One of the most popular sections of our site is the luxury hotels in Belize section and it’s easy to see why. English-speaking Belize is a short hop by plane and offers better deals and diving than most of the Caribbean – but with the same warm and beautiful waters.

Most of the resorts there don’t have much of a beach though. If you strip out all the sea grass the reefs get damaged and the reefs are what bring in all those divers and snorkelers. A few high-end resorts have a decent beach though and we’ve just added a review of one that also has a beautiful pool complex and large suites with room to spread out.

Las Terrazas is relatively small and low-key, like most hotels on Ambergris, but it has a larger footprint and roomier rooms.

The 37 one- to three-bedroom accommodations of the resort are housed in two-story, modern design buildings that overlook the beach and dock, or the 70-foot lap pool, which is lined with comfortable lounge chairs some semi-submerged on the pool’s edge. Most rooms have a split-level layout, with a living room (complete with two sofas and a flat-screen TV), a dining room, a fully equipped kitchen, and a king size bedroom upstairs. Although the look is decidedly modern, Belizean artwork on the walls and colorful furnishings add a local flair.

This is not some barely staffed condotel though with limited services. Restaurants, bars, and watersports are on site and the staffers can arrange all kinds of excursions on water or land.

See our full review of Las Terazzas in Belize.

Next week I’ll be relaxing with my family on Spring Break. This has been a relatively mild winter in the U.S. and parts of Canada, but I’m sure lots of people are dreaming of warm and sunny places by the water. Here are a few pictures to ponder as we head into the weekend. Click on them to go to the hotel or article they came from.

Chabil Mar Villas, Placencia, Belize

Las Alamandas, West Coast of Mexico

Roatan Island beach, Honduras

Deserted beach at Latitide 10 resort, Costa Rica

Pousada Maravilha, Fernando de Noronha, Brazil

It’s hard to keep up with all the name changes at hotels across a region, even when you’re covering the industry on a regular basis. So in case you had your eye on any of these for a future booking, here’s a heads up that they’ve put up a new sign on the entrance.

The Tides Riviera Maya is now the Viceroy Riviera Maya. It’s the same company, but despite this resort being by the tides of the ocean, the company considers this an upgrade to a more luxurious name following renovations. The biggest changes are an additional restaurant, a fitness center with a view, and “11 new luxury villas with plunge pools, including the resort’s first beachfront and ocean-view villas.” We hope to get one of our writers back in there soon to do an updated review.

The Marquis Hotel in Los Cabos is switching over to Secrets Marquis Los Cabos. For now both websites are still active and taking bookings, but since the previous incarnation was an a-la-carte resort and the Secrets chain is all-inclusive, you may be able to have it either way for a while. Considering how expensive food is in the Los Cabos region and how far you’d have to go to get to another restaurant on that hotel corridor, I’d go for the Secrets plan. But either way, do this one over the phone to be sure of what you’re getting.

Machaca Hill in Southern Belize has changed its name to Belcampo Lodge (pictured at the top) and dropped the safari-style all-inclusive plan that made it such a unique experience. This may not make a difference since the amount of food laid out before was on the excessive side and you do still get a full breakfast to start your day of exploring. Plus recessionary times call for adjustments. We’ll see though what the management shuffle and rate plan change means to overall service.

We're ALL going to Belize!

How many cruise line passengers think about the impact they’re having in the places where they alight for a day or less? You can forgive them if it’s not on their radar—the executives running those cruise lines don’t seem too concerned either. When dealing with a small and fragile country like Belize, the result can be slash-and-burn tourism at its worst.

There’s a great article in National Geographic Traveler on the tense negotiations between Belize and the cruise ship industry: Shore is a Shame. Belize faces the problem many destinations have dealt with since the dawn of these floating hotels: take the lure of fast and easy money these big ship companies promise, or say no and bring in far fewer visitors each year. Unfortunately, there’s not much middle ground, with negotiations often taking a “our way or the highway” route, the cruise ships holding all the leverage.

In Belize the big issue is the harm all these huge crowds are having on formerly sparsely crowded Maya ruins sites. The industry is balking at an admission park rise to $10 (still among the lowest in the world). “That increase, Belize officials maintain, is desperately needed to better care for the same parks that receive high traffic from cruise passengers.” But “Carnival warned them that it might pull out of the country if its demands were not met.”

So the government must allow its parks to continue to be trampled by the hordes for a pittance. “The cruise line’s threat to cut back its ship visits to Belize forced the government to abandon the proposed increase in national park fees. The cruise industry may have set sail on sustainability, but it has yet to bring it into port.”

See the full story here.

Although luxury real estate is by nature expensive in any country, there can be a huge variance from place to place. I had a bizarre juxtaposition illustration of this a couple weeks ago when I watched two House Hunters International shows back to back. In the first, a couple was looking for a beachfront home in Ecuador. All three choices were fabulous and all were under $200,000. The next show I watched had a couple looking for a French home in Provence. Their budget was $1.2 million and every place was a fixer-upper dump. Once didn’t even have a bathroom!

Most of Latin America falls somewhere near the bargain end of that scale. Apart from a few exceptions like Rio de Janeiro and maybe Santiago, what you get for your money is going to be a better value than what you could find in the U.S. or Canada when it comes time to buy a luxury vacation home or a retirement home. Sometimes a much better value.

Apart from real estate though, what’s it really cost to live in these places? Answering that question is not as simple, but International Living is doing its best to help. They have just released a series of detailed budgets which give a break-down of all the major outgoings on a monthly basis in some of the world’s favorite overseas retirement hotspots.

All of them are places we cover here in Luxury Latin America: Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, Panama, Ecuador and Roatan in Honduras.

They include information on things like rent, utilities, entertainment, health care and groceries, as well as tips and pointers on how to make retirees’ money stretch further.

“Most of us think about living the good life abroad but things rarely develop beyond a daydream,” said International Living magazine editor Eoin Bassett. “Resources like this can help equip readers with the information they need to bring those dreams to reality.”

The figures were put together by International Living contributors on the ground in each of the seven retirement hotspots, so this info is much more reliable than what you’ll find in a Mercer cost of living study, for instance.

“This 4,000-plus word article is a massively useful tool for anyone considering retirement overseas,” added Eoin. “But it’s really just one among many must-read resources we provide on everything from budgeting for a life abroad and buying a beachside bargain property, to getting the best deal on dental treatment or setting up a small business.”

I’m a subscriber to International Living and think it’s well worth the money. This report is free though. You can see the entire article here: Seven Easy, Affordable Retirement Spots.