Budget Your Trip: Belize

By Connected Horizons

Belize is definitely not a budget-friendly destination for those deciding to visit the country for a little or long while. The absence of hostels in most cities/towns and the high transport price will make your budget levitate but as usual cooking most of your food will save you a good penny.

Here follows a collection of our budget experience during our one-month roadtrip throughout Belize. We tried putting together a comprehensive guide to help you organize your trip from the start. Just choose your budget and go with it!


1# Accomodation Cost

Finding the right budget accomodation can be hard in Belize but choosing carefully your destination can definitely lower the costs of your stay.

In certain areas such as San Ignacio, Caye Caulker, Dangriga & Hopkins, where hostels have appeared recently expect to pay at least an average of 15-20BLZ per bed (c.a. 10$) for a bed in a dorm and 60-80BLZ for a private room.

In Orange Walk there is currently just one but awesome hostel (read our post about it!) which offers very affordable rates for sleeping either in a tent (provided), a simple double room or a bigger apartment (20, 35 & 55BLZ).

Differently, finding cheap accomodation in other big cities such as Belmopan, Belize City or Punta Gorda can be quite challenging so opting for Couchsurfing will work beautifully (if not, cheap “decent” hotels have rates starting from 50BLZ).


2# Food & Eating Out

Differently to the accomodation costs, eating cheap in Belize is way easier than expected. Although the common main dish a.k.a chicken/pork, white or bean rice & banana chips usually has a price range of 5-10BLZ from a street vendor, the option of cooking remain the best budgeting option.

Luckily, in Belize there are plentiful of Chinese supermarket selling many groceries at an affordable price and cheap veggies/fruit can be easily picked up at the local market for even less.

Whereas, normal restaurants would have main dishes going at 15-20BLZ, in places on the coast expect to pay a little higher for any fresh fish plate (especially if ordering lobster).

Beers and drinks are also quite expensive so expect to pay at least 2$ per beer and triple that for a good cocktail.

Overall, consider to spend something in-between 7-15$ per day on food if eating out on a budget or less than 10$ if you’re cooking most of your meals.


3# Transport & moving around

Moving around Belize can also be quite expensive even if you’re planning on using just public “chicken” buses.

In general, try to keep in mind that the fare of a chicken bus could be roughly rounded to 2US$/1hr of travel e.g. short one-hour Corozal-Orange Walk costs 4BLZ & a long three-hour journey Belize City-Dangriga goes for 13BLZ.

Taxis are very expensive all throughout the country with 30-40BLZ being the normal fare for just a 15min ride.

On small islands such as Caye Caulker, bicycles can be rented quite easily (20BLZ/full day) otherwise taking one of the many golf carts riding around can also be relatively cheap (4-5BLZ/per ride).

Renting a car in a group can sometimes be a good (& cheap) option for covering many places covered by tour operators but not by public transport; expect to pay 150BLZ/day for a 7-seat minivan or 70BLZ for a good off-road.


4# Tours & Day-Trips

Most of the guided tours offered throughout Belize are very expensive and can be easily done without a guide. For example, a self-guided trip within the Cockscomb Basin National Park is super easy as trails are well marked and hiking is relatively easy to do.


Another example could be a trip to Caracol Ruins in San Ignacio for which renting a car and just driving to the ruins is the cheapest and simplest option. Nevertheless, there are a couple of guided tours which bring you in places unreachable with your own means and here’s a short list of them.

Full Day – Boat Trip to Lamanai ——> 40$
Full Day – Self-guided trip to Caracol Ruins ——> 20$
Full Day – Tour of ATM Caves ——> 70-90$
Full Day – Snorkelling in Hol-Chan Reserve ——> 55$


Final Thoughts

Even before crossing into Belize, everybody we met depicted the country as one of the most budget-unfriendly countries of Central America. However, travelling as a couple and cooking the majority of our meals reduced a lot our costs.

Truth to be told, during our roadtrip throughout the country we didn’t gift any travelling “luxury” at all thinking that the final day average would have been at a decent level but it ended up still being higher than expected. It was definitely worth every last penny but budgeting a trip here will be harder for everybody, especially solo-travellers.

The final budget for Belize was 100BLZ/day for the both of us and it was broken down into the following:

Food & Eating out – 27.1BLZ (11.70€)

Accomodation – 30.8BLZ (13.30€)

Transport & Moving Around – 20.15BLZ (8.70€)

Tours & Day Trips – 14.7BLZ (6.30€)

Extras – 7.25BLZ (3.10€)

TOTAL – 100BLZ/day (43.1€)


PLANNING A TRIP TO BELIZE? CHECK MORE GUIDES BELOW!


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