Belize

Let me be direct: you do not go to Belize for the beach. The beach is not the point. The beach is fine in the way that a parking lot is fine. It gets you where you need to go. You go to Belize to get in the water and see the reef, which is the best in the Western Hemisphere and genuinely worth the trip.

Ambergris Caye is supposedly the most tourist-friendly, most cosmopolitan part of the country. As a gay couple, we still toned it down. Longer shorts than I'd normally wear, no PDA. It wasn't hostile, but the calculation was there. That's the friendliest part.

The food was decent. The chaos of Fourth of July week added a particular energy that I wouldn't recommend.

Transportation on the island (technically almost-an-island, there's a sliver of land connecting it to Mexico at the north) is exclusively golf carts. And I mean exclusively. No cars, no taxis, just golf carts driven by people who have completely abandoned any relationship with traffic laws. It is the most unsafe method of transportation I have ever experienced, and I say that having used it repeatedly because there is no alternative.

Getting there deserves its own paragraph. To reach Ambergris Caye you take a tiny prop plane (think 8 seats, flown by someone who appears to have just gotten their learner's permit) on a 25 minute flight from Belize City. Simple enough in theory. In practice, they could not get us on the same flight. After a considerable amount of negotiating, they put my partner on one plane and me on a later one. Both planes made multiple stops at different airstrips before reaching San Pedro, like a flying bus route. We arrived separately, frazzled, and immediately needed to get in the water.

Go for the reef. Manage your expectations on everything else. Would I go back? It's low on the list. Very low.