At first sight, no one would say this is Belize: pines instead of jungle, gray granite instead of limestone, fresh mountain air in the middle of the tropics, and a river that comes down jumping from pool to pool as if someone had sculpted a water park in the rock. That is Rio On Pools: the succession of natural pools and slides that the Rio On carved over thousands of years on large slabs of granite, within the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, in the Cayo District, in the west of the country. The river descends through the pine plateaus and, sliding over the polished rock, spreads into a series of stepped pools connected by small waterfalls and channels that function as slides.
It's one of the most popular places to bathe in the Belizean west and the star stop of most excursions to Mountain Pine Ridge. Its appeal combines the fresh, crystal-clear water of the pools, the stone slides and a pine setting that breaks completely with the tropical image of the rest of Belize.
The name 'Rio On' comes from the Rio On itself, which shapes the whole. The site is near other attractions of the reserve, like the Rio Frio Cave and the Thousand Foot Falls lookout, with which it's usually combined in a single visit day.
The beauty of Rio On Pools is, above all, a work of geology and of time. The Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve sits on outcrops of granite and ancient rocks that are part of the Maya Mountains, very different from the limestones that dominate most of Belize. Over that granite runs the Rio On.
Over thousands of years, the river's water eroded and polished the large slabs of granite, creating hollows that fill up forming pools, smooth channels that act as slides and steps down which the water jumps from one level to another. Granite, a hard and resistant rock, wears down slowly, which results in rounded and polished surfaces, very different from the forms that water produces in limestone (caves, sinkholes).
That same granite substrate explains the landscape that surrounds the pools: sandy, poor and acidic soils, where the Caribbean pine thrives instead of the tropical jungle. Thus, Rio On Pools is a good place to understand, at a glance, why Mountain Pine Ridge is so different from the rest of the country: water, granite and pines instead of jungle and limestone.
Rio On Pools is protected within the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, one of the oldest protected areas in Belize, established in the times of the British colony to safeguard and use the pine forests. That protection made it possible to conserve the pine landscape and the watercourses that give life to the pools, integrating them into an ecosystem that is cared for as a whole.
Long before the creation of the reserve, these highlands were part of the Maya territory of western Belize. The region was close to great Maya cities —Caracol, the largest in the country, is found beyond, crossing the reserve itself— and, although the poor soils of the pine forest didn't favor intensive agriculture, the highlands, their rivers and their caves were integrated into the Maya world, with its routes, resources and sacred places.
With the boom of nature tourism, Rio On Pools became one of the recreational icons of Mountain Pine Ridge and the Belizean west. Its conservation is tied to that of the reserve as a whole: protecting the headwater forests and the water quality of the Rio On is what keeps the pools clean and crystal-clear. Thus, this natural bathing spot condenses the geology, the Maya history and the ecotourism present of the region.
The recent history of Mountain Pine Ridge —and therefore of the surroundings of Rio On Pools— was marked by an ecological catastrophe. At the beginning of the 2000s, between 2000 and 2001, a devastating pine bark beetle plague (the Dendroctonus frontalis beetle, 'southern pine beetle') attacked the Caribbean pine forests of the reserve. The insect, favored by a combination of drought and by the density of the pine forests, killed in a few years the vast majority of the trees, leaving entire slopes of dry pines of a reddish and brown color.
The impact was enormous: it's estimated that the plague razed tens of thousands of hectares and eliminated much of the mature pine cover that gave the reserve its name. The dead trees also increased the risk of forest fires, which in later years also affected the area. For those who had known Mountain Pine Ridge as a green mantle of pines, the landscape of the early 2000s was unrecognizable and desolate.
In the following decades, however, the forest began a notable recovery. The Caribbean pine is a species adapted to fire and regeneration, and with the management of the Forest Department, reforestation programs and the ecosystem's own resilience, the pine forests gradually grew back. Today Mountain Pine Ridge again shows extensive young and mature pine forests, and attractions like Rio On Pools continue to be a magnet for visitors. The story of the plague is a reminder of the fragility of these ecosystems and of the importance of their conservation.
Mountain Pine Ridge —the setting that makes Rio On Pools possible— has an additional, little-known merit: it was set aside as a forest reserve in 1944, during the British colonial era, which makes it the first and one of the largest protected areas in Belize, with about 777 square kilometers. That early protection status explains why the set of pine forests, rivers, caves and waterfalls that surrounds Rio On Pools remained relatively intact for more than eight decades, even after the beetle plague and the fires of the early 2000s.
Although at first glance the pine forest seems a poorer environment than the tropical jungle, Mountain Pine Ridge hides a surprising biodiversity. On its trees and rocky outcrops grow orchids by the dozens of species —some individual trunks come to host five or six different varieties— along with a great variety of ferns, flowering especially toward the end of the dry season. The wildlife includes elusive mammals like the tapir (Belize's national animal), the jaguar, the ocelot and the puma, which rarely let themselves be seen but which confirm the health of the ecosystem.
For birdwatchers, the reserve is famous for being one of the few places in Central America where it's possible to spot the Orange-breasted Falcon, a threatened species that nests in the cliffs near the Thousand Foot Falls, plus solitary eagles, the crested eagle and the black-and-white hawk-eagle. This combination of pools to swim in, spectacular waterfalls, orchids, rare birds of prey and elusive felines is what turns a simple bathing stop like Rio On Pools into the gateway to one of the most singular and best-preserved ecosystems in all of Belize.