We’ve visited a fair chunk of Central America over the past 7 weeks. With nearly 2 months of travel in this area we wanted to share our best bits…

Best for kids:
⁃ Surfing lessons. An unexpected win though we do recommend warm seas and ensuring your little one can swim a bit first!
⁃ Zip-lining. Not for those nervous of heights but otherwise a brilliant, albeit expensive, way to spend a few hours.
⁃ Hot springs. Always a win for us.
⁃ Chaa Creek. A resort near San Ignacio in Belize. We stayed in a jungle lodge with open netted walls and no electricity. More upmarket options are definitely available. The combination of jungle, trails, butterflies, canoes, river tubing, howler monkey sounds and open camping was brilliant.
⁃ Ambergris Caye – the secret beach whilst not at all secret was amazing. A child friendly stretch of coral sand and pristine sea kept us happy all day.
⁃ Golf buggy action on Ambergris Caye. Must be driven by a responsible adult with a driving license and not a 3 year old…😉
⁃ All beaches and swimming pools are a win for us. Swimming, jumping, acrobatics, sandcastles, collecting rubbish from the sand. This all kept us very busy and happy.

Beaches:
⁃ Roatan. Everything that a Caribbean beach should be…when the cruise ship is not in town! House reef wading distance out for snorkelling.
⁃ Ambergris Caye Secret beach. Ditto re Caribbean paradise plus a child friendly depth all around, kayaks and tubes to play on.
⁃ Matapalo / Uvita. Pacific beaches backing onto the jungle. The bath warm water is clean if not clear. Lively waves are good for surfing.

Nature:
⁃ Chaa creek – see above. To be woken by howler monkeys is spectacular. We also spotted an anteater, agoutis, butterflies, iguanas, bats, a terrapin. V cool!
⁃ Costa Rica in general is a natural paradise but the highlight for us was definitely spotting the tree frogs.
⁃ Uvita / Matapalo. A real natural paradise with jungle hitting the beach. Though annoyingly we didn’t see much and I suspect the marine life with whales and dolphins would have been good.

What we wished we’d skipped:
⁃ David in Panama. Bad scheduling and a flower festival made us stuck here for 2 days. There is literally nothing to write about David.
⁃ We should have taken less time in Monteverde (Costa Rica) but in the end we had a fab time hanging out with our Canadian pals.
⁃ A lot of fuss is made over the Resplendent Quetzel (bird). We saw one. Whatever.
⁃ The free hot springs in the evening in La Fortuna. An odd 18-30 party experience cramped under graffitied bridges.
⁃ James sickness in Medellin. We got away lightly but 4 days into the trip we totally could have done without it!

What we wished we’d seen:
⁃ More of Colombia. It’s a vast country with so much more to offer and just our kind of place. But the distances involved means that It just wasn’t a good idea with a toddler.
⁃ Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Roatan and Belize were our Caribbean adventure but it still would have been nice to see the Costa Rica version.
⁃ Bocas del Torres in Panama. It’s supposed to be a spectacular beach area but tricky to get to if like us you haven’t planned for it.
⁃ Santa Catalina in Panama. In our pre James days we definitely would have hung out at this kind of place but the long journey and trade offs to visit other places meant we skipped this.
⁃ North of the Panama Canal into the jungle. Looked very cool but we were doing jungle elsewhere so we skipped this.
⁃ More sloths. They don’t do much but it would have been fab to see more of them in the wild.
⁃ Blue hole and shark alley in Belize. Given John and I both dive we would have loved to do the Blue Hole but it’s a full day trip that we would have had to do one at a time. We tried to snorkel Shark Alley but apparently they are not so keen about toddlers being bait 😂.

All in all, travelling through Central America with a toddler was filled with amazing experiences and once we’d found our travelling on local buses mojo it was relatively hassle free. In fact travelling with a toddler opens up a whole new world thanks to 3 year olds abilities to break down social and cultural barriers… We also recommend travelling without one! 😮