Belize, a tiny, democratic, English-speaking country—the former British Honduras—remains an excellent vacation destination. While the interior offers rainforests, Mayan sites, bird-watching, river canoeing, and cave-exploring, the coast has beach resorts and world-class diving; Belize has the largest barrier-reef in our hemisphere, the second largest in the world after Australia’s. For general travel information: www.travelbelize.org or www.lonelyplanet/belize.com. For coastal travel: www.amerbriscaye.org.

The hotel where we stayed, Chaa Creek, has expanded to 23 rooms and now has its own stable and a pool but seems, from its website, to have successfully preserved its rustic charm:  www.chaacreek.com.

Our family took many trips through Equitour, with uniformly wonderful results: www.horseridingtours.com.

topics: family, travel