Belice

Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Belize City, San Ignacio — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Belmopan was built from scratch after Hurricane Hattie destroyed 75 percent of the former capital Belize City in 1961 — the government commissioned a new inland capital on the Belize River, designed with a Maya archaeological site's layout as inspiration, making it one of the few purpose-built capitals in the Americas.

El idioma oficial es inglés, que refleja el patrimonio cultural del país y lo conecta con una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Belice se contacta mediante el código +501. Belize is the only Central American country whose majority language is English and whose culture is more Caribbean than Latin — its Garifuna population, descendants of Afro-Caribbean and Arawak people exiled from St Vincent by the British in 1797, maintain a language and drum music tradition that UNESCO listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2001.

Belice comparte sus fronteras con México, Guatemala. El tráfico rodado circula por la derecha, en consonancia con la convención de

La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC-06:00, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.

Belize's basketball culture coexists with football as the sport where Belizean athleticism is most visible regionally — and the country's Caribbean Games athletics programme has produced sprinters competitive at the CARIFTA level.

The Belize Barrier Reef, at 300 kilometres the longest in the Northern Hemisphere, contains the Great Blue Hole — a circular marine sinkhole 300 metres across and 125 metres deep, formed when a limestone cave system collapsed as sea levels rose after the last ice age — a formation that Jacques Cousteau ranked among the world's top dive sites in 1971.