons, then the Belize Zoo is more like a halfway house for wild animals that can't make it on the outside. A must-visit on any trip to Belize District, the zoo has many animals you're unlikely to see elsewhere – several tapirs (a Belizean relative of the rhino) including a baby, gibnuts, a number of coatimundi (they look like a cross between a raccoon and a monkey), scarlet macaws, white-lipped peccaries, pumas and many others.

But what really sets Belize Zoo apart is that the zoo itself – and in some cases, even the enclosures of individual animals – are relatively porous. This means that the wildlife you'll see inside enclosures are outnumbered by creatures who have come in from the surrounding jungle to hang out, eat, or – just maybe – swap tales with incarcerated brethren.

Among the animals you'll see wandering the grounds (aka 'free runners') are Central American agoutis (also called bush rabbits), huge iguanas, snakes, raccoons, squirrels and jungle birds of all sorts.Take a night tour (one of the best ways to experience Belize Zoo, as many of the animals are nocturnal) and you'll be just as likely to see a gibnut outside enclosures as in. You'll also be able to hear ongoing long-distance conversations between the zoo's resident black howler monkeys and their wild relatives just a few miles away.

The story of the Belize Zoo began with filmmaker Richard Foster, who shot a wildlife documentary entitled Path of the Raingods in Belize in the early 1980s. Sharon Matola – a Baltimore-born biologist, former circus performer and former US Air Force survival instructor – was hired to take care of the animals. By the time filming was complete, the animals had become partly tame and Matola was left wondering what to do with her 17 charges. So she founded the Belize Zoo, which displays native Belizean wildlife in natural surroundings on 29-acre grounds. From these beginnings, the zoo has grown to provide homes for animals endemic to the region that have been injured, orphaned at a young age or bred in captivity and donated from other zoos.

Many of the animals in Belize Zoo are rescue cases, that is, wild animals that were kept as pets by individual collectors. The zoo makes every attempt to recondition such animals for a return to the wild, but only when such a return is feasible. In cases where return is impossible (as is the case with most of the zoo's jungle cats, who have long since forgotten how to hunt, or never learned in the first place), they remain in the zoo: perhaps not the best life for a wildcat, but better than winding up in some closet.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby attractions

1. Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

1.55 MILES

A natural, privately protected area just off one of the country's main highways, this 1070-acre wildlife sanctuary and environmental education center…

2. Belize Central Prison

13.01 MILES

The 'Hattieville Ramada' (as it's called on the streets) is the only prison in Belize and, as such, it houses criminals of all stripes, from pickpockets…

3. Community Baboon Sanctuary

13.84 MILES

Since 1985, more than 200 landowners in seven villages northwest of Belize City have signed pledges to preserve the habitat of the black howler monkey,…

4. CBS Museum & Visitor's Center

13.86 MILES

In a newly constructed building, CBS Museum & Visitor's Center has a number of good exhibits and displays on the black howler, other Belizean wildlife and…

6. Belize Archives Department

15.83 MILES

This local history collection is mainly a reading room and research facility with computers for public use. You can stop by and chat with the researchers…

7. St Herman's Blue Hole National Park

16.15 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…

8. Guanacaste National Park

16.73 MILES

Belize's smallest national park was declared in 1990 and is named for the giant guanacaste tree on its southwestern edge. The tree survived the axes of…