Belize beyond the Blue Hole

The one question everyone asked when I mentioned I was going to Belize? When (not if) I’d visit the Blue Hole, as if it was inconceivable I’d leave without checking out its famous dive site. In reality, the spots I had my eye on were ones most people I spoke to hadn’t heard of: Xunantunich, a Mayan archaeological site with plaster friezes, and the so-called Ceremonial Cave – an enormous cavern filled with evidence of human sacrifice. And bugs and minibeasts – the weirder, the better, in my view. I wasn’t disappointed.

On my first night at Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge, in the foothills of central Belize’s forested Maya mountains, I find a praying mantis waving at me from my toilet’s U-bend. A foot-long stick insect takes up position above my bed and, by night time, my patio is a minefield of multicoloured frogs, cooling their damp tummies on the wet concrete. I watch as a syrup-like swarm of ants devours what I thought was a leaf, but turns out to be a still-twitching katydid, an insect with an uncanny resemblance to a sprig of greenery.

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The guide for my jungle trek is Pedro, a weathered local who’s taught survival skills to the Belize Defence Force. I tell him about my fear of ticks. “It’s the fer-de-lance you need to watch out for,” he replies, explaining that one of these deadly snakes recently killed his horse. “And the mosquitoes,” he adds, pointing to his jawline and explaining that the missing chunk of flesh was caused by leishmaniasis – a particularly nasty, mosquito-borne infection.

The plant life is equally weird and wonderful. My favourite specimens include what Pedro refers to as the cheese straw plant, due to the floppy tendrils inside its main stalk, and a towering kapok tree. Its moniker, tree of life, stems from the Mayan belief that its roots connect to the underworld. Pedro’s nemesis is a thorn-covered plant he refers to as the “bastard palm”, closely followed by poisonwood trees. “Their sap burns through skin in seconds,” Pedro says, tapping one disdainfully with his machete. Suddenly ticks look rather tame.

The Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge sits in the heart of a huge chunk of wilderness open only to guests, and its piece de resistance is the Ceremonial Cave. After an hour-long trek through thick jungle, I pause at the cathedral-sized entrance to don my helmet and head torch, ducking as bats flit through the morning mist. It takes an entire hour to hike from the cave’s entrance to its most important spot, the altar – a smooth, flat stone where locals were once sacrificed by Mayan priests, an honour that guaranteed a bountiful afterlife. En route we pass tower block-sized flowstones and bright white curtains of calcite. My guide asks me to flick off my torch so I can appreciate the lack of light, and as I near the 60-second point, it becomes a battle of wills, the final 10 seconds spent with my trigger finger on my torch as I recall the scorpion I’d spotted earlier.

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The hike back to the cave’s entrance takes even longer, partly because of the human remains we must navigate – previous floods have scattered the bones of those sacrificed. My guide points to a skull poking out of the dirt, explaining its position by describing how it’s to the left of a jawbone, right of a fibula. I also spot my first scorpion spider – a huge monster with fearsome pincers.

There’s more wildlife at the archaeological site of Xunantunich – scaly, statue-like iguanas basking on the main temple’s oven-warm stone steps, oblivious to our presence. The sprawling archaeological site is believed to date back to AD 700, and it’s just 6km from Guatemala – hence the theory that it served as a satellite city to the ancient Guatemalan city of Tikal. The top of the main temple is a fantastic spot to enjoy uninterrupted views of Guatemala’s hills.

I spend my final days making the most of Belize’s diversity, basing myself at the beachfront Lodge at Jaguar Reef, near the wonderfully wild, big cat-filled Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. I explore it on firefly-flecked night treks led by a ranger whose office is a Dr Doolittle-style chamber of wonders, complete with a formaldehyde-filled vase containing a fer-de-lance, whose frozen fangs are pressed against the glass. Afterwards, I cool off with a surreal swim in a bioluminescent lagoon connected to the Sittee River. I even succumb to a spot of snorkelling after I convince my guide to take me to a local dive spot, despite the waterlogged sky. And it’s worth it – within seconds I see an enormous manta ray, gliding along like a king-sized duvet, and a beady-eyed eel, slinking out of sight beneath sprigs of scarlet coral. Sadly, the storm clouds are gathering and I’m forced to beat a retreat. As I bounce across the choppy waves, I vow to return to experience more of Belize’s panoply of wildlife. Who knows? One day I might even make it to the Blue Hole.

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American Airlines flies from London Heathrow to Belize (Ladyville’s Philip SW Goldson International Airport) via Miami.

Doubles at the Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge from £159. thebelizecollection.com/sleeping-giant

Visit travelbelize.org for more information.