Spanish Lookout & San Ignacio

We took a cab to the car rental office, near the airport, and got our 4x4. This was actually needed! The roads in Belize are terrible, and you absolutely need a 4x4 if you're planning to go by yourself to some sites. On our way to San Ignacio we stopped in Spanish Lookout, a Mennonite community.

Sometimes mistaken for Amish, Mennonites are members of Christian communities that originated in the XVI century with the Anabaptists in German and Dutch speaking parts of Europe. I guess we were aware that Spanish Lookout was more modern and open than other Mennonite communities, but we felt a bit disappointed to see that the village felt more like rural USA than anything else.

In any case, we had lunch at Sisters Diner followed by ice cream at Western Dairies, an important dairy manufacturer that has been around since 1967, and then we went to San Ignacio, where we had booked a little apartment with two rooms at Rainforest Haven Inn. We took the route that crosses the Belize River by hand-cranked ferry, which was fun.

We arrived in San Ignacio a bit after 4PM so we couldn't go to the Iguana Conservation Project, which was just hosting it's last tour of the day, so instead we just went to take a walk around town.

San Ignacio is a small, vibrant place with a bunch of restaurants and guesthouses. There's not that much to do in town, but it's an excellent base to go on activities around the area. In retrospective, we could have tried to fit something else on the way there, but it was still nice to take it easy.

We had a drink at a bar and then we went for dinner to Ko-Ox Han Nah, a well reviewed restaurant that offered some combination of Indian and Central American food and ended up being very good. The three of us had lamb dishes and the three of them were good. After dinner we just went back home.Read more