Bacalar Chico National Park boat trip

Up at the northern end of Ambergris Caye, against the Mexican border, the island goes wild. The national park and marine reserve cover swamp, grassland and tropical forest, including a rare strip of beach forest that coastal building has wiped out almost everywhere else in Belize, plus mangroves, seagrass, patch reef and Laguna de Cantena, the biggest lagoon on the island. All five of Belize's wild cats have been recorded here, jaguar and puma among them, and manatees and crocodiles live in the mangroves.

Rocky Point is the one spot in Belize where the barrier reef touches the shore. A fossil reef lies exposed there, which is where the name comes from, and the beach nearby is the country's largest nesting ground for loggerhead and green turtles and one of the largest for hawksbills. The reserve is part of the Belize Barrier Reef World Heritage Site, and the reef here is still recovering from the coral die-offs of the 1990s.