🇧🇿 Belize · South and coast
Monkey River Town is one of those corners where the most authentic, quiet Belize meets wild nature. It's a small fishing village, of Creole and Garifuna roots, settled at the mouth of Monkey River, right where the jungle and mangroves open to the Caribbean Sea, south of the touristy Placencia peninsula. A place of sandy streets, wooden houses on stilts and a leisurely pace of life, marked by the tides and fishing.
But the true star of Monkey River is its river. Going up the Monkey River by boat is one of the most popular and thrilling river safaris in Belize: the boat ventures among walls of jungle and mangrove, and almost always the prize is to hear —and see— the howler monkeys, whose thunderous roars give the place its name and its soul. To them are added crocodiles peeking out of the water, iguanas sunbathing, manatees in the stretches near the coast and an enormous variety of birds.
This guide covers the practical side of visiting Monkey River from Placencia: what the river tour is like, the jungle walk after the howler monkeys, what wildlife to expect, the quiet life of the village and the possibility of fishing or spending the night. An ideal plan to combine with the beach and discover the most natural and genuine side of southern Belize.
Monkey River Town is a small coastal village in southern Belize, at the mouth of Monkey River, with roots tied to fishing and to the Creole and Garifuna communities of the Caribbean coast. At its moment of greatest prosperity, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a town of some importance linked to the banana industry and to the export of the region's products, coming to have a much larger population than today. The decline of the banana —affected by disease— and, above all, the impact of the hurricanes that periodically strike the Caribbean coast of Belize gradually depopulated the place and reduced it to the quiet fishing village it is today. Its name comes from the howler monkeys (which in Belizean English are popularly called 'monkeys') that inhabit the riverside jungle of the river. With the development of nature tourism in Placencia, Monkey River was reborn as an ecotourism destination: its river safaris, its howler monkeys and its fishing draw travelers in search of wildlife and tranquility. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Belize's deep south, the rainiest, most forested and least visited region: the only district in the country where Maya languages are spoken by a majority, land of the Mopan and Q'eqchi', of Lubaantun, Nim Li Punit, Uxbenka and Pusilhá, of a Garifuna and Creole coast of remote villages, and cradle of organic cacao and of the alcalde system that won a landmark Indigenous rights ruling.
Read the history of Toledo District →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
At dawn, at the mouth of Monkey River, a guttural roar cuts through the jungle and is heard kilometers away. Whoever hears it for the first time swears it's a jaguar, or something worse. It's a monkey of barely seven kilos: the black howler monkey, owner of one of the most powerful sounds in the animal kingdom and responsible for the name of this corner of southern Belize. In Belizean English, these primates are popularly called 'monkeys' (and even 'baboons', though they have no relation to African baboons), and their abundant presence along the river gave its name both to the watercourse and to the village that stands at its mouth.
The howler monkeys are, without a doubt, the most emblematic animals of the place. They live in groups in the treetops and are famous for their deep, powerful roar, one of the loudest sounds in the animal kingdom, which can be heard kilometers away and echoes through the whole jungle, especially at dawn and dusk. That unmistakable bellow is the soundtrack of Monkey River.
The village, Monkey River Town, is at the point where Monkey River pours its waters into the Caribbean Sea, south of the Placencia peninsula, on the border between the Stann Creek and Toledo districts. It's an enclave where jungle, mangroves and the ocean mix, a rich ecosystem that explains both the abundance of wildlife and the fishing vocation of the town.
Monkey River Town is part of the human mosaic of the Caribbean coast of Belize, marked by Creole and Garifuna roots. The Creole population of Belize descends largely from enslaved Africans and British settlers, and developed its own culture, with its language (Belizean Creole), its music and its cuisine. For their part, the Garifuna —descendants of Africans and of indigenous Carib and Arawak peoples— arrived on the coasts of Central America at the beginning of the 19th century and settled at various points on the Belizean coast, contributing a very rich cultural identity.
The coastal communities of southern Belize, like Monkey River, historically lived off the resources of the sea and the rivers: fishing, gathering and the use of the jungle. That fishing vocation remains, to this day, the livelihood and the identity of the village, where families keep a close bond with the tides, the river and the Caribbean.
This cultural heritage is reflected in the everyday life of the town, in its cuisine —fresh fish, seafood, dishes of Creole and Garifuna root— and in its leisurely, hospitable character. Getting to know Monkey River isn't only a nature safari: it's also an encounter with an authentic Caribbean community, heir to the different human currents that populated the coast of Belize.
Although today Monkey River is a tiny, quiet village, at its moment of greatest splendor —in the late 19th and early 20th centuries— it was a much larger and more prosperous town. The locality was formally incorporated as a 'town' in 1891, when it came to have an estimated population of some 2,500 people, dedicated above all to the timber industry and the nascent banana activity. Its growth was tied to the expansion of those sectors across the southern coastal region of Belize, then the British colony of British Honduras. The fertile land of the riverbanks and the closeness of the sea for export made Monkey River a point of some economic activity, with shops, a school and a movement linked to the cultivation and shipping of the fruit.
The banana was in those years a product of very high demand in the markets of Europe and the United States, and the plantations of southern Belize joined that thriving Caribbean trade circuit, along with other banana areas of Central America like those of Honduras and Guatemala. Monkey River, with its natural river port, functioned as a collection and shipping point.
However, that prosperity did not last. From 1916, 'Panama disease' (Fusarium) began to spread through the region, a fungus that attacks the roots of the banana plant and that gradually devastated plantation after plantation throughout the Caribbean and Central America; by the 1930s it had ruined much of the local crop. The fall of the banana industry caused a wave of emigration from Monkey River to other parts of Belize in search of work, and the town began a demographic contraction that the censuses reflect starkly: from those 2,500 people in 1891 it dropped to barely 277 inhabitants in the 1970 census, and to 190 in 1980. In 1981 the locality was legally reclassified as a 'village', though it kept its historic name of 'Town'.
If the banana crisis started Monkey River's decline, the hurricanes finished sealing its transformation into the small village it is today. The Caribbean coast of Belize lies right in the corridor of the Atlantic tropical cyclones, and the most devastating blow in all its recent history came on October 9, 2001, when Hurricane Iris made landfall exactly at Monkey River Town as a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds of 145 miles per hour (about 233 km/h).
Iris razed the village: it destroyed the vast majority of the homes, completely devastated what remained of the banana crops in the area and hit the local wildlife hard, including the then numerous population of black howler monkeys, which was drastically reduced. For a community already diminished by decades of emigration, it was an almost fatal blow: many survivors chose not to rebuild and settled permanently in Placencia, Dangriga or Belize City.
For a coastal town, located at the mouth of a river and directly exposed to the Caribbean Sea, hurricanes represent a recurring threat: storm surges, destructive winds and floods that raze homes and crops with each great storm. The houses raised on stilts still seen in the village are, to a large extent, a testament to that forced coexistence with the floods and the storms. In the 2010 census, the population of Monkey River Town was barely 196 inhabitants, a fraction of those 2,500 of 1891.
More than two decades after Hurricane Iris, Monkey River Town faces a different but equally urgent threat: coastal erosion. The same sea that feeds the town through fishing has, year after year, been eating away the coastline where the village sits. According to reports from local media and conservation organizations, the advance of the water has already carried off the town's soccer field, entire homes and even graves from the local cemetery, while the beach that once bordered the village practically disappeared.
Faced with this threat, the Monkey River Watershed Association partnered with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to install geotubes —long synthetic bags filled with sand, about 50 meters (160 feet) long— in front of the most exposed properties, with the goal of creating a physical barrier that absorbs the energy of the waves and halts the advance of the sea. It's a mitigation solution, not a definitive one, but it represents a concrete effort by the community and its allies to buy time against the erosion.
Of those 2,000 to 2,500 inhabitants the town had at its 19th-century peak, today Monkey River Town has quite a bit fewer than 200 permanent residents. Some families have already left in the face of the advancing sea. And yet, the village is still alive, sustained by fishing, the small ecotourism industry (the river safaris that today make it known around the world) and a community tenacity that, with geotubes, environmental management and the affection of its residents, seeks to secure for Monkey River a future that its own coast seems to want to snatch away.
Monkey River's fate took a turn with the boom of nature tourism in Belize, especially from the development of the neighboring Placencia peninsula as a tourist destination. What for decades had been the town's basis of subsistence —the river, the jungle, the mangroves and their wildlife— became its main attraction for visitors from all over the world.
The river safari up the Monkey River, with the watching of howler monkeys, crocodiles, manatees and birds, became one of the most popular nature excursions of southern Belize. The residents, who know the river and its animals like no one else, found in the trade of guiding a new source of income, added to traditional fishing and the growing sport fishing that draws enthusiasts in search of tarpon, bonefish and snook.
Thus, Monkey River was reborn as a small-scale ecotourism destination, which keeps its authentic character and its leisurely pace. The village today bets on respectful tourism, tied to the conservation of its surroundings: the mangroves and jungle that surround it are very valuable ecosystems, nurseries of marine life and refuges of wildlife. The challenge is to keep the balance between tourist development and the preservation of that natural heritage that is, at the same time, its greatest treasure and its reason for being.