Naia Resort And Spa

Five treatment suites at Naïa Spa stand on small islands scattered across a freshwater lagoon, its surface thick with lily pads and threaded with walkways between them. A sixth, private suite sits alone on its own island for couples wanting no company but each other. The resort spreads across 19 acres of beachfront inside a 200-acre community on Belize's Placencia Peninsula, with close to a mile of palm-lined sand facing the Caribbean. Thirty-five Beach Houses and villas are built in a residential style, furnished with locally made pieces and stocked with fresh coffee beans and a plunge pot rather than a kettle. It is a quiet, low-built place. Guests paddleboard from the beach, or slip a kayak into the lagoon behind the property, sharing the water with pelicans and, occasionally, a manatee. Spa treatments draw on native plants and the resort's own organic product line, made with local artisans and, on some, traditional healers. A yoga and movement studio overlooks the same lagoon, and a small fitness centre sits alongside it. Dining runs to two onsite restaurants, including the signature 1981. The pace here follows the tide rather than a schedule, and the mango trees along the property are said to be a century old.