Disappointed in San Ignacio, Belize

There are two main reasons to visit San Ignacio, Belize. The first is to visit the Mayan ruins in the area with the main one being Xunantunich, and a lesser one being Cahal Pech. The second reason is its proximity to the Guatemalan border, and Tikal (one of the largest Mayan ruins). To get to San Ignacio, we flew from San Pedro to Belize City on Tropic Air, and then arranged for a driver to take us to San Ignacio. The drive is about 2 hours long. The first order of business was lunch. I asked for a local lunch but our guide took us to what seemed to be a more tourist oriented spot. He explained that they were hesitant to bring tourists to “real” local spots due to the risk of food poisoning. Anyway, the place he took us to was called Hode’s Place. It was ok.

On our way to San Ignacio, our driver told us that we could not visit Xunantunich, but that Cahal Pech was still a go. This was disappointing news. The reason we could not visit Xunantunich was because in order to access the site, you need to cross a river which is done via manually operated ferry. Apparently, the ferry had broken down and this happens once in a while. Cahal Pech was not impressive. Its a pretty small site and the ruins are not grand.

However, one cool thing about the site is that some of the colors on the ruins are still intact. This is something I have not seen before at other sites.

We also took a brief walk around the city of San Ignacio. Nothing really worth seeing. After that, our driver took us to our hotel – The Lodge Chaa Creek. This is probably the best option in the area. There are a lot of activities on site, but unfortunately, we arrived in the afternoon and a lot of them were done for the day. We did go for a nice hike to the river. Here is a tour of the room:

A couple notes about the place:

• its located about 20 minutes from San ignacio
• there are no TVs in the room or phones
• after a certain time, there is no front desk or other staff, only security
• if you need anything afterhours, there is a radio in the concierge’s office to call security (they say it has never been used)
• there is no key to lock the room

We had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, which consisted of four courses:

I was so glad to see salbutes on the menu as these are my favorite dish from Belize. The best I had was at El Fogon in San Pedro.

This was followed by a corn salad:

The mains – tacos and tamalitos:

Then dessert:

Breakfast was also included but we left so early the next morning that we did not take it. From the hotel, the Guatemalan border is about 30 minutes. Note that the border is only open during certain times (I think it opens at 6AM but you should double check). Our guide recommended going early to avoid long lines and to maximize our time at Tikal. We were first in line when we arrived. If you need Guatemalan currency (Quetzals), there is a guy at the door who will do FX with USD. Our guide basically guided us through the exit process on the Belize side, then the pre-arranged Guatemalan guide took over from there, and walked us through the entry process on the Guatemalan side.

Overall, San Ignacio itself is not that interesting if Xunantunich is closed. If that is the case, you could skip it all together and just cross into Guatemala. If Guatemala is not on your list, then you could check out other areas of Belize instead (we did not go, but according to some of our guides, there are some places in the south, along the coast, that are worth checking out.