Tours Package
Tours in Toledo and southern Belize:
Nature, culture and adventure
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.
Chocolate & NatureLovers
Belize is truly “Mother Nature’s Best Kept Secret!” With a population of around 350,000 and around 40% of its land area under protected status, Belize is a hidden gem in Central America. Sparsely populated and ethnically diverse, the country is rich in natural wonders from the barrier reef and coastal cayes to the Maya Mountains and inland rainforest.
The southern district of Toledo is the Mayan heartland of Belize and the traditional center for growing cocoa (cacao). The Tanager Rainforest Lodge is centrally located in the Toledo District and is the ideal base from which to explore this unspoiled area of Central America. Wake up each morning to tropical sounds and finish each day with a delicious three course meal. All dinner options will include a Chocolate infused dish.
Day 1. Arrival at Philip Goldson International (BZE) airport in Belize City. Transfer to Tropic Air for the one hour flight from Belize City to the coastal fishing town of Punta Gorda, which is also the Toledo district capital. Here you will be met and transferred 20 miles to the Lodge. On arrival enjoy a welcome rum cocktail and settle into the Lodge.
Day 2. Begin the day with an early-morning guided bird walk around the Lodge property and through our gardens where you can spot colorful tanagers, orioles, toucans, trogons, parrots, parakeets and many other exotic species. Around mid-morning head to the traditional Mayan home where you will experience authentic Maya culture. Our Mayan staff are eager to share with you the way in which the Maya lived and how they used the plants, trees and herbs for housing, furniture, food and medicine. This is also where we have lunch today and you will have a chance to make your own tortillas and taste some of the local produce and enjoy a cacao drink from a calabash gourd. Later in the afternoon enjoy the lodge pool and gardens or take a tube and enjoy a leisurely float around the meandering river that surrounds the lodge. After dinner join your knowledgeable tour guide for a night hike on the property. You will come across various animals including birds along the trails.
Day 3. We begin the day with a short ride 15 minutes away to the Belize Spice Farm. The farm produces commercial quantities of vanilla, cardamom and black pepper. They have dozens of species of Belizean fruits and nuts and many other spices like nutmeg and cinnamon which the guide will talk about and offer sample tastings. After the tour, lunch is planned at nearby Pearleen’s café, which offers a delicious, daily Belizean buffet with rice, beans, chicken, pork, cohune cabbage (heart of palm cooked in turmeric), calllaloo, fried plantain and other dishes. After lunch saddle up for a ride on the trails along the bend of the Rio Grande river and explore the tropical jungle with your knowledgeable guide. If you rather not ride, we can arrange a special horse drawn buggy ride through a jungle road full of birds and monkeys.
Day 4. This morning, with your guide, explore the Mayan archaeological site of Lubaantun where the crystal skull was discovered in 1924 by Anna Mitchell-Hedges who, as a teenager, was accompanying her father Frederick, an adventurer explorer. This magical site is beautifully preserved with a wonderful ambiance and few other travelers. From the ruins site, drive through the Mayan villages to the Rio Blanco National Park where you will enjoy a picnic lunch and can jump from the rocks into the deep pool below the waterfall. Cross the river on the cable bridge and trek the jungle trail that loops through the surrounding forest, keeping an eye out for small mammals and birds. In the afternoon, you have option of exploring nearby Tiger cave, kayaking, walking the property gardens or enjoying lawn games on the property.
Day 5. Travel to Blue Creek village for a hike to the Blue Creek cave before experiencing a Mayan meal and Chocolate making. This beautiful creek, is often full of pools and small waterfall to enjoy before entering the cave all the way back to the small waterfalls inside the cave. After the hiking and caving, enjoy a great Mayan meal before experiencing a full chocolate making experience. Learn how Chocolate is made from the bean pod and how wonderful it tastes at different levels . This if often a full day tour, but if there is time, we will try to visit the Mayan site of Nim Li Punit. It is perched on a hilltop overlooking the coastal forest and cayes beyond. The site has the largest collection of carved stelae in Belize that tell the story of the civilization that occupied the site over several hundred years. It is also a great place for birding among the large forest trees that have grown among the ruins.
After a full day of exploring and Chocolate making, relax on the property before going to the dinner experience.
Day 6. Breakfast and departure.
Birds of southern Belize:
3 & 4 night packages
Each morning begins with a bird walk beginning at around 06:00 and lasting a couple of hours. On your first morning explore the lodge property itself comprising as it does orchard and meadow, secondary growth forest and riparian habitat along the mile of river that winds around the lodge. Another morning will begin with a visit to Nim Li Punit Mayan site six miles north of the lodge in Indian Creek village. The site has mature second growth broadleaf forest. Groups of Keel-billed Toucans (up to twenty-four) are often seen there along with a range of woodpeckers, woodcreepers, warblers, becards, trogons, motmots and more.
On a third morning travel up to the savannah grasslands twenty miles north of Big Falls and enjoy birding on the savannah with the Maya Mountains rising in front of you to the west and sun rising over your shoulders from the Caribbean. On request, we take guests 50 miles north to Red Bank village to observe the Scarlet Macaws that are around from December to March before retreating to more remote nesting grounds in the Maya mountains. They are a magnificent sight as they swoop in formation around the hillside with the sun catching and enhancing their brilliant plumage.
A late breakfast most mornings is followed by visits to all the different habitats described elsewhere on the site. You will visit Piedra Lagoon, Dump, Blue Creek, Rio Blanco National Park and the coast alongside Punta Gorda town, Lubaantun and Nim Li Punit Mayan sites and bird along the way as you move around the area.
The 4-day/3-night birding package is available for just US$1,084.38 per person sharing accommodation (double occupancy). The 5-day/4-night birding package is US$1,386.88 and includes accommodation and all meals, transfers to and from Punta Gorda, free use of the Lodge’s facilities including kayaks, guiding services on each day of your stay to different birding habitats. The price also includes entrance fees to sites as well as all government taxes and a service charge of 10% on accommodation and meals. Starts on any day of the week.
Mountains to Mangroves
In this 8-day/7-night birding package The Lodge at Big Falls partners with Hidden Valley Inn in the mountain pine ridge south of San Ignacio in the Cayo District. The package includes 4 nights at one resort and 3 nights at the other. Guests can choose where they want to begin and where they will spend the four nights or three. The two lodges offer complementary habitats and some species only found in that part of the country. The Lodge at Big Falls offers the Bare-crowned Antbird and the Black and White Owl. Hidden Valley Inn large numbers of King Vultures and Stygian Owl.
The package includes all accommodation, meals, tours with an expert local guide and transfers between the lodges and to and from Belize International Airport including one flight on Tropic Air between the airport and Punta Gorda.
US$2,750 per person double occupancy.
