Not to miss

Ambergris Caye

Coconut-palm-fringed Ambergris Caye comes with one big recommendation: it's the island that Madonna sings of in 'La Isla Bonita'. Located 58km (36mi) north of Belize City, it's awash with colorful, sandy streets and offers sun-drenched days, filled with activity, by turquoise seas.

Belize City

Belize City's urban scenery is not just odorous old canals and grungy slums. There's also handsome colonial houses, seaside parks, bustling shopping areas and sailboats bobbing at the mouth of Haulover Creek. Walking the city's streets can be very hot, and occasionally threatening, but never dull.

No longer the political capital, Belize City is still home to a quarter of the nation's population. A haven for creative minds, boasting the best of Belizean arts and entertainment, shops and restaurants, it's also the perfect base to explore the country's stunning ancient and natural wonders.

Belize Zoo

This popular and well-maintained zoo is set in natural forest and boasts more than 100 native animals including jaguars, pumas, ocelots, monkeys, crocodiles, tapirs, scarlet macaws and one magnificent harpy eagle - many of which were orphaned, injured or confiscated from illegal activity. One of the zoo's goals is to make Belizeans value their native wildlife.

When filmmaker Richard Foster shot a wildlife documentary, Path of the Raingods, in Belize in the early 1980s, Sharon Matola - a Baltimore-born biologist, former circus performer and former US Air Force survival instructor - was hired to take care of the animals. When filming was over, she was left wondering what to do with her 17 charges. So she founded the Belize Zoo.

Caracol

Once one of the most powerful cities in the entire Mayan world, Caracol now lies enshrouded by thick jungle near the Guatemalan border. Sitting high on the Vaca Plateau, 503m (1650ft) above sea level, internal causeways worm outwards from the center, which was once a bustling place of temples, palaces, thoroughfares, craft workshops and markets.

Caracol is the largest Mayan site in Belize, having stretched possibly 70 sq km (43 sq mi) at its peak around AD 650. Having no natural water source, the people of Caracol dug artifical reservoirs to catch rainwater and grew food on extensive agricultural terraces.

Altun Ha

Settled around 200 BC, Altun Ha was a rich Mayan trading and agricultural town with a population of possibly 10,000 at its peak. The Temple of the Green Tomb held a priest-king dating from around AD 600, and the Temple of the Masonry Altars, depicted on Belikin beer labels, takes its name from altars on which copal was burned and jade smashed in sacrifice.

Altun Ha flourished until about AD 900, when the Classic Mayan civilization mysteriously collapsed. The entire site once covered 607 ha (1500 acres) - what visitors see today is the central ceremonial precinct of two plazas surrounded by temples, excavated in the 1960s and now looking squeaky clean.