Cultural

Toledo district offers the best of both worlds. Visitors can explore the Mayan and Garifuna cultures inland or just as easily go out to sea for snorkelling, diving, fishing or manatee watching.

The lodge is a licensed tour operator and runs its own inland tours and works with

Carefully selected partners for sea trips.We group our tours under the broad headings of Culture, Nature and Adventure indicating the primary focus of each one. In reality they contain aspects of all three.

Prices vary depending upon whether you want to tour inland or at sea and how many individual tours you want to include in a day. This is normally two or three.

Our cultural tours offer authentic experiences of the Mayan and Garifuna cultures and Mayan archaeology. Toledo is the center of cacao (cocoa) production with most of its product being exported for manufacture as Green & Blacks Maya Gold organic chocolate, the first Fairtrade product in the UK in 1994. Ixcacao is a local Mayan chocolatier.
Our full day trips can combine two or three different tours in a day.

Our cultural experiences include visiting the ancient Mayan Ruins Toledo Belize — Lubaantun and Nim Li Punit, both within 20 minutes of the lodge.

The Living Mayan Experience

The Living Maya Experience in Big Falls consists of two interactive cultural home visits that offer guests a fascinating glimpse into a fast disappearing world in which the local Kek’chi Maya depended upon the forest and found everything in it to satisfy their needs from food to furniture to medicine. The Cal family showcase a Mayan home as it would have been fifty years ago and guests help prepare and share a vegetarian meal with the family

Chocolate Making Mayan Chocolate

Chocolate Making Mayan Chocolate is the only Maya chocolatier in Toledo and one of only two in Belize. Visits include a tour of the cacao grove and a demonstration of and a chance to practice basic chocolate making. If you visit at lunch time they offer meals that include their own delicious mole sauce. Vegetarians are catered for.

Local Market

A morning trip to Punta Gorda on market day gives guests the opportunity to experience the fruit, vegetable and fish markets. You will see an array of seasonal fruit and vegetables and can watch the fishermen unloading their catch and buy fresh from the traders. Cotton Tree chocolate factory offers free tours around their small production facility. Guatemalan traders offer handicrafts and the Fajina women’s co-operative displays locally made Mayan crafts.

Nim Li Punit Maya Site

Nim Li Punit visitor centre houses the finest collection of Mayan stelae in Belize. These recount the history of war and conquest in the area. It sits atop a hill with views over the coastal forest all the way to the cayes of the Port Honduras Marine Reserve.

Lubaantun Maya Site

Lubaantun is a Late Classic site flourishing between 700-900 AD. Lubaantun is most famous for the discovery of the Crystal Skull there in 1924, for its distinctive masonry techniques and its clay whistles (ocarinas)

Warasa Garifuna Drum School

Ronald Ray McDonald provides interactive lessons in traditional Garifuna drumming, dancing, drum making and culture.