The Green Valley Inn

Set into a quiet valley near Unitedville, in Belize's Cayo District, The Green Valley Inn works as both lodge and base camp for the surrounding jungle. Rooms come with air conditioning, a minibar, coffee machine and private bathroom, plain comforts after a day on the water or the trail. There is a pool for the afternoons between excursions. The inn's own guides run day trips into the west: canoeing at Barton Creek Cave, where Maya relics still sit in the dark, and the river walk into Actun Tunichil Muknal, reached by swimming through the cave mouth and climbing over rock to a chamber of centuries-old skulls and pottery. Zip lines cross the canopy at Mountain Pine Ridge on steel cable strung across fifteen platforms, and the Green Hill butterfly farm tracks the insect from egg to wing. Big Rock Falls gives a cold, clear pool to climb into afterwards. Howler monkeys turn up in the trees near Xunantunich, one of the region's major ceremonial sites, and the Macal River offers a swim after the ruins. Breakfast is included; longer circuits push south to Placencia and the reef, or north to Lamanai by boat along the New River. It is a working lodge for a working landscape, built around the jungle rather than apart from it.