Ever come across an incredible hotel that stops you mid-scroll and makes you think, Wow, wouldn’t it be something to stay there? We do, too—all the time. Welcome to Friday Fantasy, where we highlight amazing hotels, lodges, cabins, tents, campsites, and other places perched in perfect outdoor settings. Read on for the intel you need to book an upcoming adventure here. Or at least dream about it.

Why My Family and I Love the Suitree Experience Hotel

It was my 13-year-old son who first became obsessed with the idea of staying at a treehouse in Costa Rica. So, when I found online, I quickly called him over. We stared, mesmerized, at the website’s drone footage of the treehouses’ disc-like rooftops set in a verdant rainforest on a hillside amid the clouds.

These aren’t your typical treehouses. Suitree’s four individual podlike dwellings are propped up on 30-foot-high steel stilts to better survey the scenery, with winding staircases leading to 110-square-foot “rooms.” Additionally, two ground-level bungalows can accommodate two, while their elevated counterparts can sleep up to four. On-site common areas include a lookout platform (offering views of the surrounding tree-covered hills), four pools (one with a swim-up bar), and an open-air restaurant.

Suitree opened in 2018 in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, just six miles from the closest Pacific beach. Its Italian owner enlisted an architecture firm in the capital city of San José for help in developing his idea: an immersive, canopied modern treehouse. (A note from the firm: Not a single tree was harmed in the making of this hotel.)

Fairly unfamiliar with Costa Rica, I asked a friend who lives in the province about Suitree and Sardinal, the closest town. “It’s where?” He balked. “There’s nothing out there.”

I booked it for a night anyway. Although Sardinal is roughly eight miles from Playa Hermosa, winding dirt roads make travel slow—and confusing. Apple Maps suggested we drive through a private horse pasture. Fortunately, we found another way without trespassing.

“That’s part of the experience,” says Nidia Bravo, a Costa Rican travel specialist who represents Suitree. While the property provides transfers from Liberia Guanacaste Airport, roughly 45 minutes away, guests with their own vehicle can make an adventure of their time here, just as we opted to.

We spent the morning playing in the ocean and trekking the trails in the shorefront town of Las Catalinas before heading toward Suitree. En route, we pulled off to enjoy a zip-lining adventure and monkey sanctuary. Had we foregone these detours, our drive from the coast would’ve taken about 30 minutes.

Upon our arrival, a golf cart transported us and our luggage up a steep, narrow cobblestone path to the base of our magical treehouse, which struck me as a modern Ewok village. At ground level was a private swing sofa. Our winding staircase led to what seemed like a trap door in the center of the elevated pod. Once through the hatch, we stepped into a gorgeous teak interior. There was a king-size bed, a bunk-bed nook, a writing desk, and a seemingly hidden—but spacious—bathroom. Nearly the entire space was encased by floor-to-ceiling windows.

We made the most of our wraparound deck, which afforded 360-degree views of the valley, mountains, and treetops. I did my there. And one of us was usually perched on the deck with the room’s pair of high-powered binoculars, scanning the surrounding canopy in search of wildlife. I could’ve stared out at the surrounding hills, listening to birdcalls and monkey howls for hours, but we had four bright blue pools to explore before dinner.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Intel

While Guanacaste is known for surfing—its 400-mile Gold Coast is home to popular beach breaks like Tamarindo and Playa Grande—the interior is where you’ll find monkeys and sloths and birds (oh my!).

For an additional fee, Suitree staff will book all sorts of guided tours, from a horseback ride through a savannah, to a rainforest hike at the base of the Arenal volcano, to an all-day excursion of the colonial city of Grenada, Nicaragua, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Suitree. If we’d had more time, I would’ve loved to try one of the many self-guided adventures available, including mountain biking and e-biking, hiking, and buggy rides into the jungle.

Instead, we floated in Suitree’s connected stone pools (at one point next to a resident iguana) and walked among hundreds of white and yellow butterflies. We laid out on the netting at the lookout while listening to the screeches of howler monkeys, and peered through binoculars in search of them and the other area residents: white-faced capuchin and squirrel monkeys, sloths, , , and 948 species of birds, many of them wonderfully colorful.

Various butterflies wing from bush to bush at Suitree Experience. Costa Rica is home to 1,500-plus butterfly species, and the rainier months between May and November are when more tend to be spotted. (Video: Courtesy Lisa Jhung)

My husband rose early and spotted red and blue tanagers in the adjacent tree canopy, along with an iridescent purple and green fellow that he identified as a spectacular motmot. Over coffee, I spent a solid 20 minutes staring through the binoculars at a brown spot on a faraway hillside to see if it moved—I was desperate to see a sloth. While I’ll never know if I accomplished my mission that morning, I did see a variety of birds and fell in love with the fluttering butterflies who hovered so close that they seemed to be wanting to tell me something.

Each night, bright stars speckled the sky. I regret heading straight to bed instead of out on the deck to stargaze, but fell asleep happily to the jungle’s nocturnal noises.

Choice Treehouse

While the hotel accommodates various wants and needs, including a wheelchair-friendly bungalow, its four treehouses are the main attractions. Do you choose the one with a private jacuzzi? Or the one that overlooks the stone pools? Or the one with a newly installed private pool?

We picked the one with the pool view. (The treehouse with its own pool was completed after our stay, and, because I’m obsessed with water, that’s where we would have wound up.)

Eat and Drink

With no restaurants within easy walking distance, guests will inevitably gather for a meal at Suitree’s on-site restaurant, Taru. Its menu features fresh, locally sourced ingredients and dishes inspired by regional traditions.

We started dinner with fresh guacamole prepared tableside, followed by our entrees: a mahi-mahi with seasonal vegetables for my husband and myself, and osso buco with spaghetti al bronzo (a tomato jus) for the boys.

Breakfast is included with your stay, and my sons and I were thrilled when the friendly staff offered to serve us at the swim-up bar. (My husband, less obsessed with water, dined at a regular table.) We swam over to stone stools submerged in cool water and my sons ordered pancakes, while I indulged in incredibly fresh fruit, yogurt, and honey foam.

When to Go

Suitree closes for renovations each October, toward the end of the rainy, less-touristed months (typically May through November). Rain can make outdoor activities more challenging and travel along this area’s numerous dirt roads difficult, but it also keeps this country green and doesn’t often last all day, every day.

The dry season is December through April, when prices are highest and temperatures hottest.

We visited in June and experienced torrential rains for less than 3 days of our 12-day trip, mostly at night. High temperatures were in the eighties, with more than 80 percent humidity.

How to Get There

San JosĂ© International Airport is a four-hour drive from Suitree, but the closer option is the region’s Liberia airport. The hotel offers luxury transport to and from Liberia for $120 each way for up to four people. Alternatively, you can book a shuttle or a taxi.

Don’t Miss

There’s zip lining in Costa Rica, and then there’s extreme zip lining in Costa Rica. Sign up for the latter. My family and I had our extreme experience at in Artola, less than 30 minutes from Suitree, halfway to the Pacific coast (from $45). We also tacked on a walk through its monkey sanctuary (from $54).

Strapped into a full-body harness, each of us in a completely horizontal, prone position, we whirred through the jungle canopy on five different zip lines, the longest of which was a quarter-mile. I stretched my arms out to enhance the feeling of flying above the gorgeous landscape.

DetailsÌę

Price: From $294

Address: Guanacaste, Sardinal de Carrillo
Obandito, 50503, Costa Rica

To Book:

Raised near the coast of San Diego, but living a mountain life in Boulder, Colorado, Lisa Jhung finds every excuse to travel to a beach. That said, she found herself drawn to Costa Rica’s interior on this trip, wowed by its jungles, wildlife, and adventures. Jhung’s most recent articles for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online include a story on ways to make a family ski trips easier and the best winter running shoes.Ìę

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One of the most biodiverse places on the planet, Costa Rica is a carefully preserved paradise for adventure travelers. The country’s government has protected one quarter of its land by designating parks, refuges, and reserves, and safeguarded approximately 30 percent of its marine area, too.

I first started traveling to Costa Rica nearly two decades ago, drawn to its then sleepy, surf-swept Pacific coast. As more people started to discover the pura vida vibes of laid-back beach towns like Malpais and Nosara, I ventured further inland and visited the wildlife-packed natural parks and cloud forests in the north. More recently, I scoped out the Caribbean coast, home to stellar waves, snorkel spots, and hiking trails, and a totally distinct culture—food, music, architecture—that made me feel like I was rediscovering a country I thought I knew.

On my latest trip last year, I hiked the country’s 174-mile, coast-to-coast with outfitter (from $565). This cross-country trail is the ultimate showcase for Costa Rica’s cultural and natural diversity, crossing four provinces and seven microclimates. (If you don’t have time to complete the entire 16-day hike, you can piece together an itinerary that delivers just as much variety in a shorter time frame.)

Bottom line: I don’t think I’ll ever tire of traveling to Costa Rica. From kayaking freshwater canals and surfing barrel waves to zip lining through clouded forests and scuba diving colorful reefs, Costa Rica offers the best adventure travel options. Here’s a cheat sheet to experiencing the country’s highlights, including six must-know tips from a local expert if you’ve never been before.

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Map of Costa Rica: Regions and National Parks to Visit

This interactive map of Costa Rica highlights the country’s diverse regions, and pinpoints each national park I mention below—all musts for first-time visitors. (Map: Erin McKnight)

Costa Rica Travel: A Word on Getting Around

Newbies should know that most of the country’s coolest spots require a car to get there. You can rent one at airports for a DIY road trip, or hire a driver to take you from region to region. Below, I share both flight and car options to reach each of destination. Plus, how renting the right rig and interpreting weather forecasts can dramatically impact your experience. Now, to the good stuff.

Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast

Surf swept coastline, laid back beach towns, and intensely biodiverse protected areas—both on land and at sea—make this one of the most popular areas for adventure.

Where to Go in the Nicoya Peninsula

Nosara

One of five official Blue Zones, geographically designated areas people statistically live longer, the Nicoya Peninsula offers an endless choice of dreamy beach towns including Santa Teresa, Malpais, and Manzanillo. But, Nosara stands out for its long, wide, golden sand beach, Playa Guiones, which has perfect waves for longboarding. You’ll find countless surf schools, including ($8,300 per week including room and meals), (lessons from $125; board rentals from $25 for a half-day) and (lessons from $120; week-long retreats from $5,642), where you can finesse your pop up or have a guide take you wave hunting up the coast. And there are plenty of delicious restaurants to refuel you, like (its fish tacos are a must).

How to Get There: Guanacaste’s Daniel Oduber QuirĂłs International Airport, also known as Liberia International Airport (LIR) is roughly 2.5 hours by car. Juan SantamarĂ­a International Airport (SJO) in San JosĂ© is a five to six hour drive.

Where to Stay: Family-friendly is a five-minute walk to Playa Guiones and has its own surf club and school and offers mountain bike rentals and tours (from $168 per night).

Where to Go in the Osa Peninsula

Corcovado National Park

Located in the southernmost region on the Pacific coast, Corcovado National Park packs 2.5 percent of the world’s biodiversity into .001 percent of its surface area. The country’s largest park covers more than 30 percent of the Osa Peninsula and protects mammals like the two and three-toed sloths, cougar, and giant anteaters, birds like the endangered Baird’s tapir, several types of hummingbirds, and one of the largest populations of scarlet macaws, and some 220 species of butterflies. Trails range from the mellow .8-mile out-and-back Quebrada San Pedro that leads to a view of a waterfall to the day-long, 6.3-mile out-and-back La Leona Madrigal, a bird watcher’s dream with epic sea views.

How to Get There: Sansa Airlines has daily 50-minute flights from San José to Puerto Jiménez airstrip (PJM). The drive from San José is around seven hours.

Where to Stay: Founded in 1993, is often called Costa Rica’s original eco-lodge. Rooms are nestled amidst the treetops of a 1,000-acre private reserve of Central America’s last remaining tropical lowland rainforest that skirts the park boundary (from $823 per night).

Where to Go in the Central Pacific

Manuel Antonio National Park

This seven-square-mile protected area combines beautiful beaches, rainforests, and wildlife. The resort town of the same name has all the amenities you’d want from an access point to such pristine nature. Wide, golden beaches including Escondido Beach, Manuel Antonio Beach, and Espadilla Sur can be reached via the main, 1.3-mile flat trail. The government recently capped daily visitors at 1,200 people and you must . The park is closed Tuesdays.

How to Get There: From San JosĂ© it’s a three-hour drive or a 20-minute flight on Sansa to the gateway town of Quepos (XQP).

Where to Stay: Splurge on a stay at , a sustainable, community-minded resort set on an 11-acre, trail-laced, private nature reserve. After a ten-minute walk from the property, a short trail unfurls to the north end of the beach, and the resort’s team of naturalists took me on nature walks to point out sloths and fiery-billed aracari (from $610 per night).

Marino Ballena National Park

One of the country’s newest national parks has a distinctive whale’s tail shape and is committed to conserving the marine systems within its boundaries. Twice a year (mid-July to October and December to March) humpback whales migrate to these waters. Book a whale-watching tour with (from $78). The local outfitter also offers snorkeling tours to Isla de Caño, which lies just outside of the protected area but promises sightings of dolphins, turtles, and colorful fish. hosts camps (one week from $1,795) and one-off surf lessons (from $65) at beach breaks in the park. The park has four entrance points, but head to Uvita—the main gateway to Whale Tail Beach where boat tours depart.

How to Get There: From San JosĂ© it’s around a four-hour drive or connect via a 20-minute flight on Sansa to Quepos, then drive one hour.

Where to Stay: Perched high atop a steep hill, has unparalleled views of Uvita town and the national park from its eight suites, open-air restaurant, and infinity pool (from $788 per night). And the more affordable in Uvita has just 12 rooms, each with terraces from which guests can spot hummingbirds and toucans (from $155 per night).

Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast

The less trodden east coast offers all of the natural beauty—wildlife-filled rainforests, virgin beaches—of the west, but has fewer crowds and a distinct Afro-Caribbean culture. Expect to hear Patois spoken alongside Spanish, dance to Calypso music, and dine on Jamaican-influenced cuisine like saltfish fritters and rondon, a rich coconut stew.

Where to Go in the Northern Caribbean

Tortuguero National Park

This nearly 50,000-acre patchwork of canals, lagoons, dense jungle, thick mangrove forest, and beaches on the northern Caribbean Coast often draws comparisons to the Amazon. The name is a nod to the thousands of turtles that nest on its shores, mainly from July through October. In addition to leatherback, loggerhead, hawksbill, and green sea turtles, you can see around 400 species of birds, including toucans and spoonbills, 60 some species of mammals, and over 100 reptiles. Within hours of a recent visit, I ticked off sightings of capuchin monkeys, a sloth, red dart frogs, howler monkeys, and the emerald basilisk. A night boat tour along the canals revealed the glowing eyes of crocodiles, a coiled boa in a tree, and my eagle-eyed guide spotted a common potoo camouflaged in a cluster of broken branches.

How to Get There: The park can only be accessed by boat or plane. From San José, you can drive two hours to the La Pavona Dock and catch a two-hour scenic boat transfer. Sansa has a daily 40-minute flight to Tortuguero Airport (TTQ). Most lodges in the parks can arrange van and boat transfers from San José.

Where to Stay: is a collection of 11 humble, off-grid bungalows immersed in jungle and perched in front of the Madre de Dios lagoon. Guests have free use of kayaks and canoes and can join day and evening boat tours guided by wildlife experts (minimum two-night stay from $700).

Where to Go in the Southern Caribbean

Note: These three destinations below are accessible day trips from Limón, so you can pack each hot spot into a span of a few days—or better yet, take more time and relish the diverse nature of each. Our tips below on how to get there and where to stay apply across the board here.

Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

In fall, expert surfers flock to this lively beach town to test their mettle riding Salsa Brava, arguably Costa Rica’s biggest barreling wave. The black sands of Playa Negra are ideal for lounging beneath palm fronds and an excursion to the nearby , which rehabilitates and rewilds the cats, is a must. You can get a taste of the region’s signature Afro-Caribbean flavors and sign up for Afro-Latin dance classes at locally loved . The town is also a jumping off point for Cahuita National Park and Gandoca-Manzanillo National WIldlife Refuge.

Cahuita National Park

Set aside one day to explore the coastal wildlife trails that reveal sloth, monkeys, keel-billed toucan, and paca, a rodent that resembles a big guinea pig. The other should be devoted to chilling on the unspoiled beaches or snorkeling and diving the largest system of reefs in Costa Rica. In autumn the waters are calm and clear, making it easy to view stingrays, reef sharks, and 35 types of coral. guides boat trips to snorkel the reef of Cahuita National Park ($90).

Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge

Stretching south nearly to the border of Panama, this collection of unique habitats includes a six-mile swath of golden sand, two swamps, a vibrant coral reef, and 740 acres of trail-laced rainforest. The reef teems with brain coral, Venus sea fans, neon anemones, electric blue parrot fish, and along the coastline you’ll find rare mangrove oyster beds. On land, you may spot endangered ocelot, the elusive harpy eagle, and from March to May four species of turtles come to nest here.

How to Get There: From San José, you can drive five and a half hours, or Sansa offers multiple daily 35-minute flights to Limón International Airport (LIO).

Where to Stay: has 15 boho-chic rooms nestled on a forest-fringed beach in Puerto Viejo. I’m a fan of the complimentary bikes and snorkel gear, and applaud the hotel’s commitment to hiring employees and sourcing ingredients locally. The national park is just 25 minutes away and the wildlife refuge, ten minutes; the hotel can arrange tours of both. (Rooms from $365 per night.)

Costa Rica’s Northern Region

You could spend a lifetime park hopping in the north. First timers won’t want to skip Costa Rica’s crown jewels: Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve and Arenal Volcano. Miravalles Volcano National Park, Tenorio Volcano Park, and waterfall mecca Juan Castro Blanco National Park are less known but equally spectacular.Ìę

Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve

The cloud forests of Monte Verde, a more than 35,000-acre reserve in the Cordillera de Tilarán mountain range, contain approximately 50 percent of the country’s flora and fauna, including over 420 types of orchids, 200 species of ferns, rare birds like the three-wattled bellbird and iconic resplendent quetzal, and charismatic mammals like the sloth. You can get a bird’s eye view of the wildlife from walkways suspended in the canopies or on a zip line tour. leads night walks in nearby Monteverde Wildlife Refuge where you can observe nocturnal animals like ocelot, sloth, and armadillos (tickets from $25).

How to Get There: It’s about a 2.5-hour drive from either San JosĂ© or Guanacaste airports.

Where to Stay: A hanging bridge connects (from $265 per night) to Aguti Wildlife Reserve and guests get free admission. The reserve is minutes away and the hotel’s in-house naturalists take guests on tours of the adjacent expanse.

Arenal Volcano National Park

The park’s namesake stratovolcano soars 5,357 feet towards the clouds and is one of the northern region’s most popular attractions. But there’s plenty else to see and do in the 30,000-acre protected area including zip lining, river rafting, horseback riding, and hiking. The Heliconias, Coladas, Tucanes, and Los Miradores trails provide views of flora and fauna as well as the remains of volcanic lava tracts. Outfitter offers a trip that combines a hike through the park with a scenic boat ride on Lake Arenal (tickets from $88).

How to Get There: The gateway town of La Fortuna is around a 2.5 to 3-hour drive from either San José or Guanacaste airports.

Where to Stay: Adults-only is a luxe option in the heart of the park; villas come with private hot spring-fed soaking pools (from $396 per night). And carbon neutral is nestled at the base of the volcano, so you get the up-close experience (from $375 per night). Day passes to Tabacón’s massive hydrotherapy circuit are also available for non-guests.

Costa Rica Travel: 6 Expert Tips for First-Time Visitors

Even though I’ve been to the country over 20 times, I know I’ve barely scratched the surface. So I called Javier Echecopar, co-founder of travel company , to share his top tips for smart travel, to get that extra local’s intel Here’s what he says every Costa Rica first-timer should be aware of to make the most of your trip.

1. Know Your Seasons

Despite the size, Costa Rica has two distinct weather patterns. December through April is hot and dry in most of the country, but rainy on the Caribbean side. May through November is wet and green across the country, but dry on the Caribbean side.

2. Ignore the Daily Weather Forecast

Ask any Tico (a colloquial term for native inhabitants of Costa Rica) and they’ll tell you normal day-by-day weather forecasts are pretty much useless. For example, the forecast might show rain every day for a week but those tropical showers will only last one hour each afternoon.

3. Consider Using a Driver

Costa Rica is one of the safest places to travel but the roads can be challenging. While driving along the coast is easy, you might consider hiring a driver to explore the mountains and rainforest, which can be more challenging with tight roads, sudden rainfall, and early nightfall.

4. If You Do Drive, Choose Your Rig Wisely

Try to rent a high-clearance SUV with all-wheel drive, and if you need extras like a car seat for kids or roof rack for surfboards, book with . It’s the only company that offers all of the above for no fee. Locals avoid Google maps which has been known to confuse rivers for roads. Instead, follow instructions on Waze.

5. Don’t Expect Late Nights

Costa Ricans are early risers. Sunrise is usually around 5:30AM, year-round. And it will be dark by 6PM as well. Expect to shift your day a little earlier to make the most of your time here. If you want nightlife, head to the capital, San José.

6. Carry Small Bills for Tips

American dollars are widely accepted. “I haven’t touched a colón in a long time,” says Echecopar, referring to the local currency. You can pay almost everything with a card, but keep some smaller bills in either currency for gratuities.

Jen Murphy has visited Costa Rica more than 20 times and feels like she has still barely scratched the surface of all the country offers. Last year she trekked the Camino de Costa Rica from the Caribbean to the Pacific Coast and encountered fewer than five other tourists on the trail.

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There are half a dozen things in the jungle that worry me: skinny green vine snakes, 200-pound panthers, all kinds of poisonous plants. And yet I’m walking through the dense jungle in a bathing suit, with an inflatable tube hanging from my shoulder as if I don’t have a care in the world. Therein lies the beauty of Belize—the country is an odd mixture of foreign and familiar, a living contradiction in the most fascinating ways. It sits in the middle of Central America, flanked by Mexico and Guatemala, but has more in common with Caribbean culture than its immediate neighbors.

The country welcomes foreigners as an integral part of its economy (and takes the American dollar), yet it has managed to resist some of the biggest trappings of that international influence. For example, there are no American chain restaurants. Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to open some locations here in the eighties, but it didn’t stick; locals were curious but ultimately more satisfied with the mom-and-pop shops that operate in backyard kitchens and buying from the women who sell snacks out of coolers on the side of the road.

I’m not suggesting Belize has some sort of identity crisis. On the contrary, the country and its citizens seem to be very comfortable with the cultural nuances at play. It is one of the most stable nations in the region, and one of the most diverse in terms of both culture and adventure. Less than 9,000 square miles, and just 180 miles long and 68 miles wide, it’s roughly the size of Massachusetts, so you might not think there would be much to it. But get this: . And with only 420,000 residents, even though the country’s landmass is small, it’s not hard to find solitude.

Mayans are the original denizens of Belize, having called it home since 1500 B.C., with communities inhabiting the Maya Mountains. Creoles, the descendants of enslaved Africans, make up roughly 24 percent of today’s population, while the majority of Belizeans are Spanish-speaking mestizo, a mixture of Maya and Spanish. The Garifuna, descendants of shipwrecked Africans who blended with native islanders, comprise a small but culturally significant portion of the demographic as well. More recently, a large influx of German-speaking Mennonites and Chinese immigrants have helped diversify the pot. Because the country was a British colony until 1980, English remains the official language (and Queen Elizabeth is still on all of the local currency), but due to the cultural diversity, most Belizeans speak three languages. They grow up speaking Kriol, are taught English in school, and many learn Spanish, thanks to the influence of their Central American neighbors.

The landscape is just as fascinating as the culture. With 240 miles of coastline along the Caribbean Sea, forest-covered mountains in the west, and peaks that rise up to 3,600 feet, Belize shifts between broad-leaved jungle, arid pine hillsides, and a coastline peppered with more than 450 cayes (small, low islands) that are strung together over the world’s second-largest barrier reef. You’ll find restored Maya ruins on one side of the country and seaside villages on the other.

Despite all of the natural resources and the rich heritage, most Americans know little about the country. We’ve made our mark and explored every inch of Costa Rica and Mexico, but aside from those in a handful of expat retirement communities and a few beach towns that get hammered with tourists, most of us find Belize still largely a mystery.

What many have heard of is the Great Blue Hole, a sinkhole amid the barrier reef that Jacques Cousteau labeled one of the best diving spots in the world. The site, with a diameter of 1,000 feet and a depth of 400 feet, is truly amazing, but even more so is the thriving reef that surrounds it, an equally popular attraction.

I recently spent seven days trying to crack the enigma that is Belize. I followed Maya guides into caves and over towering ruins. I snorkeled with third-generation professional water people and hiked through jungles looking for monkeys and wild cats. In the mountains I ate a steady diet of stewed chicken with rice and beans, and on the coast, seafood prepared every way possible. I couldn’t get enough of local delicacies, like banana jam and Marie Sharp’s pepper sauce, both of which changed my life in small, significant ways. A week was not enough. Even though I was constantly moving, seeking the next adventure, I barely scratched the surface. Belize remains a mystery. A delightful one. And I can’t wait to go back.

What You Need to Know Before You Visit

Hire a guide. I enjoy the discovery that trekking alone in the wilderness provides, but you should consider hiring guides for most of your pursuits in Belize. First, adventure guiding is a growing business here. Second, every guide that accompanied me grew up in the country and has a passion for their backyard and its resources. But mostly, you won’t know what you’re looking at without a guide. For instance, I toured Caracol, an impressive site of Maya ruins, with a guide and learned about how the city supported evidence of a middle class in the civilization and also that they believed the saba tree could span heaven, earth, and the underworld. In fact, some Maya sites, like the ATM cave (see below) require accompaniment by local guides to help preserve the sanctity of the area.

Getting around is slow going. It’s a small country, but it takes a long time to drive from one side to the other because there are only four paved highways. Belize is divided into six different districts, though most travelers stick to the mountains in the west, the coastal towns to the south, and the cayes that punctuate the sea. Aside from the highways, the rest of the roads are dirt, which require a four-wheel drive and can become impassable after a hard rain. Land travel between districts and towns is so tough that many travelers and locals take puddle jumpers between the bustling towns of Belize City, San Ignacio, Placencia, and the cayes. Keep this in mind if you’re planning to drive over to the next town or park—20 miles could take an hour or two.

Prepare for the jungle. If you’re going to spend time in the interior, you’ll be in a subtropical ecosystem that has all the hallmarks of a jungle: heat, humidity, and bugs. Lightweight hiking pants and long-sleeved sun shirts will be your best friends when it comes to keeping the bugs off. A layer of deet helps, too. That said, during my time in Belize, I didn’t find the mosquitos to be any worse than what I’ve experienced in Florida or South Carolina. Take a few precautions and you’ll be just fine.

Be serious about conservation. In 2017, the country passed a moratorium on oil exploration in Belizean waters, making it one of the few countries in the world to do so. In the past few years, the government has reigned in illegal fishing while expanding its offshore conservation areas, where hundreds of islands are dotted with resorts catering to anglers, paddlers, and divers. The most tangible and dramatic restoration effort happened recently, when the country sank the Winconcrete, a former World War II ship that will serve as an artificial reef, enhancing both the local ecosystem and its tourism draw. In recent years an environmental coalition that includes the Nature Conservancy, Rainforest Trust, and the World Land Trust purchased 236,000 acres of the Belize Maya Forest, protecting roughly 9 percent of the country’s landmass in a single effort.

Understand that it’s a rapidly developing country. After Belize broke from colonial rule, it experienced a huge developmental leap within a single generation. The growing pains are still apparent (a young road system is the most obvious), and many of the country’s residents remain below poverty level, but the future of Belize looks bright, particularly in terms of eco-tourism and conservation. Before the pandemic, lodges, parks, and Maya sites in the rainforest gave the local economy an annual boost of $15 million. Overall, ecotourism is responsible for $1 billion in annual revenue and more than 20,000 jobs in Belize.

Embrace soft adventure. The mountains and jungles are ripe for serious adventure, and dedicated residents are hard at work developing mountain-bike trail systems and rock-climbing routes. The potential for canyoneering in the Maya Mountains is off the charts as well. But by and large, guided adventures are of the soft variety, and most companies and resorts will steer you toward zip-line tours and cave-tubing opportunities. But don’t fret; the guides are locals who know the jungles well and are often willing to customize an adventure for a client. If there’s a river you want to explore, or a multiday excursion you’re dying to experience, ask guides what’s possible. They’ll probably accommodate you.

Consult travel advisories. While certain sections of Belize City are widely regarded as dangerous due to gang activity, I stuck to touristy neighborhoods and felt safe there and throughout my travels. As always, it’s important to exercise caution and avoid making yourself a target for pickpockets. Check the current from the U.S. Embassy so you can make an informed decision.

Do a lot of research if you want to camp. The country has a variety of established campgrounds, both in the jungle and along the cayes. Most jungle preserves and parks offer camping options, and you might have the entire area to yourself, as the activity isn’t as popular in Belize as it is in the U.S. You’ll need to research each park you’re visiting directly to make sure they have sites for rent, as there’s no central reservation database. Be sure to bring everything you need; you won’t find any independent outdoor stores here.

The Best Time of Year to Visit Belize

Those who visit in the high season, which runs from late November to mid-April, will enjoy consistently pleasant weather, with little rain and mild but warm temperatures that peak in the mid-eighties. It can get chilly at night and in the morning, though, especially in the mountains.

The rainy season coincides with hurricane season, running from June through November, though days typically only see brief afternoon thunderstorms. Hurricanes peak in September and October. The amount of rainfall differs depending on the region, with the south getting three times as much (150 inches) as the north (50 inches).

Aside from April and May, which are the hottest months, when the mercury might might hit triple digits, the temperatures are relatively consistent in Belize. Winter weather is definitely warm enough for swimming in the ocean, although occasional cold fronts, called “northers,” will swoop in for a few days at a time.

Crowds disperse during summer months, and you can find the lowest prices then, but you’ll also deal with the most finicky weather.

How to Get There and Around

Getting to Belize

There are an increasing number of direct flights, most of which fly into Belize City, at the center of the country. Alaska, American, Delta, and United Airlines all offer direct flights to Belize City year-round, and airlines including Frontier, Southwest, and Sun Country Airlines offer direct flights during peak season.

Getting Around Belize

Renting a car is straightforward, and a number of major companies have offices in the Belize City airport, but keep in mind all car rentals have to be returned to their point of origin, and gas is three times as expensive in Belize as it is in the U.S. If you’re going to explore the jungle, it might make sense to rent a four-wheel drive.

While there’s an expansive bus system, it can be slow and unreliable. If you don’t want to rent a car, many resorts offer transfers from the airport. A guided hike or adventure usually includes pickup and drop-off, and many services can also be hired to transport you between cities.

If you’re spending most of your time on the cayes, skip the rental and simply book transfers to airports and ferry landings. Regional airports connect key cities on the mainland to a few of the larger cayes off the coast, andÌę and Ìęrun daily flights between points. and Ìęwill also carry you to the larger and smaller cayes.

Belize Travel: Where to Go

It’s a small country, so you might be inclined to try and “see it all.” Don’t. If you only have a few days, pick one region. If you’re here for a week, consider splitting your time evenly between the islands and the mountains.

There are four regions: northern Belize, western Belize, southern Belize, and the cayes. Central, coastal Belize City offers quick access to the cayes via puddle jumpers and ferries. It’s also the starting point for the only paved highways headed north, west, and south. Western Belize is mountainous, full of waterfalls, Maya archeological sites, caves, and jungle resorts. Off the coast, the 450 cayes are a mix of privately owned, bustling centers of tourism and pristine preserves.

The reef acts as a sort of glue, linking all these islands and attracting snorkelers, divers, and anglers. Southern Belize is home to coastal towns with a vibrant Garifuna culture, like the scrappy port town Dangriga, and up-and-coming tourist towns, like Hopkins Village and Placencia. Inland you’ll find wild rainforests that hide animal preserves and archaeological sites. Northern Belize is the country’s hub of agriculture. Sugarcane is the main crop, but you’ll also find groves of bananas and pineapples.

We’re focusing on the hot spots of adventure—western Belize, southern Belize, and the cayes. Follow this guide to explore Maya sites, trek through jungles and caves, and island-hop along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, paddling, diving, and fishing as you go.

Western Belize

The 72-mile Western Highway runs from Belize City to the town of San Ignacio, a bustling hub with a lively food and bar scene roughly 11 miles from the Guatemalan border. As you make this drive west, the terrain quickly goes from floodplain (Belize City sits below sea level and was evacuated in the 1960s after a hurricane) to scrub brush to lush tropical forest. The mountains in western Belize rise to 3,681 feet, serving as a backdrop to communities like San Ignacio and Belmopan. From San Ignacio, the pavement mostly ends and the mountain roads that define western Belize can only be tackled by a four-wheel drive.

The terrain is decidedly jungly, with lush broad-leaved forest dominating most of the slopes and limestone crags giving way to hundreds of caves. Rivers run wild, offering numerous waterfalls and swimming holes. Citrus trees are everywhere, and Belizeans like to pull the fruit from the tree before it’s ripe, slice it, and eat it with salt, pepper, lime, and Marie Sharp’s pepper sauce. Mountain biking and rock climbing are gaining popularity, and more routes are being built every year. But if you’re in the Maya Mountains, you want to spend your time trekking to waterfalls, exploring caves, and visiting Maya ruins.

Some of these adventures can be done on your own, but again, spring for a tour guide so you can fully comprehend the magnitude of what you’re seeing. Even if you’re not camping and you’re only exploring for a day, bring everything you need with you—snacks, extra layers, extra water. And try not to be the last car out of the parking lot; the roads in the mountains are remote and rough, so if you break down, you want there to be one more car coming behind you to help. Otherwise you can expect to be spending the night.

What to Do

Explore Caracol

is a massive Maya city that’s now protected by Chiquibul National Park, the country’s largest, with multiple structures ranging from the foundational walls of “suburban” neighborhoods to towering temples. The ruins are not as famous as Tikal, in Guatemala, but it rivals its cousin in size and historical significance. In fact, the two cities would often battle each other, and toward the end of the Classic Period (250 to 900 A.D.), Caracol conquered Tikal and was the capital of the civilization in the region. The Maya flourished during this time, domesticating corn and erecting buildings with stone walls. Caracol supported up to 150,000 people, which is bigger than modern-day Belize City. The central structure of Cana, which translates to “sky place,” is still the tallest manmade structure in the country.

Hiking through the site doesn’t require putting in many miles, but access to the structures is essentially unchecked—nothing is technically off-limits. While you can climb the massive stone steps and learn about the Maya in a hands-on way, be sure to tread lightly. offers guided walking tours of the site that delve into its significance; a hot lunch of stewed chicken, rice, and beans is included (from $60 per person).

Hike and Swim the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve

This protects a rare pine forest atop 2,000-foot-tall mountains, but the real gems here are the rivers, which have carved tight gorges through granite and massive caves through limestone. is the easiest waterfall to get to, about 20 miles from San Ignacio, and it’s worth a quick stop, but don’t spend too much time here, as it’s probably the least impressive feature in the area. Take the short but steep hike to , a 150-foot vertical drop surrounded by boulders to jump from. If you’re feeling brave, swim and climb your way a mile downriver, exploring chutes and cascades en route to Five Sister Falls, located below Gaia Riverlodge, where you can order a cocktail, or take the resort’s nature trail to the secluded pool at the base of the 20-foot twin Little Vaquero Falls.

Cave into Maya Culture

There are more than 400 known cave sites in Belize, 80 percent of which contain Maya artifacts. The most spectacular of them all has to be the (ATM), which requires a semi-technical descent more than a mile underground. It’s like canyoneering into the center of the earth. After a river crossing and a hike through the rainforest, you’ll swim into the mouth of the cave, then wade through channels, squeeze through narrow hallways, climb rock slabs, and spot the remnants of pottery and human remains dating from 300 to 900 A.D., all of which were used as sacrifices to the gods.

As you travel deeper, you can see how the Maya became more desperate as they lived through a two-century-long drought, moving from a culture that gave thanks to the gods with food and pottery to a culture that pleaded with the gods with human sacrifices. Only guided parties can enter the ATM cave, and local guides receive special certification to ensure the cultural heritage of the site is honored. Book in advance, as there are no guides on-site available for tours (from $100 per person).

Where to Stay

Gaia Riverlodge

The 16-cabana will put you in the heart of the mountains in a high-end thatch-roofed hut overlooking Provincial Creek and the Five Sisters Waterfall. Even better, on-site hiking trails lead to multiple other falls. If you’re lucky, Coco, the resort dog who has her own thatch-roofed hut, will follow you on adventures throughout the property. The food is top-notch, too. Ask for the banana jam with your breakfast; it changed my life. From $315.

Midas

If you want to stay in the middle of San Ignacio and have multiple restaurants and bars within walking distance, this has 40 well-appointed rooms and colorful cabanas surrounding a large pool. It also sits on 30 acres, with hiking and equestrian trails. From $196

San Miguel Campground

This drive-in is located in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest, above Big Rock Falls and close to Privassion Creek. Make sure you bring everything with you, as it’s miles from the nearest town and there are no stores or visitor centers to stock up on provisions. Camping in Belize is all about self-sufficiency. From $30 per person

The Best Place to Eat and Drink

San Ignacio is busy and charming without feeling like a tourist destination. On Burns Avenue, a collection of bars and restaurants are popular with locals, Guatemalans that come across the border, and adventurous tourists. is a good place to look for traditional Belizean food (rice, beans, and stewed chicken or pork) but it also serves solid vegetarian options, like mixed veggie curry.

Southern Belize

This region is a tangle of lively coastal towns and beach bars, thriving wildlife preserves, pristine beaches, lesser traveled Maya sites, and active Garifuna culture. For the most part, it’s not as busy as western Belize and there are still vast tracts of jungle and forest that tourists and even most locals visit, particularly in the southernmost tip of the country.

What to Do

Explore Hummingbird Highway

The Hummingbird Highway, running 55 miles between the capital of Belmopan and coastal town of Dangriga, is hands down the prettiest road in the country. It’s flanked by the occasional orange grove and small village, which give way to steep slopes on either side of the road covered with palm-leaf forests. Most people drive the highway, but its length, hilly nature, and scenery beg to be cycled. You can rent basic-level bikes in the towns of Hopkins and Placencia (think: cruisers and older mountain bikes), but don’t expect top-end equipment. If you want to pedal Hummingbird Highway (or anywhere in Belize), it’s best to bring your own rig with you.

Whether you’re driving or cycling, make a pit stop at , a 1,600-acre tropical forest at milepost 17 where you can take a 20-minute hike to a waterfall with a swimming hole that’s tucked inside a limestone gorge plastered with moss, ferns, and palms. Aprùs at , a red and white roadside stand that has what might be the best tamale in the nation. Get there early before its spicy chicken tamale sells out.

Look for Jaguars

The is the only one of its kind in the world, a 128,000-acre oasis of mountains and rivers set aside specifically for the protection of the big cat. Much like the rest of North and Central America, hunters have done a number on the species in Belize. As other countries made hunting them illegal throughout the 20th century, wealthy hunters could still travel here and pay up to $25,000 for the shot. Needless to say, populations were dwindling when the preserve was officially recognized in 1986. Today more than 100 live within the preserve, many of which grow to 200 pounds, thanks to a steady diet of armadillos. Sightings of the jaguars here are still rare, however (the animal is notoriously elusive), so you don’t need a guide. are well marked and extend from a staffed visitor center into the low-lying rainforest surrounding the wide, meandering South Stann Creek. This rich biodiversity is as much the draw as the chance of spotting a big cat.

Sign up for a trip with , and you’ll get the lowdown on local flora and fauna from a guide who makes a habit of poking sticks into holes until something cool crawls out (it’s usually tarantulas the size of your hand). The operator also runs mini-canyoneering adventures that will have you jumping off of waterfalls through a tight, limestone gorge, followed by a mellow float by tube along the South Stann Creek River. Even better, hike the preserve at night, from 6 P.M. to midnight, and you’ll get to see the forest come alive with snakes, spiders, and (fingers crossed) jaguars.

Boat the Monkey River

The howler monkey is a cartoonish creature, big and loud, and can be found hiding in the jungle canopy. Your best bet for seeing these primates is by taking a boat up the Monkey River, an hour and a half south of Placencia, off of the Southern Highway. The journey starts at the mouth of the river as it dumps into the Caribbean at the small hub of Monkey River Village.

Head with a (from $90 a person, minimum four people) on a small powerboat into mangrove forests filled with manatees, crocodiles, giant iguanas, and toucans. Deeper in the jungle, a short hike will bring you to an area where howler monkeys thrive. They live in tribes and are prone to howling at each other when one tribe encroaches on the territory of another, but they’re not aggressive, even though their call sounds like the scream of a dinosaur. The worst thing they’ll do to you is pee or poop on you. Seriously, don’t let them pee or poop on you.

Where to Stay

Belizean Nirvana

This two-story has rooms on the water, each with its own share of Caribbean-facing beachfront. It’s located in Placencia, a funky village at the end of a peninsula with luxury resorts, expat retirement communities, and restaurants and bars where you’re likely to see as many locals as tourists. Get a first-floor room and you’ll have a porch that spreads out into the sand. The beach is stunning, a narrow strip of sand dotted with coconut trees, with a mellow bay on one side and small resorts and lively bars and restaurants on the other. The heart of the village is a pedestrian-only street lined with beachfront dining and drinking establishments. From $150

Detours

You’ll find Garifuna culture throughout the coastal towns of southern Belize, but Dangriga is the epicenter, home to regular festivals, museums, and drum-making shops. Check out the Ìęto learn about the history of the people and their contributions to today’s vibrant cultural community, and step into the to try your hand at working the instruments, made from mahogany and deerskin.

If you’re looking for seafood and elevated cocktails, , a rooftop restaurant at the top of a boutique hotel in Placencia has the best of both. Order the Seafood Sere, a Garifuna chowder served with coconut rice and plantain chips.

The Cayes

Belize is absolutely lousy with islands. These act as exclamation points along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second-largest reef system in the world and one of the healthiest of its size. Yes, the Great Blue Hole is here—a seemingly bottomless pit that you can dive into, paddle around, or fly over during a scenic tour—but there is so much more to this area than diving into a hole.

Sandy beaches are rare here, but they do exist if you know where to look. The ironically named “Secret Beach” on Ambergris Caye is the most popular, boasting restaurants and thatch-roofed picnic tables jutting out of the water. There’s world-class snorkeling and diving everywhere, some of the most productive saltwater fly-fishing in the world, and paddling options that range from easy two-hour spins to multiday bucket-list adventures.

Local airlines Maya Air and Tropic Air operate regular puddle jumpers making trips from the mainland to Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, the two busiest cayes off the coast. There are also regular ferries that connect the major islands, and you can hire boats and guides to take you to smaller, more remote islands along the reef.

What to Do

Swim with Sharks

OK, they’re nurse sharks, and they’re more harmless than the fish that follow them around feeding on their scraps, but they’re still sharks. And they can get quite big (a nine-footer swam beneath my feet while I was in the water). The sharks like to hang out in a break in the reef system dubbed Shark Ray Alley in the Hol Chan Marine Reserve. to the reef (from $55 per person for a half day), which includes a stop at Shark Ray Alley. Sure, the snorkeling is amazing and you’ll get to see all kinds of species, but come on
 sharks. That’s the story you’ll tell when you get back home, not the parrotfish you saw.

Paddle the Islands

The breadth of the barrier reef and the sheer volume of islands that stretch across it make Belize an open-water paddler’s dream. A variety of experiences exist here, from casual half-day excursions within eyesight of high-end resorts to multiday adventures that will have you camping on primitive islands.

Caye Caulker, a 10-minute flight or 45-minute ferry from Belize City, is a great spot for beginners. The island is divided into two sections by a narrow channel, with most of the development existing on the southern side, while the northern side is occupied by a dense mangrove forest. rents boards and windsurfing kits (from $50 an hour) and guided tours if you don’t want to go it alone (from $100 per person).

If you’re an experienced paddler looking for a big adventure, will rent you expedition-ready gear and give you maps with suggestions for routes along the southern cayes for self-guided trips (from $40 a day or $375 for a week). The outfitter also offers a that starts with three days of guided paddling and lodging, then four days of self-guided paddling at the Glover’s Reef Atoll, a Unesco-designated World Heritage site that covers 80 square miles of reef, islands, and open water. You can spend a few days at its base camp learning key skills, then break out on your own for a few days to practice what you learned. also offers fully guided seven-day paddleboard trips throughout the same terrain. Instead of camping, you’ll stay at various lodges (from $2,875).

Fish for the Big Three

You can find world-class fishing all along the coast, and most anglers show up with their fly rods in hopes of snagging a Grand Slam, which entails catching a bonefish, tarpon, and permit in a single day. There probably isn’t a bad place to fish along Belize’s portion of the Mesoamerican Reef, but the country’s atolls have become hot spots. Turneffe Atoll, the largest of the ringed reefs, casts a halo that’s 30 miles long and 10 miles wide.

More than 150 islands along the reef serve as launching points for the lagoon, which encompasses a shocking variety of ecosystems, from expansive mangrove and seagrass habitat to saltwater flats and creeks to vibrant reef structures. Turneffe is just 20 miles off the coast, south of Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye, so the fish do receive some pressure. If you’d prefer an area that receives less attention, head farther south to the expansive , the largest of Belize’s eight protected marine reserves, much of which consists of shallow saltwater flats. Local anglers have dubbed the South Water Caye “permit alley,” due to an abundance of the highly sought-after species.

The Big Three are all catch-and-release only. You’ll be able to land bonefish year-round, so timing isn’t as important for that species, but permit are hungriest in spring and summer and tarpon pass through in summer. In addition to the Big Three, you’ll have the chance to cast for jack, snapper, and triggerfish. Hire a local guide service like , one of the most storied in Belize (and the only Orvis-endorsed outfitter in the country), to increase your chances of success. Half-day and full-day trips depart from Hopkins or Placencia (from $591).

Where to Stay

Victoria House

If you’re looking to treat yourself, book one of the thatch-roofed villas at , some which have their own private pool and all of which overlook a sandy beach with tall palms. The location on Ambergris Caye is ideal if you’re looking to explore the Hol Chan Marine Preserve, and in-house guides can take you on a variety of adventures. The restaurant is top-notch as well, especially its rotating selection of ceviche (get the tuna with watermelon if it’s on the menu). From $225

Glover’s Atoll Resort

This sits on Northeast Caye, a big, sandy island on the edge of the Glover’s Reef Atoll. Its variety of inexpensive accommodations range from hostel-style bunks and individual huts built on stilts to campsites beneath coconut palms. You can cook your own meals or eat in the restaurant. Accommodations are basic yet charming, but you’re here for the location—snorkeling, fishing, and paddling starts right on the edge of the island. Camping from $10, cabins from $30

Thatch Caye Resort

Occupying the shorefront of a private island 30 minutes off the coast of Dangriga, hosts just 30 guests at a time. Stays include meals, all beverages, and adventure gear. Choose from an oceanfront cabana or an over-the-water bungalow. From $500 a night for two guests

Where to Eat and Drink

Yeah, you’re in the islands and you’re probably craving seafood, but take a break from the conch and spend one dinner at , in the heart of Ambergris Caye’s bustling San Pedro, where everything is cooked in the traditional Belizean way over an open fire. Don’t worry, there’s actually quite a bit of fresh fish on the menu, but don’t overlook the pork stew or chicken kebabs.

How to Be a Conscious Visitor

Go Local

The majority of the guides you’ll encounter here were born and raised in Belize, making it easy to pass an entire trip with local experts. The Belize Tourism Board curates a list of gold-standard guides and hotels that follow new safety and health protocols. Follow the same principles for tipping as you would at home.

Tread Lightly

The barrier reef is a living thing that’s under constant pressure from humans. Be sure to pack non-nano zinc sunscreen without extra chemicals, like Thinksport, as you’ll have a hard time finding it here. Don’t touch or stand on the reef—ever—and no matter how friendly a fish or turtle looks, don’t try to get close to them. Even hovering over a turtle is a disruption.

Eat Sustainably

It’s never been more important to know where the fish you’re eating comes from. Belize is going to great lengths to help preserve the various populations within its waters, limiting commercial operations and certain harmful practices. Check out to learn what species you should seek out and which to avoid, and consult its list of restaurants that source only from local fishermen who follow sustainable practices.

Graham Averill is a longtime contributor to șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű magazine and our national-parks columnist.

The post The Ultimate Belize Travel Guide appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

There’s a tarantula creeping up the mesh door of our tent. It’s black, furry, and the size of a tennis ball. These light brown Baja species are relatively harmless, their venom only slightly more powerful than a bee sting. But it looks intimidating, especially since we’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re at Rancho Cacachilas, a 40,000-acre private eco-ranch dedicated to adventure and sustainability. The ranch sits in the rugged Sierra Cacachilas, an arid landscape of red granite and centuries-old cardon cactus 45 minutes via a sandy four-wheel-drive road from the closest village of El Sargento, which is an hour east of La Paz. Since my compadreÌęBrianÌęand I are the only people camping here tonight, and we don’t have our own wheels, we’re a captive audience.

The feeling that the arachnid stirs up in me is a metaphor for how I’ve been feeling lately about Mexico—easily spooked. I have loved this country since I saw the Ballet FolklĂłrico de Mexico perform in Minneapolis when I was a kid. The graceful dancers, with their elegant costumes, instilled in me a deep curiosity about the country, which inspired me to take Spanish-language classes. My primitive language skills have allowed me to communicate with surf instructors and other locals on a decade’s worth of family spring-break vacations to a sleepy town near Puerto Vallarta. In my twenties, I road-tripped with friends from Minnesota through Mexico to Guatemala and back, camping en route, exploring remote MayaÌęruins of the YucatĂĄn, and eating cabrito asado in Monterrey, pescado in Veracruz, and pozole in Guadalajara. In the decades since, I’ve traveled through Chiapas, surfed and lazed on the beach in coastal villages north of Puerto Vallarta, and road-tripped a handful of times through southern Baja to mountain-bike, kayak, and gaze in wonder at sea turtles smaller than the palm of my hand.Ìę

But as much as I love Mexico, my connection to the south has felt strained of late, thanks to an echo chamber of bad news that gets amplified in the U.S. media. Yes, there are certainly parts of the country that AmericanÌętravelers should probably avoid due to crime—namely the states of Colima, Guerrero, MichoacĂĄn, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas—according to the U.S. State Department. And, yes, there are also ever increasing numbers of gated five-star hotels in resort communities like Los Cabos. But where, I wondered, could I still do the things I love, like kayak, mountain bike, hike, and camp, without compromising my safety? I found my answer at Rancho Cacachilas.Ìę

“I got involved with this project because I love mountain biking,” says Rafael Camposeco, the project manager for tourism and trail development at Rancho Cacachilas. The 40-year-old former archaeologist grew up in Mexico City and owned an expedition mountain-bike tour company in Oaxaca before he was lured to the propertyÌęin 2012 by its incredible potential. Before building the first trail, Camposeco spent months surveying the land with a geologist. “But it’s not only about the mountain biking here,” he says. “That’s less than a quarter of what the ranch is trying to do.”

Rancho Cacachilas, which opened to guests about three years ago, is composed of four smaller ranchesÌęspread out over its expanse. One of them, the main hub, called El Chivato, has eight safari-style tents and four brick-and-mortar resort rooms with a rooftop deck. The amenities here are basic but comfortableÌęand include communal hot-water outdoor showers, a pool with stunning views to the hazy mountainous outline of Isla CeralvoÌęin the Sea of Cortez, and an outdoor restaurant headed up by Alejandro VillagĂłmez, who worked with chef Enrique Olvera at the famed Pujol restaurant in Mexico City before he took on the challenge of remote alfresco dining fueled largely by the organic gardens at Rancho Cacachilas. Our first evening here, a large group, fresh off an REI șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs sea-kayaking trip, was spending the night at El Chivato, but the next two nights we had the entire camp to ourselves, an unusual scenario.

In total the ranch employs about 65 people, from scientists to vaqueros (cowboys) to mountain-bike guides to organic gardeners. These employees take guests on mule rides or mountain bikes into the wilderness; hold running races like the 35K and 54K ÌęTrail Run every November; host seminars on irrigation and animal husbandry for local ranchers; and offer workshops on beekeeping, organic gardening, cheese making, and even rainwater harvesting for the rest of us. Through partners like Sea Kayak șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, they can arrange paddling journeys and other excursions in the Sea of Cortez and at protected reserves along the Pacific.Ìę

The ranch’s under-the-radar owner is Christy Walton, the widow of John Walton, one of the four children of Walmart founder Sam Walton. Christy fell in love with Baja while sailing in the Sea of Cortez with her husband in the 1980s. Almost anyone who rides a mountain bike has tuned in to the fact that Christy’s nephews, Tom and his brother,ÌęSteuart,Ìęhave investedÌęmore than $74 million through the Walton FoundationÌęto create 160 miles of trails and cycling infrastructure near Bentonville, Arkansas, the corporate headquarters of the brand. Rancho Cacachilas used the same Bentonville trail designers, Progressive Trail Design, as well as consultants from the International Mountain Bicycling Association, and has so far invested millions of dollars in the property’s existing 26 miles, employing 14 full-time trail builders and an erosion expert from France toÌęensure that increasingly torrential downpours don’t wash out their hard work. The master plan is to build at least 25 more miles of trails.

Christy Walton’s plan, however, goes well beyond mountain biking. (I reached out to Walton for comment, butÌęshe declined to be interviewed. “Christy likes to stay off the radar and does not give out interviews or quotes and would like the story to focus on the ranch, conservation, and holistic approach,” her communications director, Luisa Balderas, explained in an email.) According toÌęCamposeco and Balderas, Walton’s vision for Rancho Cacachilas is to use it as a research and conservation petri dish for environmentalists, biologists, geologists, gardeners, and ranchers who are investigating things like new plant and animal species and experimenting with watershed, land, and livestock management as a way to create a long-term management plan. Since 2013, a revolving door of researchers, organized through theÌę, have rigorously inventoried the region, finding new endemic species of trees, reptiles, butterflies, bats, and a spider even bigger than the tarantula we saw—this one softball sizeÌęand related to the venomous Brazilian wandering spider.

With luck, that elusive spider will stay in its cave this morning. After a 7 A.M. breakfast of huevos rancheros and fresh tortillas, we hop in aÌętruck with Camposeco, who drives us down the mountain to the village of El Sargento. This is where we find the ranch’s Mountain and Bike Hub, a well-appointed shop with a pump track next door, where we sign waivers, rent Specialized Stumpjumper 29ers, then hop back in the truck to drive 45 minutes to a trailhead that links three different routes—La Reina, the Monte Cristo loop, and Santa Rosa—for a 16-mile ride.Ìę

It’s about 80 degrees, and we’re a long way from anything resembling an emergency room. We’re on our best behavior, skipping the B lines (which tempt Brian with their more aggressive gap jumps and drops) and instead stick to the smoothly engineered, sandy cross-country trails with bermed switchbacks that are fortified with granite boulders chiseled together in a perfect puzzle, so well built that they bring to mind a Roman road. The heavy rain that has fallen in the past few weeks makes this normally arid desert feel almost tropical, with multihued greens sprouting everywhere, like the lomboy tree, whose sap coagulates the blood—a good thing to knowÌęif one of us happens to crash. Even the normally bone-dry arroyos are running with water, a welcome cooldown for our sweaty feet. We end the ride at one of the ranch’s remote casitas, tucked into a valley on a stream bank, where we sit on an outdoor shaded portico to eat a barbecue-beef feast accompanied by a cold Mexicali-made cerveza called CucapĂĄ that’s tinged with agave honey.

We’ve ridden a fraction of the trail network today. Tomorrow we’ll start from El Chivato and ride an even more remote and technical 12-mile section, past an old silver mine, up to a ridge with distracting views of the sea, and down a sandy technical switchback, where I’ll have my first wipeout of the weekend. (Luckily, it doesn’t yield enough blood to necessitate the sap of a lomboy tree.) MidrideÌęwe reach the organic gardens, sprouting with basil, corn, squash, carrots, and kale, and check in on the resident goats who produce the ranch’s delectable cheese.

In four days, we barely scratch the surface of the ranch’s hiking and mountain-biking trails. In JuneÌęthe ten-mile ridgeline Sky Trail will be complete, climbing a few thousand feet higher than the existing trails,Ìętopping out with uninhibited views to the Sea of Cortez, and offering steep downhill sections for riders who like to get sendy. Like the existing trails, the Sky Trail will be fortified with local granite in all the right places.

As Camposeco told me earlier: “This place is built to last.”

No trip to Baja is complete without time on the water. Since Rancho Cacachilas has no coastline access, it partners with local sustainability-minded companies like to offer guests kayaking and whale-watching outings. Our original plan was to spend three days kayaking the perimeter of 31-square-mile Isla EspĂ­ritu Santo, the Unesco World Heritage site in the Sea of Cortez, where sea lions play in water so turquoise it looks fake. The winds from the north, however, are blasting at 25 miles per hour, which scratches that plan.

Luckily, Baja also borders the Pacific Ocean. Sea Kayak șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs’ on-the-fly new plan is to drive four hours west to the Pacific fishing village of Puerto LĂłpez Mateos, the jumping-off point to Magdalena Bay, part of the nearly three-million-acre . The 89-square-mile Magdalena Island acts as a buffer and a protective sanctuary for gray whales that migrate from AlaskaÌęin the winter to give birth. It’s also home to five species of sea turtles: green, black, yellow, hawksbill, and olive ridley.

The whales haven’t arrived yet, but the placid bay teems with bottlenose dolphins and an occasional sea turtle, always expertly spotted by our guide, Sergio Navarro, the son of a fisherman who grew up in the nearby village of Puerto San Carlos and who now works as the manager of Sea Kayak șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs’ Baja operations. Sea turtles are so protected here, he tells us, that “killing a turtle is worse than killing a person.”Ìę

We hug the shoreline of Magdalena Island, an otherworldly landscape of shifting sand dunes, some two stories high, and miles of mangrove forests, a miraculous ecosystem that can thrive in salt water and is one of the most effective carbon filters on the planet.

After a lazy, downwind nine-mile paddle, we stop for the evening to set up our first camp, a sandy oasisÌębacked by a small sand mountain. Before dinner, Brian and I pitch our tent and set out on a short hike. Sergio warns us that the island is inhabited by coyotes that can get aggressive, especially if they’re in packs.

“Coyotes will take anything outside your tent, like your flip-flops,” he says, explaining that the wild dogs have ingeniously figured out a way to use the shoes to collect water.

Brian and I climb the dunes. To the west, the sun is setting fast. In the east, the full moon rises. We see a pack of coyotes. They keep their distance. The next morning, we climb out of our tent to find one standing on top of the deck of our tandem kayak, licking it clean of dew.

Three days on the water isn’t enough. For that matter, four days at Rancho Cacachilas isn’t either. Who wouldn’t love to sea-kayak in a new marine park, mountain-bike state-of-the-art trails, and eat fresh Mexican food forever? But even in this short week, our time in Baja has reassured me that the Mexico of my memories still exists. It’s just a little harder to find it.

IfÌęYouÌęGo: The ranch is open from October 1 to May 31 (prices start at $250 per person a day and include accommodations, meals, guides, and activities). December to February is the cool, dry season, when daily temperatures average 79 degrees. Los Cabos International Airport is 2.5 hours south. Depending onÌęwhere you live, a faster, less expensive option may be to fly to San Diego, walk across the Cross Border Xpress bridge toÌęTijuana International Airport, then catch a domestic flight to La Paz’s Manuel MĂĄrquez de LeĂłn International Airport, an hour west of the ranch. For more information on the region, see șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s Ultimate Guide to Baja.

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From director , Thereabouts Colombia is a documentary that profiles brothers and cyclists and as they explore this South American nation. They also meet the country's next generation of great riders, like 2019 Tour de France winner Egan Bernal.

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While the Caribbean has no shortage of rideable waves (and impressive breaks such as TresÌęPalmas), it isn't known for monster waves.Ìę

So when a big swell popped up on the Caribbean radar near Panama earlier this month, we booked last-minute tickets to score what was shaping up to be one of the better swells in a long time. The surfing world descended on the isthmus, including Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, and Greg Long.

Pat Schmidt and I set up shop in Bocas del Toro and worked on capturing a few good images. This particular evening happened during the tail end of the swell when I was set up on the inside of the wave with a fisheye lens where the waves hit the reef.Ìę

TOOLS: Canon 70D, 10-17mm, 1/50 second, f/8, ISO 100

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Mostly I remember the ocean’s sharp blue phosphorescence. Looking like a patch of water that Jesus might walk on, it stretched with hardly a ripple from the beach out to a wall of frothing surf just off the coast. That’s where one of the finest coral reefs in the world lay submerged below the surface, a diver’s magic kingdom beckoning.

This memory comes from my first trip to Ambergris Caye, in 1987, back when few outsiders knew about this idyll off the Belizean coast. Those who did stayed mainly in palm-thatched huts with few frills. The sole town, San Pedro, had a small airport, a few open-front bars, and two sandy, unpaved streets. There was at least one luxury hotel on the farÌęnorth end of the skinny, 26-mile-long island, near the Mexican border, and a handful of American and British expats had erected bungalows near San Pedro. Mostly, though, Ambergris attracted hardcore divers ogling the reefs and fly-fishermen pulling in a profusion of tarpon and bonefish.

Now, 26 years later, I was back, about to tumble backward off a dive boat into those same weirdly glowing waters. I had returned to spend some time with my 18-year-old son, Alex, before he left for college—and, I suppose, to revisit memories logged by my twentysomething self.

Mostly, though, I was back to revisit the scene of my crime.

No, I didn’t murder a neighbor on Ambergris, as John McAfee has been charged with doing in a recent wrongful-death lawsuit. He’s the eccentric technology mogul who abandoned Silicon Valley for the island a few years back, then fled Belize after authorities sought to question him in the shooting of another expat. According to sordid news reports, McAfee had dyed his hair blond, surrounded himself with young women, and shot the man after an argument over McAfee’s dogs. (He denies it.) Nor did my offense involve drugs or some other contraband.

My misdeed involved a betrayal of the place itself—of the secret of its existence. Not to a few friends, but to hundreds of thousands of people in an article I wrote for CondĂ© Nast Traveler. Published a few months after my visit, it was one of those travelogue staples that whisper seductively about some veiled Shangri-La known to only a few clued-in people—which, of course, can forever alter a place, often unhappily, by inspiring the hordes to follow. As if I could learn squat about an island (or a nation of 175,000, the population of Belize back then) in a few days. Such is the conundrum of travel writing.

Not long after my Traveler article was published, other magazines followed with their own reports on Belize. And just like that, the secret was out. Airlines added direct flights to Belize City, and discount-travel companies ran ads for getaway packages. Then came the cruise ships delivering scuba divers to the reefs. The throngs scooped up the conch shells piled high on the bottom and mistreated the delicate living corals. Fishermen came, too, some with spin reels (horrors!), and hauled in boatloads of sport fish. Hotels both cheap and luxurious sprang up in San Pedro, along with discotheques and, I was told, a whore-house or two. More expats moved in, with most managing to avoid getting shot by neighbors.

Back in the U.S., I felt pangs of remorse. Had I helped produce a nether-world of boorish tourism in Belize? I had seen it happen before in places like Patpong, Thailand, which was a quiet suburb of Bangkok before descending into a seedy labyrinth of neon, night-clubs, weird sex acts, and human trafficking.

Not that I could claim full credit for what had happened in Belize. It would have been discovered eventually. But, as I told Alex during our flight from San Francisco to Belize City, “Words can be powerful—even stupid words in a travel magazine.”

He turned to me with his disarmingly wise eyes, as if to say, Duh. I know this. My dad is a writer. Which may be one reason that he plans to major in biology.

We landed at the newish international airport outside Belize City. This spares travelers from going through the old downtown airport and spending a night in the capital of the former British Honduras. Guidebooks have long recommended avoiding the city, which is supposedly rife with petty thievery. In 1987, when I came here with my then wife—Alex’s mother—we stayed at a Radisson near the old airport. Security guards warned us not to explore the streets at night, which from the parking lot did look run-down, dark, and dangerous.

Alex and I caught a connection to Ambergris on a Tropic Air 14-seat single-engine prop plane that wasn’t much different than those I flew on in 1987—frayed seats and safety cards that had been handled so many times the lamination was wearing off. I found the ramshackle effect charming, though I wondered why, in a country that now hosts nearly a million tourists a year who spend $321 million, Tropic Air couldn’t afford a new plane—or at least new safety cards.

“This might be the very plane your mother and I took,” I said to Alex.

“Are you going to do this the whole trip?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Talk about what it was like in the old days?”

“Yes, I am,” I said.

Alex shrugged and looked out the window. Possibly because he’s my third (and final) child, Alex has learned to be scarily calm and to smile and occasionally laugh endearingly at a family not known for its serenity. Like his older brother and sister, he loves to scuba-dive, which is why I wanted him to see the same fluorescent waters I had when I was just a bit older than he is now. He also confessed to wanting to visit a place where his mother and father had visited when we were young. We divorced when Alex was five, so he has no memories of a time when his mom and dad were in love.

The plane rose in an arc and cleared the shore, leveling off at 5,000 feet. It’s the perfect height for a travel writer: low enough for strong impressions, too far removed for details. The perch left me feeling momentarily relieved that the coastal islands of Belize, at least, looked the same from the air, with mangrove-covered atolls splattering blobs of dark green against a blue so intense it looked radioactive.

Fifteen minutes later we were angling downward over San Pedro, and here I saw an enormous change. The once tiny town now had many paved streets sprawling across the island’s narrow middle. On the beach stood a nearly unbroken progression of white bungalows and hotels.

“Go ahead, Dad,” said Alex with a rueful smile. “Tell me what it was like back then. You know you want to.”

BACK IN 1987, my wife and I had stayed at a collection of thatch huts called Ramon’s Reef that sat on an uncrowded beach. The main lodge had served basic meals of fish and fruit, with the chef happily frying up whatever his guests brought in, including two groupers we’d caught between dives.

Alex and I walked to the same place, now called Ramon’s Village Resort. The huts had given way to luxurious air-conditioned bungalows. A swimming pool shaped like a stream wound its way Disneyland-like through a patch of landscaped tropical flora and past a gigantic modern stone head of a Maya man. A dozen sleek boats were moored to a pier.

That night, we watched a beauty pageant, Miss Costa Maya, on a runway that Ramon’s had created for the event. The pageant featured contestants from seven Central American countries. With Latin disco pulsing and spotlights blazing, they sashayed past us in swimsuits while Alex had his first legal drink (the minimum age in the country is 18), a local beer called Belikin. I was relieved to find that the label on Belize’s ubiquitous brew hadn’t changed much: a simple depiction of a Maya temple on a white background.

Holding a pageant on the rough-hewn beach that had been here 26 years earlier would have been unthinkable. Yet there was something purely Belizean about the spectacle. Whole families of locals were in attendance, with grandparents wearing bright island shirts and kids playing in the sand behind the folding chairs. I didn’t have to ask if they preferred this life to the “paradise” of palm trees and huts I’d described in 1987.

The next day, I leaned back on the side of one of those slick dive boats, holding my mask and regulator, and fell backward into the sea. I bobbed up to the surface and gave the OK sign to our dive master, -Turiano Vasquez. A 60-year-old Maya with a laugh that came from a rotund and deeply tanned belly, Vasquez had told me on the trip out to the reef that he was most likely my guide in 1987. “If you stayed at Ramon’s, I was the only guy there,” he said.

I asked him what had changed on Ambergris over the years. “I’m older,” he said playfully. He waved at the sweep of the nearby coastline and the string of hotels along the beach. “None of this was here,” he said. “It was a simple place. And people were poor.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Some rich, some poor,” he said, shrugging. “But mostly people are happy. There are jobs.”

Before we dove, Alex asked if I was OK. I nodded, though actually I was in extraordinary physical pain. A few months earlier, a mountain-bike crash had caused me to reinjure my lower spine, aggravating an old wound from my twenties. Now the swelling in my back was causing the sciatic nerve in my left leg to flare up—it felt like someone was stabbing my hip with a bowie knife. During our descent, I had to tuck my left leg up to my chest to avoid a sharp pain when I tried to straighten it out to kick.

By 40 feet down, Vasquez noticed and came over. He pointed at my leg and held up his hands in the universal gesture of “What’s up?” I shrugged. He pointed to the surface: Did I want to go back to the boat? I shook my head and gave him the OK sign. He looked at me sternly and then turned away to head over to a nearby reef. Alex watched with an inscrutable look. He then tucked his own leg up, teasing me. It was after this dive that he started referring to me as “my old man.”

I concentrated on the dive and saw a big difference in the reef from my last visit. There were virtually no conch shells left. “They were taken by divers,” Vasquez later admitted. There also seemed to be fewer fish, though, as I later learned, this was mostly due to commercial overfishing in the eighties and the more recent impact of climate change on the coral ecosystem. We saw a stingray, a small turtle, several groupers, squirrelfish, yellow-tail snappers, and angelfish. The colors of the reef were dazzling. Still, I felt guilty. Alex would never know what this reef looked like 26 years earlier.

Our last day on Ambergris, we hired a bone-fishing guide. This was Alex’s first time saltwater fly-fishing, so our guide, Manuel Acosta, a seventy-something (or eightysomething? or sixty-something?) native of Ambergris, spent much of the morning showing him how to cast among the mangrove tufts to the south of the island.

After a few hours, I asked Acosta what had changed on Ambergris. “When I was a boy, we lived in huts and ate fish and had no school,” he said. “It was a hard life. It’s better now.”

I wished I had more time to dig deeper into Belize, the way I have in countries where I spent months or years as a foreign correspondent. My quick impression was that the wonder remained. New roads, bars, and hotels hadn’t ruined the place, even if the conchs were gone. But, really, who am I to say? As we floated in the shallows, I was reminded of something Henry David Thoreau wrote: “He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority.”

The same is true of travel writers. While watching Alex land his first (and only) triggerfish, I realized that my years of fretting about my role in “ruining” Belize had been as superficial as my descriptions of paradise all those years ago. I also realized that, for me, paradise was being here with Alex at this instant in time, just as it had been about being here with his mother in another time. The fisherman and Belize and even the incandescent water were part of this moment, but not as crucial as the moment itself.

With Acosta looking on, I kidded Alex about the size of his fish. It was smaller than his hand.

“Your mother caught a bigger one back in 1987,” I said.

“That’s only because the fish were bigger back then,” he said.

“And the sky was brighter,” I said.

“And you weren’t so old,” said Alex.

At this, Acosta cracked the slightest of smiles. And we shared across the boat, and across our differences, a moment, too—as men growing older, as -fathers, as fishermen. And I realized that I might only know this man and his country at second-hand, but in that instant it didn’t matter to either one of us.

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The bus ride to the stadium is like every other bus ride through this place: an uncomfortable kind of third-world tourism. We’re in this big, dark, cold transport, and we’re wearing shoes and button-down shirts, holding bags with computers. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, there are a lot of people without those things, and all these places we pass by—an all-purpose store with a male mannequin in a speedo and advertising for giant carpets called USA Factory, a McDonald’s branded with a faded cartoon of Ronald McDonald spinning a basketball on his hand, a place called Robert Tire—seem and are funny to me, but probably make sense to everyone watching us as we go by.

Ìę

Earlier this morning, we had breakfast with—or at least, near; it was a rectangular table thing, so some people were far away—Sunil Gulati, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation. He answered a lot of questions, from things ranging from the future of Landon Donovan (probably the greatest American player ever, who is currently on an open-ended, maybe-forever hiatus from the sport), the country’s failed bid for the 2022 World Cup, and the near-impossibility of switching the current Major League Soccer schedule (starts in March, ends in November) to match with the major European leagues (starts in August, ends in mid-to-late May).

He seemed a funny-enough guy—at least, he made me laugh, like, more than three times. Toward the end, he was asked a question about Americans in particular being content with just being average on a world scale, happy making a living as professional soccer players, and not really concerned with getting better. He didn’t answer the question, but he did say that American players—and just Americans in general—are more-coddled than players from other countries because America is America. For the best Brazilian or Argentinean players, a successful career is often a fight out of poverty.

The conversation continued for another 10 or so minutes after that. Everyone went back to typing out notes on their laptops. Others checked their iPhones to make sure they were still recording. And I took a sip of my orange juice through a straw.

WE GOT TO THE stadium three hours before kickoff—so early because the stadium was supposedly going to fill up (meaning, seats are full, hallways are full, stairways are full, and there’s barely enough air for everyone to breathe). Cars started parking about a mile out, just filling up those empty green fields we saw yesterday without anyone directing anything but also without any real noticeable chaos. (That’s how things were all day.) Fans yelled at our bus, not in a menancing way, just in the way that you yell because this is one of the few times when that is a socially acceptable thing to do.

Locals sold Honduran flags and gear all the way from the hotel to the stadium—the amount and extent increasing as we got closer. The jerseys were all bootleg. Honduras wears Joma; these didn’t have a brand. Most of the vendors had a couple American flags, too, which wasn’t all that strange because it’s worth a shot/always diversify. But there were a few Honduran kids in the stadium holding out a big red-white-and-blue flag while wearing Joma Honduras shirts. They wanted to get on TV, I guess, because their buddy, a sort of chubby kid with a side-part and some overly-gold, definitely-frost-tinted, and possibly-women’s sunglasses held up a sign with a picture of a dead Uncle Sam (his eyes were “x’s”) getting hit in the face with a soccer ball that read: “HOY SI TIO SAM.”

This was two rows in front of me, and a row in front of most of the other journalists, right in line with midfield. They gave us two rows of seats under an overhang, but only one with a counter for computers. One thing we had: many outlets. One thing we didn’t have: much Internet. The stadium Wi-Fi was mostly not-present and totally spotty whenever it was.

So, most of waiting for the game was listening to a tiny, all-bass-heavy selection of music on shuffle: one straight-up mariachi-type song, a pop-ballad centered around the word “volveremos,” something by the Honduran Ke$ha and the Honduran Akon—seriously, both of their whiny-but-not-actually-whining voices, just in another language—and some kind of Honduran soccer anthem (I understood “seleccion,” the Spanish word used to refer to national teams) that sounded like a commercial for a waterpark. And the majority of the music was this last song. I still have it in my head: Starts with a bicycle horn. Guy yells. Response: HONDOORAS. Repeat that three times. Then some verses sung in this happy-battle-chant way, followed by—always fucking followed by—“vamos vamos todos.” I’m pretty sure if I ever hear those two words as those three words ever again, I’ll start sweating and immediately feel like I have a laptop on my lap no matter where I am. I’m also not sure my body will ever again function properly without the rhythm of that song to go off of. We shall see.

The stadium was about two-thirds full when we arrived, and slowly filled up from there, the lower seats last. (There’s a barbed wire fence circling the inside of the stands, so if you sit too close, your view is actually pretty terrible.) There were four of those inflatable people with long arms and legs on each corner of the field. (Sponsored by Claro, obviously.) And behind both of the goals were a bunch of other giant inflatable things, including: a Salva Vida beer bottle, a Coke bottle, a fat cowboy in a Honduras jersey, a superhero guy with spiked-back hair, and an orange ball labeled “Lotto.”

Other pre-game entertainment: a man slowly riding around the track on a mountain bike, wearing a helmet with a Honduran flag. Another man flying a blimp (you know the sponsor) with a string, running across the field. A third man in a cowboy hat singing and playing guitar at midfield, flanked by four Honduran women who were dancing, I guess, but basically just stepping forward and backward. (At one point, the mountain biker got off his bike—but kept his helmet on—and started grinding with the air in front of them.) Then there was a 60-piece high school marching band, all in Honduras jerseys, who were, honestly, kind of terrible, but did a reasonable-enough imitation of the standard high-school-marching-band-fight-song. Some women in traditional dresses danced to one side of the band, while a bunch of young boys in these feather wigs and these outfits that made it look like they were only wearing cloth diapers, just kind of stood on the other side and really limply shook these sticks they were holding.

Vendors sold whatever the hell they wanted. Unofficial Honduras gear—hats, scarves, jerseys, whatever—was everywhere, it seemed, and their weren’t any real official stadium refreshment stands. Rather, just a bunch of people with multiple-liter bottles of soda, their own grills, and their own coolers, who found some counter space out in the hallway. There were a few guys walking around with Little Caesar’s boxes and not yelling “pizza, pizza,” so I ate Church’s chicken, instead—some guy was selling boxes of around 11 fries, a drumstick, and a breast for $4—for the first time in my life. (Little known fact: fried chicken was invented in Honduras. Also: that is a lie.) They were selling carne asada at another makeshift stand, but the bathroom was just sort of vaguely a place for you to privately do your business and more of just a communal room where you did whatever you had to do—I saw a guy peeing on a shelf that was also a urinal—so that wasn’t an option. I also bought a bag of water, but never drank it because it was a bag of water.

I sat back down 15 minutes before kickoff and a hoard of riot police walked onto the field in masks, carrying shields, guns, and wearing neon-vests. Oh, yeah. The soccer game.

HONDURAS WON BECAUSE THEY . That’s, um, how sports work, but it’s generally just how soccer games between two somewhat-similarly-talented teams are. Two teams play, and if they played the same exact way 10 more times, you’d get 10 different results. But at the same time, what happens is what happens, and it can’t just be dismissed because there are only 10 games in this tournament.

Clint Dempsey, the American who didn’t talk to anyone, scored the first goal. A long ball from Jermaine Jones (born in Germany, but a naturalized American) came in over Dempsey’s shoulder, and, before it hit the ground, he caught it about as well as he could with his right foot, sending it into the far corner, side netting. It was suddenly shocking because it looked so easy, even though it’s not. (Willie Mays caught a ball with a glove over his shoulder, and people think it’s the greatest moment in the history of Western Civilization. Dempsey kicked a ball with his foot, people.) So, it was kind of like, “Oh, wow, I guess that just happened?” and then the stadium was silent for the first time all day. The Americans celebrated, but it felt like we were watching it at some crappy bar because there was no sound, and it was 90 degrees.

Maybe because it was in the afternoon, and it was so damn hot and so many of these guys play in countries where it’s winter now, but the game was just kind of sluggish up to that point. Even after Dempsey’s goal, the stadium was sort of muted. All the same noise—offbeat drums, random horns, stray yelling—just a few levels lower on the volume scale.

Then Honduras scored: , and the entire stadium shrieked at once. It wasn’t that growl you hear at American sporting events, but this high-pitched yelp, something like relief, coming from 30,000-plus people. The goal really was great—Klinsmann called it “probably the goal of the century here” post-game—and the father of that kid with the Uncle Sam sign—he also of the side-part—looked back at me, shaking his head, basically saying “Ohhhhh, yeahhhhh, motherfucker,” and then flipped his wrists up and down to imitate the bicycle kick in the least athletic way possible.

Again, from then on the sounds stayed the same—chaotic drums, untraceable horn spurts, and yelling-just-to-do-some-yelling—but they rose a couple decibel levels after the goal, and never dropped back down after. To give you a sense: the ref blew the first-half whistle, and the stadium MC came on the PA system, bellowing something to the effect of “Vamos Honduras.” But the ball was on the other side of the field when the ref blew his whistle, and the players near it (a few American defenders, and the Honduran attackers) kept playing. Then the ball got kicked out of bounds, and they still kept playing. One of the Hondurans grabbed the ball to throw it in, and then they played for maybe five more seconds before the ref was able to run over and finally stop it.

The bike horn honked and “VAMOS VAMOS TODOS” started up again.

THIS GAME WAS A national holiday. A guy next to me in the press section was wearing a Honduras jersey, all the Honduran cameramen were cheering for Honduras, and a bunch of the journalists we saw yesterday at the press conference, trudging through the mixed zone and taking pictures of the brief snippet of training we saw, were wearing jerseys at the game. It’s a bizarre thing from an American press perspective, sure, because impartiality seems important and it definitely is. But I don’t know if that really matters here.

Yesterday, the stadium, like I said, was this beautiful thing, but only really beautiful because of all the stuff you could project onto it and with how it contrasted with everything around it. But for this game it was this living thing, in that it kept together tens of thousands of living people, who were almost all—the “U-S-A” chants of the 50 American fans were drowned out pretty quickly—hoping for the same thing to happen. And it did.

A few minutes after a stadium-wide “SI SE PUEDE” chant, Honduras scored what ended up as the winning goal. A long ball split the American defense, a Honduran attacker beat American keeper Tim Howard to the ball and touched it toward the center of the goal. Omar Gonzalez, a 24-year-old still playing in Major League soccer and who was playing in his first-ever competitive game for the United States, hesitated for a second, and was beaten to the ball by Jerry Bengston, who slid it into the open net.

Food, water, ripped up cardboard, basically anything throw-able, fell down from the upper levels. The stadium shrieked as one again, and the base sound level moved up even higher. Journalists cheered with fans. Two people made out a couple of rows in front of me. That imaginary Uncle Sam murderer in the J-Lo shades jumped up and down, just like everyone else. The stadium wasn’t moving, but everyone in it, except for about 25 of us, was.

The game ended 11 minutes later, and that shriek came up one more time. The drums kept beating, a pattern something like the drunken footsteps of a guy walking home, and if you had a horn, you blew into it. Then for a few seconds, everyoneÌę chanting together: SI SE PUDO. And then they left, because the game was over, and even with a game like this, you’ve still got to get home before the rest.

IT’S TOUGH FOR THE U.S., this loss, because they have better players and this game was a big deal as far as U.S. soccer in the media goes. At his press conference, which I watched, sitting in front of a dozen or so TV cameras, on the floor, five feet in front of the coach, Jurgen Klinsmann said all the things you’d expect him to say. (While seated between two five-foot-tall blow-up bottles of Coke and Salva Vida beer. They also had beer on the press conference table, which American officials quickly removed.) The team needs to play better. The team will play better. He’ll make changes if he needs to. And etc.

The players took a similar tone after the game. You’re bummed when you lose, but Tim Howard, today’s captain, talked about how there are nine more games to play and there were always going to be bumps in the process. And this bump surely gets amplified with this being the first game.

The U.S. came here, and they left soon after the game with just as many points as before. It’s not all that much different after this loss; there’s just some more pressure. For Honduras, it’s a similar situation: a great start, but it doesn’t guarantee anything. They expect to win all of their games in a place like this anyway.

In short, it was just like every first-game-of-a-tournament there ever was.

When the game ended, a row of fans turned around and shook hands with some of the journalists behind them. One woman chanted U-S-A in my face while I walked through the stadium down to the press conference, and another guy smiled at me and said, “Sorry, sorry.” For The Murder Capital of the World, I should’ve been shanked in broad daylight, my laptop and phone stolen, body dumped onto the walkway outside the stadium among the Little Caesar’s boxes that one guy was collecting and stacking up to recycle later on. (I’ve been choked by an English fan after trying to shake his hand when his team tied the U.S. in the 2010 World Cup. And we left a Mexico-Guatemala game early because a Mexican spilled a beer on my brother and then threatened to kill him.) That didn’t happen, though, as the existence of this thing you’re reading would suggest. And hell, a guy apologized to me.

After talking with some of the players at a less-full, more-depressing mixed zone, we got on the coach bus for the last time and rode back to the hotel behind the escort. No one was dead, which was good. And no one outside the bus really paid any attention this time. Some people yelled, while most did nothing and just sat on their cars or stood on the grass in the middle of the street, presumably headed somewhere, eventually, but not right then. Things will get better and they’ll get worse, but Honduras had just won a soccer game.

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Some truths about countries: they have people, they have/say they have “a government,” and if they have a mall, that mall is terrible. That’s a redundancy, sure, because every mall is terrible. They’re all too clean, too big, and either too loud or too quiet. There’s a food court, too many nearly-identical clothing stores with vaguely-suggestive first-name names, and always a Cinnabon. Always a goddamn Cinnabon—even in San Pedro Sula.

Ìę

This being, you know, The Murder Capital of the World, (Jay-Z was wrong, unless he secretly grew up here) we’ve been told to not leave the hotel so we don’t get mugged and to then not resist said mugging if it happens because we will be assaulted with either a pistol or a knife and possibly murdered. The only place we can go safely, we're told, is the mall next door. (Note: one commenter called me a “candyass,” and he/she is correct.) The one with the coned-off parking spot with a stork-holding-a-baby sign (I don’t know, new-born-baby parking?) and the FOODCOURT and CARRION lettering on the outside walls. (I expected a warehouse filled with carcasses. What I got was a Honduran Sears.)

There was a coffee-and-donuts place called DK’D Donuts with suspiciously-similar-to-Dunkin-Donuts magenta and off-orange colors. An electronics store that looked like a bootleg Apple store—same silver, smooth-edges vibe—but claimed to be an “authorized Apple retailer.” Donald’s Barber Shop, which looked like a jewelry store but had taxi-cab and fire-truck seats for kids. The part-Nike-store-part-regular-athletic store that sold mostly FC Barcelona gear and had only two stands-worth of Honduras stuff. (One of the employees followed us around the entire store, keeping a constant three-foot buffer.) And the Ace “hardware” store that sold food, a bunch of children’s toys, and had five (total) bottles of liquor for sale at the register.

Once we found the movie theater, hidden on the third floor and closed—but showing Duro de Matar, El Vuelto, and Lincoln when open—it was time to go. . We walked out, while a guy wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a gun pushed an old man in a wheelchair through the door.

U.S. SOCCER HELD THE day-before-the-game press conference at our hotel because all the journalists are here and because it’s the least San Pedro Sula place in San Pedro Sula. All the rooms have flat screens, shower-baths, white comforters with those annoying half-blankets draped over the top, and all those other nice-hotel things you’d expect from some big American city. There’s a pool, a patio with ceiling fans, a workout room, and three fancy-ish restaurants. The walls are pretty high, too. While here, we’re in San Pedro Sula only in the widest, non-geographical sense.Ìę

The press conference was every press conference: journalists asking questions because they have to write stories and players/coaches answering questions because they have to answer questions. No one really wants to be there, but everyone’s always been there, so it keeps happening. I don’t know. Maybe not for the Honduran media, who outnumbered Americans with somewhere around 30 people and about nine television cameras. Their cameras clicked from beginning to end, and they asked most of their questions through a translator sitting next to coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who was flanked on the other side by midfielder Michael Bradley.

Klinsmann and Bradley each have sort of interesting stories. Klinsmann is a German, who lives in California and . He’s one of the greatest German players of all time and was a member of their most recent World Cup-winning team from 1990. He then coached Germany to an unexpected third-place finish in the 2006 World Cup. After that, he coached Bayern Munich, the biggest and best club in Germany (sometimes referred to as FC Hollywood), for less than one season, as he was fired with five games left. And Germany has done even better without him and with his assistant from 2006 as the head coach. So, in general, people are unconvinced.

Bradley is the son of the man Klinsmann replaced, now-former U.S. coach Bob Bradley. While he’s only 25, Bradley’s played 72 games (that is a high number) for the U.S. At first, some troll-types said Bradley was only being selected because his dad was the coach—all this while he was playing and playing well in the Netherlands and Germany, for teams much better than the U.S. Bradley is now a starting center midfielder for Roma, which is in Rome, which is in Italy. They’re one of the biggest and most historically-successful clubs in the country, and Bradley is widely considered (and just is) one of the two best American players, along with Clint Dempsey.

They’re interesting stories, but only in the sense that it’ll be interesting to see how their careers play out. Nothing gets added to them from a press conference—barring some table-flipping, cameraman-punching, or journalist-choking. The interesting thing about this, besides the idea of the U.S. playing an interesting sport and trying to qualify for maybe the most interesting sporting event in the world, is where they have to do it. Toward the end of the press conference, Bradley was asked about what it’s like to have to play such an important game in an area surrounded by security concerns:

“It doesn’t affect us at all.”

LATER, WE'RE AT THE stadium: Estadio Olímpico Metropolitano. The only time we’re encouraged to leave the hotel is when we’re riding in a police motorcade, and that’s how we got there: in a coach bus behind the team’s coach bus, surrounded by police vans, police motorcycles, and blaring sirens. Being inconspicuous does not matter when it comes to being safe. It’s about as close as we could get to just carrying the hotel to the stadium, it seems.

Everyone on the street turns and looks because that’s what you do when you see two big buses surrounded by police, no matter where you are. One guy in a wifebeater, sitting on a motorcycle, gave the convoy a thumbs down, and a maybe-seven-year-old girl grabbed the bars of a fence, jumped up and down, and looked like she was yelling. Everyone else just turned their heads and went back to being wherever they were. We passed some stray dogs, a place called Power Chicken, and a bunch of school buses that were being refurbished with tinted windows and a Jesus-Christ-wearing-a-crown-of-thorns decal, and then we were there.

The team has one training session before tomorrow’s game, and before that, there’s something called a mixed zone, which is pretty much the soccer-press equivalent of a petting zoo. Basically, there’s a 20-to-30-foot bit of fence up outside the locker room. Journalists, cameramen, camerawomen, and whoever else managed to get into the stadium on one side, players on the other. And it’s then a 20-minute scramble to ask as many questions as you can, but players are outnumbered by media by about 20 to one, and there is no ratio for media to fence space because you can’t divide by zero. There’s no room. Cameramen are swinging their cameras freely, somehow not smacking anyone in the face.

Jozy Altidore, a striker who plays in the Netherlands, spoke about getting racially abused during a game last week, saying, “All you can really do is hope it doesn’t happen again … and move on from it.” (.) He respects the Honduran team and hopes to start tomorrow. Geoff Cameron, a central defender who plays in England and is the one sure starter for half of the two central-defense slots, talked about going out tomorrow with the right attitude, communicating, and matching the intensity of his opponents. He also said, “You never know what’s being thrown at you, and you have to adjust on the fly,” which is maybe something that can be applied beyond the field here, but is not at all what he meant. The Honduran media flocked to the team’s few Spanish-speaking players, and Clint Dempsey, the star of the team and the person everyone wants to talk to, talked to no one. We now know nothing we didn’t know before.

For a good 20 seconds, I was sandwiched by two sweaty stomachs underneath the tucked-in polo shirts of two large Honduran men who wanted to hear from Altidore. It’s a weird cattle-drive-type thing—just read back that last sentence—but I guess this seems like the only way to do it since no one’s leaving the hotels, other than for the game. Just throw everyone in a tight space, put a fence in between them, and see what happens.

After that, training began and we—something like 50 Hondurans and 20 Americans—were allowed to watch from one of the end lines. The warm-up takes more time than that, so we didn’t see much from the players, but the stadium was weirdly beautiful. Or at least the idea of it was. And not in that Fenway or Wrigley way—distinct, classic designs—but in the way that this place contrasts everything around it, yet still is very much of this place. It hasn’t been renovated in a long time—if ever—and it’s most definitely not “classic,” just sort of old and rusty and old. If it were in the middle of the city, it’d look like everything else around it—kind of sad and aged, a sheen of dirt over everything—only sadder and older and dirtier. But the stadium’s a little ways outside the city, just past two giant green fields where people were pulling horses that clearly didn’t want to be pulled, some 25 minutes from our hotel.

The stadium itself is this over-colored (blues, reds, oranges, yellows, and greens) and over-advertised-on bowl ( is everywhere), but it’s also this solid thing that’s just sort of there, in the sun, with this bright green grass (surprisingly long and surprisingly plentiful), taller than everything around, other than the mountains a few miles away. Opposite the mountain-side, there’s not much at all, and you can look through the openings in the stands on one end and see nothing but sky. The mountains were covered by some light clouds, but you could still see their outline and the sun shone through just enough to brighten things up without making everyone sweat. There was a small breeze. A bunch of kids played soccer on a field you could see through the entrance. Some good things were pretty obvious: almost-perfect weather, the crazy greenness of it all, the breadth of the mountains, kids doing an active thing and sounding like they’re having fun, and this big structure, weathered from all the things and all the people that have been here and so big because more than enough people care about what’s happening tomorrow afternoon. This is all non-Cinnabon stuff: good and relatable, everywhere only if you're looking.

Then the cops walked onto the field with their “Policia” hats and navy blue outfits and their shiny tuxedo shoes or their pants-tucked-into-boots. A few of them had rifles, and the others had guns in holsters. Our 15 minutes were up. They told us it was time to go, and I couldn’t forget everything else we’ve been told about this place.

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“Javier, when was the coup?”

Ìę

Those words came out of the mouth of some man—southern, reasonably-tall, and apparently the mayor of San Pedro Sula, based on some of the I’m-sort-of-a-regular way he tried to talk about the place—on our shuttle from the airport to the hotel.

It doesn’t really matter that the driver’s name was Melvin—he got three letters right, at least—or that, after a back and forth, they decided that the coup happened no later than 2008. , as , esteemed person-who-has-been-to-Honduras-once, told me from the back of the shuttle. And what matters here is just that the coup happened. It happened less than four years ago, and now I’m here, rolling through the streets in a van, navigated by a man not named Javier, who has no problem cutting through gas stations instead of waiting for a red light to turn.

So, why the hell would anyone go to San Pedro Sula, Honduras?

That’s something I asked myself this morning, while I sat in the Houston airport waiting for my flight. I mean, it’s an easy-enough answer for the majority of people who were on the plane: they’re Honduran. But there were other not-Honduran people on this flight, too, all traveling to this city either to stay or to transfer on to somewhere else, but traveling to the same point for the two-and-a-half hours we were in the air.

Type San Pedro Sula into a Google search. See that second result? It’s a Washington Post article titled “.” As of January 2012, on the homicides-per-100,000-people scale, this city was first with 159. (For reference, New Orleans was the most violent American city on the list with 57 per 100,000.) —the transportation hub and industrial center of the country; also, a hub along the dotted path that is the Western cocaine trade—“the world’s most violent city.”

(It should also be noted that the State Department says, “Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens safely visit Honduras each year for study, tourism, business, and volunteer work.” Which is then followed by, “However, crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country.”)

So, again, what were all these other people doing, boarding this flight? Well, the elderly Canadian couple I met were on their way to some hidden outpost to meet friends. When I asked if they were staying in San Pedro, the woman—as nicely and as old-lady-like as possible—just laughed in my face. Then there was a Canadian woman going backpacking with friends through the country (that makes it sound less menacing than it actually is) for five weeks, and the guy with the guitar from Tulsa who apparently grew up down here and easily switched from that Oklahoma twang to perfect, Honduran-accented Spanish. Oh, and the church group from Louisiana—all overweight, post-middle-age, John-Deere-hat-and-camo-bag types … wearing John Deere hats and carrying camo bags—doing God knows (seriously) what.

But everyone had their reasons because this just isn’t a place you come to just to come to. You do it for, well, any other reason than that. My, Noah’s, and a couple other people on the plane’s reason: to watch a soccer game.

THIS IS HOW THE path to the World Cup generally goes for the United States Men’s National Soccer Team: they win most of their games at home, they lose in Mexico, and they scrape and scrap together enough wins and ties from games they play in Central America and the Caribbean.

Three (possibly four, depending on the result of a consolation game) North American teams will qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. There are six teams—the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Panama, and Honduras—in the final stage of qualifying, which is referred to as . Over the next year, each team will play 10 games (one home, one away: against each of the other five). It all kicks off on Wednesday, and, for the Americans, it’s kicking off in San Pedro Sula.

Quick primer: all of the Americans, and this is true for most national teams, play professionally for club teams, whether they’re in Europe, Mexico, the United States, or somewhere else, as their full-time jobs. They then play for the U.S. intermittently throughout the year (pro leagues take breaks for international games) in qualifying and the occasional major tournament (regional tournaments and the World Cup) over the summer. Here is the roster (clubs in parentheses):

GOALKEEPERS: Brad Guzan (Aston Villa, England), Tim Howard (Everton, England), Sean Johnson (Chicago).

DEFENDERS: Matt Besler (Kansas City), Carlos Bocanegra (Racing Santander, Spain), Geoff Cameron (Stoke, England), Edgar Castillo (Tijuana, Mexico), Timmy Chandler (Nuremberg, Germany), Brad Evans (Seattle), Omar Gonzalez (Los Angeles), Fabian Johnson (Hoffenheim, Germany), Michael Parkhurst (Augsburg, Germany).

MIDFIELDERS: Michael Bradley (Roma, Italy), Brad Davis (Houston), Maurice Edu (Bursaspor, Turkey), Jermaine Jones (Schalke, Germany), Sacha Kljestan (Anderlecht, Belgium), Jose Torres (Tigres, Mexico), Danny Williams (Hoffenheim), Graham Zusi (Kansas City).

FORWARDS: Jozy Altidore (AZ Alkmaar, Netherlands), Clint Dempsey (Tottenham, England), Herculez Gomez (Santos Laguna, Mexico), Eddie Johnson (Seattle).

Some combination of those 24 guys will either beat/tie/lose to Honduras on Wednesday, and they’ll all be staying in a hotel down here starting tonight. (At the urging of the U.S. Soccer Federation, and I’m told this is a first, all American journalists are staying in the same beefed-up-security hotel.) Look at where they’re all coming from: basically, anywhere that isn’t San Pedro Sula.

Not the place where the guy was selling glass-bottled coke out of a wagon pulled by a horse. Or the place with the gigantic, all-white, abandoned Jewish temple right outside the airport. Or the place where a one-armed man was passed out in the middle of the highway, surrounded by 20 or so people, somehow with towels on the ground underneath, just generally looking pretty dire. Or the place with a pharmacy fronted with security guards. Or the place with the Chinese restaurant fronted by security guards. And most definitely not the place where Pizza Hut is the nicest building you see between the airport and your hotel.

In short: this isn’t necessarily the most-conducive environment for optimal athletic performance, but this doesn’t mean that it can’t be or that it won’t be or that it even needs to be in order for the U.S. to win. But it makes a soccer game—and I think this is one of the few times I’ll be able to say this without feeling queasy—almost something more than only that.Ìę

Ìęso everyone in the country can watch the game, which is great. We should at least be coup-d’etat-free until then.

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