Wheelchair accessible tours in Belize City

Any suggestions for accessible tours in Belize City? We're heading there on Splendour of the Seas in December 2005, but wanted to get some preliminary information.

ahawton@rep.scdsb.on.ca

R. Aubrey Hawton

There isn't much to see in Belize City and to my knowledge, there are no truly accessible tours in Belize. However, we found Altun Ha is reasonably accessible when we were in Beize last April. Its a long drive, partially because you have to go very slow for the last 10 miles because the road is terrible. The driver gave us a tour of different parts of the city in each direction.

Throughout Altun Ha there are hard dirt paths most of which could be traversed by a wheelchair. Tohere is a slope to get to the site. Pushing up the slope and through out the site was not too dificult except when the path became rocky or full of roots. The driver helped me at when I needed it at first and then took over pushing my husband's chair.

We found Altun Ha interesting, but not as interesting as Dzibulchan which we visited while in Progresso a few days later. It certainly is worth a visit if you like archaeology.

You might want to check I think you will be tendering into Belize. We went several years ago on the NCL Sun. And a lot of times they suggest that you don't get onto a tender. We did Booked a car and driver through the cruise line to take us around and to the zoo.Now my husdand is adventurous but when we saw the tender rocking and rolling we opted not to go. Even though we would loose the money we paid for the excursion. NCL did give us our money back which they didn't have to. Hopefully they have built a dock. We will be returning in 06. or maybe the water won't be so rough this time. I hear Belize is beautiful.

One of the potential replacement stops for Grand Cayman was Belize so I looked into a few things for my mom. One of the things we considered was Altun Ha ruins with Mark McField. His e-mail is markmcf@BTL.net He is an archeologist who gives tours of the ruins around Belize and seems very knowledgeable. There were several good postings about him in the Belize section of the board. When I contacted him, he said that the paths through Altun Ha are well-packed dirt so provided it didn't rain, the wheelchair could get around fairly easily. There are a few places where a second person might be needed for pushing. Mr. McField has a van that he uses for the tours, but it does not have a lift. The person would need to transfer into the van (front seat is easiest) either on their own or with assistance. The chair could be folded and placed in the back until needed. I can't remember now exactly what he quoted per person, but I think it was around $25 each.

Please note that this is all second-hand information since we ended up going to Costa Maya instead. I think we would have preferred Belize since there is nothing accessible in Costa Maya.