I have purchased both the first and second editions of this book
and have found it extremely helpful. Coupled with a travel book that gives more details on things to see and do, it is perfect for RVers. Improvements I'd suggest are:
1. PLEASE review rules of punctuation before the next edition. Either break two separate (but related) thoughts into two separate sentences or use a semicolon (not a comma)in the middle.
2. The basic info on cities and sites is good, but it would be nice to see more options for itineraries. What's on that other highway? Are there alternate ways to get from Point A to Point B? What are the differences in miles, road conditions, campgrounds, etc.? Are there roads to avoid?
Keep up the good work!

I bought this book for a backpacking trip I am planning along the Maya Riveria. I am a tent camper. Although the title implies that this book was written for those travelling with an RV or tent, it is primarily for the RVer. It does mention when tent camping is an option but gives little or no information beyond that fact. The writers do give RVers a good idea of what to expect, providing decent descriptions of campground setup, condition, and facilities. They go so far as to tell you what part of the campground you will likely find a spot and whether shady sites are available. They give very little detailed information regarding tenting conditions. If you are planning tenting trip to Mexico, this may be a very usual guide simpy to locate the campgrounds but for little else. If you are planning a RVing trip to Mexico, I would not go without this book.

We recently spent 6 weeks roaming in a small Toyota camper, off the beaten tourist paths, down the Gulf Coast to Veracruz, then inland to Teotihuacan and back via various cities. This book led us to a number of delightful (umm... and otherwise, but hey they worked) campgrounds we wouldn't have otherwise found, and I appreciated its directions for bypassing Mexico City and Tampico. We were somewhat more adventurous than the Churches recommend about finding places to boondock, but we do speak enough Spanish to ask the locals, which we always did.

I have a list of resources in an ebook I've written about Mexico, and this one literally tops the list -- for RVers.

This book has what Peterson's "Mexican Birds" lacks: good colour pictures of (nearly) all birds of Mexico and adjacent areas and their Spanish names. However, the presentation of the pictures is a mishmash. The descriptions of the birds are not detailed but very short. It is a pity that there is no information about the behaviour of the birds, often very important for identification.

We used this book on a recent trip to Belize. It is THE book in use by local Belizian birding enthusiasts, and we only saw it for sale at one shop during our 12 day stay, so it might be hard to get once you're there. Birds of same species on different color plates slow you down, but the pictures are very good. Highly recommend taking this book with you if you plan to do any serious birdwatching.

This field guide will enable you to see paintings of all of the birds that occur in the area. It also discusses (briefly) each bird. The paintings are excellent and the copy is quick and to the point. To pick at nits, though, the arrangement of the paintings is confusing. Not all birds in a specific family are illustrated on the same plate, and some are found pages away from the rest of their family. The logic seems to be that if the bird is found regularly in northern North America (the elegant trogon, for example) its picture does not need to run with the rest of its relatives. Close study of the guide can overcome this problem, however, making it an easy, economical way to pack the information of other guides into the field.

Conroy is funny and the book is very readable, but I didn't give him a higher rating because I didn't think he tried very hard to know the people of Belize, or the country itself. He has a lot to say, all true, about the poverty and the governmental inefficiency when he was there, but didn't notice any of the natural beauty or the native culture(s) in this unique little place. He got really distressingly cold-blooded when he wrote about Hurricane Hattie, a tragedy in which there was great loss of life, and seemed mostly concerned that he wrecked his boots! If you want to know Belize, I would recommend that you read Zee Edgell's fine book BEKA LAMB, which is a nice antidote for Conroy's fin-de-colonialism attitude in this book. Conroy's attitude is reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh in this book, but although he is (almost) as cruel, he is not half so funny.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because I read it as a foreign service adventure commentary, NOT as a travel log of Belize. As a daughter of a foreign service officer and as an avid listener of f.s. stories thereof, I chuckled about the various snafus, ridicula, and adventures of this young man and his family on their first post.

Our Man in Belize is the story of Belize before satellite TV, before tourism, and before crack.

In 1959, Richard Timothy Conroy, something of state department misfit, was posted as U.S. vice consul to British Honduras, a lowly job in one of the backwaters of the diplomatic world. Two years later, one of the worst hurricanes of the century would strike an unprepared Belize. Out of this mixture of colonialism and disaster, Conroy builds an entertaining, fanciful memoir of life when the driving was still on the left. Or, as likely as not, in the middle.

The just-arrived vice consul recounts a trip into the Belize City of 40 years ago:

"The car crunched over the land crabs that had crawled onto the road to enjoy the last heat of the day ... The two-mile drive into Belize along Princess Margaret Drive was a drive into another century. Out at the racetrack, the few houses, for all their bleak shabbiness, had a cheap modern look. A failed subdivision on the edge of an abandoned town in a small country with unsupportable pretensions .... The old part of Belize presented, as we entered, a certain harmony of man, dog, and environment. Even shabby charm ... But the big difference was the number of inhabitants in the streets. The desolation that had so marked the new settlements was replaced by a town teeming with life, on foot, paw, and bicycle as well as rooted in the salty ground."

Conroy quotes U.S. state department reports of the time that the country has "a road going west, and a road going north; both going nowhere." He reports, too, that except for the Fort George Hotel, Government House, and a few houses in the British section which had piped-in water, most of the city collected its water in cisterns "with the occasional rat or cat for body and flavor." He tells of some of Belize's great eccentrics: "Paddy," who would filch the American consulate's copy of The New York Times, and then, after removing all his clothes to wash them in the sea, would sit naked on the public seawall reading The Times while his clothes dried. And of "Bugger," a chess-playing Polish physician who always wanted to go to Africa, so when offered a position in Belize City, he quickly accepted, learning only after he was half-way there that Belize wasn't in Africa.

After his British Honduras post, Conroy did a tour in Vienna, then left the state department for the Smithsonian Institution. Happily for us, Conroy's time in government work didn't ruin his knack for a good story. He's published three mystery novels and can tell a tale with the best of them.

Witness: The sedate dinner party when giant roaches, attracted by the candlelight, drop from the ceiling into the gazpacho, or the story of a fool-proof method for stopping the cook from stealing your scotch.

That these stories have, as the author admits, taken on a life of their own, are perhaps as much fantasy as fact, does not at all detract. Such recasting of reality, however, is likely behind Conroy's irritating and otherwise unexplainable habit of changing the names of nearly everybody, and even of some cities and countries, long after most of these people are gone and the events forgotten.

Some old Belize hands, including those who knew him personally, take exception to Conroy's tales. It is not, after all, always a flattering memoir. He tells of the petty stupidities of the U.S. government and of the bunglings of both the British and the local Creole establishments, albeit disguising the identities of the participants. Conroy revels in juicy and unflattering gossip. He reports, for example, the story of the long-time Belize City department store owner who, after getting a nice settlement from the insurance company on losses from Hurricane Hattie and the looting afterwards, piled his Rover full of cash and drove north to the Mexican border, outrunning a customs inspector on a bicycle and violating British currency exchange regulations then in force.

More significantly, Conroy also could be faulted for focusing on the details, however amusing, of personal discomforts and calamities caused by Hurricane Hattie, rather than on the human tragedy the hurricane caused. Hattie struck on the night before Halloween 1961, killing more than 400 Belizeans and destroying much of Belize City. Conroy gives short shrift to the misery of homeless Belizeans in the shacks of Hattieville (which Conroy misidentifies as the site of Belmopan, the new capital) yet lightheartedly claims that after Hurricane Hattie young girls in Belize stopped wearing underwear, in a primordial reproductive reaction to a natural disaster. With an irreverent nod, however, to Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and a wave to the captivating scoundrels of In the Garden of Good and Evil, Conroy's is the kind of memoir which, to paraphrase William Powell as Nick Charles in Shadow of the Thin Man, we enjoy no other kind than.

Conroy says he has not been back to Belize since 1963 and proposes that today's Belize he would not even recognize. He suggests that Hurricane Hattie may have been, as it were, a watershed in Belize's history, the turning point from the old colonial backwater past to self-government and a move to a new order of politics and business on a wider stage. The final laugh of this memorable memoir, this one on Vice Consul Conroy himself, may be that the Belize of the 1950s, with its entertaining eccentrics, bordellos, heavy drinkers, comic politicians, inept diplomats, dope airstrips in the bush, auto-theft rings, and port thieves, is not that much different from the Belize of 1998.

Don't buy this book - if you are the sort of reader who expects to be spoon fed a narrative that is constructed in a predictably conventional fashion. The story told in P.O. Belize - The Church of the Day of Reckoning - is like coming to terms with a dear and somewhat wacky friend, requiring patience and indulgence. This said, you will be rewarded with a wealth of sensual imagery that you will want to read and re-read with a smile on you face. Not unlike the papier mâché animals and people created by the books's central character, Minerva, all the delightfully naive and colourful fragments magically pull themselves together to form a pleasing whole. Once this happens you will certainly go back and re-examine many of the hilarious situations in the light of the larger context. Definitely a permanent addition to the bedside book pile.

The tiny country of Belize comes endearingly alive in P.O.Belize . The writer uses her obvious first hand knowledge of the country to sketch, not just the extraordinary mixture of people of all colour, shade and ethnic backgorund that make up the country but, the charm and friendliness of the country iself and its people. It is far more than a colourful travelouge though as Minerva , the protagonist, wrestles constantly with her own identity, her past present and future, her children,her husband and Mr Fizzy. This is a novel to read again and again and each time it offers a fuller and finer reward. The extraordinary character of Mr. Fizzy and his fixation with the Angel of Death is a novel in itself.

This was a different kind of guide book in a good way. It gave a nice history of the area and gave information to not only the usual tourist places but "off the beaten track" activities that we actually did in Belize.....and had a great time. Would give this one to any friend going to the area.

This is a great book focusing on northern Guatemala, southern Yucatan and Belize. It has great pictures, and some excellent text on identifing characteristics, with a key in the back. I will be using it in the Carmen del Playa and Merida areas, and will let you know how I feel about it after the trip.

The area map is not the best, but that is a minor problem. You ought to have a map of your own anyway.

Wilk develops an excellent model for talking about social organization. Based around an ethnography of the Kekchi Maya, household ecology presents a model that allows the anthropologist to deal with such issues as history, gender relations, markets, subsistence and political organization (and that is easily transferred to different settings for comparative work). This is a book for readers interested in understanding how households function as social institutions, it is replete with information and useful data. Not for a beginner, but for the student of anthropology and ecology, this is an important text.

"Johnnie" Fisk mixes memories of a rich life with ornithological observations during a birdwatching expedition. Remarkably human.

First of all, Bill and Claire Gray need to hire a good editor. Even a bad editor could improve this. Their book is so full of punctuation and grammar errors that it makes reading difficult and continually annoys.

Beyond that, the book is brief, anecdotal, and incomplete. It's poorly organized and badly illustrated. I simply don't understand the positive reviews. I'll be looking for something better since I'm hoping to spend time in Belize soon and possibly retire there.

Granted, the Blair's have shared some helpful hints from their years of living in Belize. There are tips on entering the country, transportation, and immigration. Some of these, though, seem unreliable and vague.

If this were the only book on the subject it might be worth having, but I'm guessing there has to be something better out there.

Belize Retirement Guide has impressed me as much more than then other retirement guides! When I read it, I felt like I had a guide right next to me and that I was actually visiting Belize. The Gray's have provided a guide that is both entertaining and factual which you will understand, after reading it, could only have been written by someone who actually lives there and done that. They provide you with both the Pro's and Con's of moving to and living in Belize from their first hand knowledge and not armchair or internet research. I found the Belize Retirement Guide to be an excellent resource for anyone considering either visiting or actually retiring to Belize. If you have ever dreamed, like I have, of retiring to a warm tropical climate where living is much more affordable than the U.S., then the Belize Retirement Guide will help you beyond anything else I have discovered before. Everything you need to know is available in this complete guidebook. Just be careful, however, because after reading the Belize Retirement Guide you may find yourself calling your travel agent the next day to book a flight and you just may be ready to make it a one way ticket.

Just returned from Belize-had a great time , will be returning in November. I just can't praise the retirement guide enough.It was with us all the time as a quick reference and gave my sister and I that special "edge". After practically memorizing "Belize Retirement Guide before we departed , it was as if, when we arrived , we were visiting an old friend. I could find no category in which comment or assistance and addresses or phone numbers had not been included.

We have found a house to rent and are planning on retiring in Belize.

I don't know about you, but I often get a feeling about the credibility of a novel when I am told the characters' names. Here are some of the people you will meet in J. Weber's Hot Ticket: Fausto Kiss, Krikor Tunalian, Tanqueray Tougaw. Saying Hi to these folks made my heart sink. Am I going to have some serious difficulty in suspending disbelief? Yup.

I was one of JWs biggest fans up until the moment I opened this book. Our protagonist Leslie Frost, concert violinist and secret agent, is assigned the task of solving the Washington D.C. murder of another beautiful, female agent. We meet a lecherous president, and his ambitious wife - at least this is believable - plus a variety of other Washington insiders who all seem a bit strange even for Capital dwellers. Leslie becomes closely attached to Fausto Kiss, a big person around town - big in physical size as well as being influential.

Aside from the strange characters, and the "what's this all about" story, I had problems with the plot mechanics. For a significant part of the book Leslie does no sleuthing, evidently thinking that if she hangs around Fausto long enough someone will spontaneously present her with evidence. Then when she wants to locate someone to interrogate she calls her boss, Maxine, in Germany, and has her locate the desired person. Maxine calls back the next day with the desired information. Wow, what a detective is our Miss Frost. For diversion she makes two trips to Belize. How believable is this? She travels at night to a hidden camp by walking across two jungle mountains in pitch darkness, arriving at dawn the next morning. I live in a rural area without streetlights, and can't even see my house at night when I stand twenty feet away from it.

The humor falls flat; the metaphors and similes are strained; the story drags - although near the end there is an interesting murder with a most unusual weapon. Don't read this book, but do read Janice Weber's other books.

I totally enjoyed this romp through the salons of Washington and the jungles of South America. Very timely topic, considering the horror currently occupying the White House. This book is perfect for a rainy weekend, a day on the beach or just an escape!

This book is witty and full of great humor. It is half parody, half serious... about a narcissistic maestro violinist who is also an expert spy. The story goes fast, and with Smith's wisecracks and sarcastic sense of humor it will leave you laughing aloud. Leslie Frost, aka Smith, is the perfect, smart heroine for the intensely serious espionage world.