What to do? Dive? Snorkel? Kayak around the island? How about a sailing cruise at sunset? Day trip to the mainland? Massage? Shopping? Deep-sea fishing? Or you can just lie back and read by the pool.

Many visitors to Caye Caulker, Ambergris, and the outlying atolls book their entire vacations on a single island—especially fishing and diving freaks on a mission. You can easily while away 7–10 days on any of these islands.

Then there are the surf-and-turf tourists who do five days in the cayes and five days inland gettin’ their jungle on. Backpackers often include only a couple of days in the Northern Cayes (or at least enough time to get scuba certified) before continuing on their Central American tours.

Even if you focus your vacation elsewhere in the country and have only a day or two, it’s still worth the trip to either Caulker or Ambergris, which are both less than an hour by boat from Belize City and worthy of the quickest of glimpses.