We spent only a brief time in Belize, so I won’t go into too much detail about a country that we were only in for 10 days and can’t claim to be experts on. But we do know how much Belize cost us.
Route
Caye Caulker – 7 nights
San Ignacio – 3 nights
Visas
90 days free for most countries, though apparently Chinese and Indian nationals have to pay huge fees. There is a rather large departure tax of $37.50US for everyone.
Money
You may be confused in my Belize posts as I keep switching between BZD (Belize Dollars) and US Dollars. It’s not too confusing though as Belize dollars are pegged to US at a rate of 2:1, so $10US is $20BZD.
USD can be used absolutely everywhere as they are legal currency, so you don’t need to change to BZD. ATMs give out BZD only as far as I know. It can get confusing working out paying for things, especially if you pay in US and receive change in BZD for example – even a few shopkeepers had to stop and work this out.
Oh yeah, it was the first time we’d seen Queen Elizabeth on banknotes since we left the UK!
Budget
All costs for 2 people over 11 days
Accommodation – £217.06
Eating Out – £115.71
Attractions – £81.48
Groceries – £46.32
Misc – £26.72
Transport – £25.71
Coffee/Drinks/Snacks – £16.70
Alcohol – £5.01
Laundry – £2.67
Total – £538.05
Per Day – £48.91
The costs didn’t turn out as badly as expected in Belize, but this was from constantly being careful what we spent, and not eating as good quality or as many meals as we would usually. Still, we thought it would be a lot worse than it was.
Average Costs
Private Room – $74BZD
Dorm Bed – $22BZD
Simple meal at local restaurant – $9-15BZD
Local bus – $1-4BZD
Bottle of beer from shop – $3-4BZD
Bottle of Coke from shop – $1.25-2BZD
Bottle of Travellers rum (700ml) – $11BZD
It actually looks pretty cheap doesn’t it? Overall it really wasn’t too bad, although meals can be a lot more expensive than $15BZD. To be honest Belize isn’t expensive at all compared to the US or UK, but just a lot more so than Mexico or Central America.
The currency doesn’t help either, as we were always converting prices to USD then to £, when we should have just done them to £.
Food & Drink
The food was a mixture of Caribbean and Central American food. Rice and beans were very popular, as was grilled, fried or stewed chicken. There was also jerk chicken but I was sad that it was nothing like it’s Jamaican counterpart.
On Caye Caulker naturally there was loads of seafood – lobster, conch, prawns, various types of fish. But it did of course cost more.
Rum was cheap and average tasting, beer wasn’t cheap but not too expensive either. The strangest thing was the size of the bottles – between 275 and 239ml – really small for the price.
The featured image in this post uses a modified version of Belize City Tour by William Boncher licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Hey! Just wondering if you found 7 nights in Caye Caulker too long. I’m doing a 6 week trip and was considering 5 nights but I dont want to run out of things to do.. we have dive licenses so may spend one or two days diving. Any input would be great!
Hi Alana! Yes probably a little bit. It was fine as we were happy just chilling but 5 nights is probably more sensible.