sherri malloy

Review of Hamanasi Adventure and Dive Re...

Among my favorite Hamanasi stories is one told on ...

Among my favorite Hamanasi stories is one told on a boat, approaching the Hopkins coast after a day out on the cays and the barrier reef. "It's easy to see it, even from here," one of our Hamanasi snorkle guides said. "It's the one with the trees."
This review is overdue, since I've been back more than a month from my first trip to Belize and Hamanasi. It doesn't matter, though, because memories that include the little snippet of conversation on the boat endure more than those from any other travel experience I've had.
It's the one with the trees. When the owners of Hamanasi put their ideals into place, creating a one-of-a-kind adventure resort without obliterating some tract of oceanfront land to do it, the trees were the winners. The tree house rooms at Hamanasi are more than just idyllic, romantic accommodations. They are emblematic of what makes this place so special. The density of the rainforest that Hamanasi's founders preserved insulates guests from one another in a most unexpected way. Emerging in the morning, we saw only trees, sky and birds. The tropical mockingbirds provide a continuous reminder that you are in ... the jungle.
It is almost shocking that a guest can descend a flight of wooden stairs, and walk a few yards through the forest, to the main Hamanasi lodge that at night could seem like miles away. It's one of the best illusions that the place has to offer.
So many reviews on this site load up with superlatives ... friendliest, most delicious, most beautiful, kindest, warmest, most exciting. Good reasons are behind every one of them. This really IS the best. A formula is at work at Hamanasi, and it works. It's not some sort of contrivance (like, say, the Disney formula is). It is a set of ideals that originate with the owners, are transmitted to their staff members who have always been their neighbors, and wind up in the memories of every guest.
My first morning brought a surprise, when I wandered off through the forest to the hotel's organic farm. No, I hadn't read enough about Hamanasi to know that it was there. Jesse, whose parents are Honduran and Guatemalan but who seems purely and proudly Belizean, took me on a tour. He showed me, in addition to the dozens of crop varieties, the serial compost bins, the worm farm, and the rest. This is not some hobby garden. It's the place where Hamanasi grows the food for its guests. What doesn't grow there is purchased locally, from Hopkins fishermen or nearby farmers. We make such a big deal in the U.S. these days about locally sourced food. These people have had it down for a long time.
I've never stayed anywhere, not in the whole world, where staff members at a hotel unfailingly knew my name from the very first meeting. Not just one or two, and not just for a day, but everyone, and for all the time I was there. That's another Hamanasi story that sticks. When we wound down toward our last day -- my wife Sherri and I, daughter Liz and her best friend Hope, all together on Liz' Make-A-Wish trip -- we were members of a new community, a new family. Now, try that somewhere else. I have, but I've never found it. At Hamanasi, it comes naturally.
All that you read here about the food, and the way it is presented, and the people who bring it, and catch it and grow it, is true. Every menu at every meal is pure joy. And everybody, from the guests at a nearby table to the people in the kitchen, knows it.
Every tour we took was like a vacation within a vacation. The cast of characters always changed, and each new set and staging was fresh and new and exciting. Many of those trips were eastbound, to the reef, and the abundance of marine life, including surprising encounters with aquatic mega-fauna, that make Belize a favorite. Before I max out, I'll write that our first Hamanasi experience is only the first of many. Once you go, you WILL go back.