Blancaneaux Lodge

Blancaneaux began as Francis Ford Coppola's private retreat and opened to guests in the 1990s. It sits beside Privassion Creek in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, a high granite landscape of pine, waterfalls and natural pools that looks nothing like the rest of Belize.

Cabanas and villas are open-sided and thatched, with the creek audible from most of them. The lodge generates its own hydroelectric power, grows much of its produce and runs an Italian kitchen alongside Belizean cooking, a legacy of the founder's tastes.

The Cayo district is the country's adventure base: Caracol's Maya ruins, the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave, riding, and the Rio On pools are all reachable from here, usually on rough roads that take longer than the map suggests.