Gaia River Lodge immerses you in the Belizean rain forest, and gives you a front-row view of the majestic Five Sisters Waterfalls in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve. This immersion comes at some cost, if quick and effortless travel is a priority — but it’s worth the trouble, as this kind of eco-travel experience would be simply impossible in any less remote a location.

The one and only landlocked hotel on this list, San Ignacio makes its home in the Mayan country of western Belize, near the Guatemalan border. You’ll trade surf and sand for archaeological expeditions and rainforest canopy tours — and at the end of the day you’ll have a small-scale, environmentally friendly luxury hotel experience awaiting your return.

Set on a farm a 25-minute boat trip from the mainland, Thatch Caye occupies the merest speck of an island, with five overwater cabanas, four larger casitas with rooftop patios, and a single Family Villa, essentially a triple unit on stilts above the sea. What it may lack in five-star gloss it makes up for in full-immersion eco-tourism — you can’t get much closer to nature than this.

Film director Francis Ford Coppola knows a thing or two about staging an epic adventure in the jungle. Suffice it to say that things at Blancaneaux Lodge go quite a bit smoother than they did in Apocalypse Now. This is no dilettante’s experiment, but a highly accomplished, unpretentiously luxurious eco-lodge — and the wood-fired Italian cuisine and Coppola wines don’t hurt a bit.

The sequel to Blancaneaux Lodge, Turtle Inn dives deeper into Coppola’s taste for Asian design, featuring Balinese-style cottages and villas and Japanese-style baths. But there’s no mistaking the setting, which is pure Belizean beachfront chill — especially if you opt for a higher level of seclusion at Coral Caye, the hotels’ own private island, home to a single isolated cottage.

Sometimes a hotel’s address says a lot. Matachica’s, officially, is “5 Miles North of San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize.” Set along a secluded white sand beach and reachable only by motorboat, the place looks more like some bohemian castaway commune than a typical resort, with its small collection of colorful thatch-roofed casitas scattered amidst the palm trees.

On the fringe of San Pedro, at the south end of Ambergris Caye, Victoria House’s 42 plantation-style rooms spread out over ten acres of white sand beaches and tropical gardens. From here you’ve got unparalleled access to the Belizean Barrier Reef, including such attractions as the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and the sensibly (if frighteningly) named Shark Ray Alley.

Set on a 3,000-acre sustainable farm, surrounded by a 15,000-acre rainforest preserve, and comprised of twelve privately sited, low-impact, high-pleasure suites, Copal Tree Lodge is, quite simply, one of the leading eco-hotels on the planet. Copal Tree is also a regular entry on the bucket list of travel-savvy gourmands, wildlife enthusiasts, birders and fly-fishermen (and -women, presumably).

Ambergris Caye isn’t the easiest place on the planet to reach — once you get to Belize you’ve still got a commuter flight and a speedboat ride ahead of you — but it’s worth every mile. Situated right on the white sandy beach, Las Terrazas is a resort in the proper sense of the word — there’s a huge infinity pool, a fine-dining restaurant, a spa and wellness center, the works. All of this at boutique scale: just 37 rooms.

Placencia is almost comically blessed with travel-friendly attributes: with a perfect white sand beach on one side, and a mangrove-dotted bay and lagoon on the other, it’s ideally positioned for seaside lounging with a side of dolphin-watching and rainforest exploration. It’s got all kinds of hotels, from the merest shacks to impressive luxury boutique hotels like Itz’ana Resort & Residences.