Secret Beach, San Pedro

Why It Exists

Almost all of Ambergris Caye's development faces east, towards the barrier reef. That side has the reef, the dive sites and the views, but the shallows there grow sea grass, so most hotels put in a dock and you swim off the end of it rather than wading in.

Secret Beach is on the west side, facing the lagoon between the island and the mainland. No reef, no sea grass, and a shallow sandy bottom that goes out a long way. You walk in from the sand and the water is still at your waist a hundred feet later.

That is it. That is the whole appeal, and it is why a stretch of lagoon shore with nothing on it became the busiest beach on the island in about a decade.

How to Get There

Head north out of San Pedro town, cross the Sir Barry Bowen bridge, and stay on the coast road. Keep going well past the main run of resorts. Eventually there is a signed turn west, across the width of the island, and the road ends at the beach.

It is thirty to forty minutes from town by cart. The driving guide covers the road north in more detail, including the bridge.

What It Is Like Now

There is a run of bars and restaurants along the shore, most with loungers, palapas, over water seating and music. Some have swings and floating platforms out in the shallows. It is set up for spending the day.

The beach itself is free. The furniture is not: if you want a lounger and a palapa you order from whoever owns them, which is the normal arrangement and nobody is aggressive about it.

Development continues along that stretch, and it changes year to year. What was empty shoreline is now bars, and there is more building behind them.

When to Go

This matters more than anything else in this guide.

Our honest recommendation: leave town by nine, be in the water by ten, eat lunch there, and drive back mid afternoon before the road fills up. You get the good version of the place and you miss the traffic in both directions.

What It Costs

The beach is free and there is no gate. What you spend is entirely down to how you use the place.

Turn up with a towel, park, walk into the sea and lie on the sand: that costs you the fuel to get there. Take a lounger under a palapa with table service all afternoon and you are buying food and drinks from whoever owns that stretch, which is the arrangement and is perfectly reasonable. Prices sit at beach bar rates rather than town rates, which will not surprise anybody who has been to a beach bar.

Nobody pressures you and nobody will move you on for sitting on public sand. But do not take up a bar's furniture for four hours and buy one bottle of water.

How It Got Like This

Worth knowing, because it explains what you are looking at. A decade or so ago this was an unnamed stretch of lagoon shore reached down a rough track, known to residents and almost nobody else. The name was half a joke.

Then the road improved, a bar opened, social media did the rest, and development followed the visitors. What you see now is the result of that sequence: a genuinely lovely piece of shoreline with a commercial strip grown along it in about ten years.

It also means it keeps changing. If you were here three years ago it is busier now. If somebody tells you it is ruined, they mean it is not what it was in 2016, which is true and is not the same as it not being worth going.

Quieter Alternatives

If the crowd is the thing putting you off, there are options on the same side of the island.

• Go further north. Past the Secret Beach turning the road continues and the development thins out fast. The surface gets rougher, which is exactly why it stays quiet.
• Go early. A weekday before ten is a genuinely different place to the same spot at two on a Saturday. This is the cheapest fix and it works.
• Go south. The southern end of the island past the airstrip is quieter than anywhere north, though it is east side, so it is dock swimming rather than wading in.
• Use your hotel dock. Unglamorous advice, but the swimming off a dock on the east side is excellent and there is nobody else on it.

The beaches guide covers the difference between the two coasts in more detail.

What to Bring

• Cash in small notes. Card machines depend on a mobile signal and the signal out there is not reliable. US dollars are accepted everywhere; Belize dollars are fixed at two to one.
• Serious sun protection. There is very little natural shade, you are on the water, and it is the tropics. A rash guard beats reapplying sunscreen.
• Water shoes, if a soft sandy bottom bothers you. Most people are fine barefoot.
• Your driving licence, which you should be carrying in the cart anyway.
• A dry bag for phones. Everything ends up in the water eventually.

Is It Worth It?

Yes, once, and twice if you liked it. Go in with the right expectation: this is a popular beach bar strip with exceptionally good swimming, not an undiscovered cove. Judged as the former it is excellent. Judged as the latter it will disappoint you, and that mismatch is the only reason anyone comes back from it unhappy.

If what you actually want is empty shoreline, keep driving north past the turn off, or go south of town. Both are quieter and neither has bars, which is rather the point. The beaches guide covers the alternatives.