Beautiful Belize! Visiting the Belize Zoo and Howler Monkey Sanctuary

If you have the opportunity to visit Belize you are fortunate! This beautiful country offers animal encounters you will never forget! We did a wonderful excursion through Norwegian cruise lines and visited the Belize Zoo and The Howler Monkey/Baboon Sanctuary. You certainly can book these trips without the cruise line, but we preferred to use NCL as the trip to both places was almost 45 minutes away from the port and the roads and travel infrastructure in Belize is not modern. We wanted to be assured that if there was flooding rains or our tour bus got stuck that the ship would wait for us and get us back to the port safely. That being said we had the amazing Ken as our guide from Kenubelizeit Tours- http://www.facebook.com/Kenubelizeit/. He was informative and energetic, despite the hot and humid weather. We saw a wide variety of animals in the Belize Zoo- http://www.belizezoo.org/- including the adorable spider monkey pictured above. The majority of animals are indigenous to Belize and Ken did a great job of sharing information about each of one of them. The environment is much like their natural surroundings, blanketed by tropical rainforest flora and fauna galore. After an NCL sponsored lunch at a roadside eating area in Belize which consisted of a chicken stew, rice, salad and a soda we headed to the Howler Monkey/Baboon Sanctuary- http://www.howlermonkeys.org/. This experience in the rainforest of Belize was both memorable and enlightening. We were given a history of the sanctuary before going to visit the howler monkeys on their turf. As they sat above our heads eating cashews and howling noisily I was truly in awe. Check out the awesome photo my talented husband took above of one of the howler monkeys eating cashew fruit!


If you plan on visiting Belize on an upcoming cruise the trips to The Belize Zoo and The Howler Monkey Sanctuary are definite must-do's!