I've been hearing about Belize for quite a while from my father, Mike. He first traveled there in 1995, and the country has been under his skin ever since—enough that he's made several return trips.

Basically, three things about Belize inspire Mike to wax poetic: the scuba diving (Belize is a world-renowned dive destination), the fly-fishing, and the barefoot lifestyle. Of those, I think it's the latter that keeps drawing him back. Perhaps it's the long winters we have here in New England, or the reserved nature of our fellow New Englanders, but there's just something about the “no shirt, no shoes, no problem” lifestyle of Belizeans that Mike finds almost compulsively appealing.

For the past few years, though, we've been hearing about things changing in Belize. We've heard that the sleepy seaside towns were waking up, the dirt roads were being paved, and the rustic fishing lodges were being replaced with luxury resorts. The reports were frequent enough to justify an investigation, so I volunteered for the task. Here's what I found.

November 2008