Lamanai Day Trip: Entrance Fee, Opening Hours and Every Published Tour Price

Verified live on 24 September 2026, on the Institute of Archaeology’s own fee letter and ticket store, the Belize Tourism Board’s site page, and eight tour companies’ own pages.

Lamanai costs BZ$25.00 for a non-resident adult — US$12.50 at Belize’s fixed 2:1 peg — and the reserve is open every day from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, with the last tour admitted an hour before closing. The site is reached by boat, so what you actually buy is a tour: a guided day at Lamanai runs US$123 to US$185 from Belize City, US$184 from Caye Caulker, US$175 to US$380 from Ambergris Caye and US$225 from San Ignacio, all re-read on the operators’ own pages on 24 September 2026. Five of the ten prices in the table below state that the entrance fee is inside them, one adds it separately, two never say either way, and one operator’s page says both about its two prices.

The entrance fee is the smallest and best-documented number on this page — it has a signed government letter behind it — and the tour prices sitting on top of it run from US$123 to US$380, about three times as much at the top as at the bottom (our arithmetic), for days built around the same ruins.

The fee, and the document behind it

The prices are in Belize dollars: NICH’s e-ticketing store states on its own front page that “All prices are in Belizean Dollars (BZD)”, so we are not reading the currency off a dollar sign. At the fixed 2:1 peg the non-resident adult ticket is US$12.50, which is our conversion rather than a NICH figure.

This fee has a paper trail, and it is worth having, because operators quote it wrong. The Institute of Archaeology’s letter to tourism stakeholders — reference IA/S/7/23(02), dated 6 December 2023 and signed by Melissa M. Badillo, PhD, Director — states that “Cabinet has approved the increase of fees to all our Archaeological Reserves effective November 1, 2024”. Its table raises Lamanai’s non-resident fee from BZ$10.00 to BZ$25.00 and the resident fee from BZ$5.00 to BZ$10.00. Those are exactly the figures the ticket store charges today, so the November 2024 increase is the one in force.

The letter also sets out who pays. For non-residents, “Standard fee applies to visitors aged 6 and up” and “Children 5 and under enter free of charge” — which is why a non-resident child of six is charged the full adult BZ$25.00 in the store. The letter and the store do not agree at exactly one age. The letter frees children “5 and under”; the store’s free variation is labelled “Minor(<5yrs)”, so a five-year-old is free on the letter and pays on the ticket page. The same store label and the same letter cover Xunantunich, so the mismatch applies there too, and neither the letter nor the store says which one governs. For residents the threshold is 12, children 11 and under are free, and “Residents enter FREE on public and bank holidays and all Sundays (except cave sites)”.

Where Lamanai sits against the other reserves, from the same letter’s non-resident table:

Our Xunantunich page prices the same top band from the ticket store’s side.

Opening hours and the rules at the site

• Open every day, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, “including on Sundays and Public & Bank holidays”.
• “Last Tour for the day: One (1) hour before closing” — 4:00 pm against the published 5:00 pm close, our arithmetic on NICH’s two figures. NICH does not print the clock time itself.
• “Maximum of 15 visitors allowed per Tour Guide.”
• NICH lists a Boat Docking Facility among the site’s amenities, which is consistent with every operator arriving by river rather than by road.
• Published conduct rules: “Wear outdoor-appropriate footwear for rugged terrain”, “Remain on demarcated trails”, “Use handrails where provided”, “No loud noise, shouting or music permitted”, “No jumping permitted on monuments”.

Every published tour price

Belize Concierge’s range is the choice between an English-speaking and a Japanese-speaking guide, and it warns that “You have to pay the fee for 2 persons if you join this tour alone”. Both Belize City figures already appear on our Belize City cruise port page, which is where the question of whether the day fits inside a ship’s all-aboard time is worked through; they were re-checked here and both still stand.

El Pescador prints two prices for one tour. Its flight-and-river day is “$310.00 per person” with a stated duration of 7 hours in the body of the page and “$380 USD per person” over “8 hours” in the summary panel beside it. Both were still live on 24 September 2026 — a US$70 gap, our subtraction on the operator’s own two figures — and the page does not reconcile them.

UpClose Belize prints two prices for one tour, too. Its Caye Caulker page prints US$184 in five places, among them “US$184 per person, tax-inclusive” and the heading of its own inclusions list, and then answers a FAQ on the same page with “the US$199 per person price includes round-trip water taxi transfers”. US$199 is that operator’s San Pedro price, which is the likeliest explanation, but the page states both.

What the money buys

The all-in tours are genuinely all-in. UpClose’s Belize City day covers “road and boat transfers, park entry, guided tour by a specialized Lamanai tour guide, and our delicious traditional Belizean lunch with beverage”, plus meet-and-greet, pickup and drop-off, and taxes. Its Caye Caulker version adds the round-trip water taxi, air-conditioned ground transport, the guided river safari, the guided walk of “all 4 main temple complexes”, the entry fee, lunch, and “All government taxes (12.5% GST), the price shown is the price you pay”.

Belize Cruise Excursions includes a Belizean lunch, “All transportation, including pick up and return to Belize Cruise Ship Terminal, Hotel or Water Taxi Terminal”, and a “Fully Guided tour Port to Port”. It picks up from the port, Belize City hotels, the water taxi terminal and both Belize City airports.

What comes off the top varies more than what goes in:

• UpClose excludes “Rentals such as water shoes and phone pouches”, snacks, alcohol and gratuities on the Belize City day; the Caye Caulker day also excludes breakfast, the hotel drop-off afterwards, and souvenirs from the site’s craft market, for which it suggests BZD$20–40.
• The San Pedro day excludes the transfer between your hotel and the island’s water taxi terminal, in the operator’s own capitals: those transfers “are NOT included”.
• JM Belize Travel includes the round-trip flight, transport, a personal guide, the entrance fee, equipment and lunch — but charges extra for “pick up/drop off beyond 3 miles north or south of San Pedro Town”, and requires booking 48 hours ahead.
• Captain Morgan’s includes breakfast, lunch and refreshments, and prices the park fee separately.

El Pescador contradicts itself on the park fee. Its air tour “Includes: Airfare, all transfers, refreshments, park fee, and lunch” and its boat tour “Includes: Light breakfast, lunch, entrance fees, water, sodas, and rum punch” — while the rate note beneath both reads “Rates are in USD and do not include sales tax, park fees, gear rentals (if applicable), or gratuity.”

The one operator figure that disagrees with the government

Captain Morgan’s Retreat prices its Lamanai day at “$175 USD per person + US$10 park fee”. The Institute of Archaeology’s published non-resident fee is BZ$25.00, which is US$12.50 at the peg — US$2.50 more than the operator adds, our arithmetic on the two published figures.

We are not going to resolve that, because nothing published lets us. The US$10 could be an out-of-date figure carried over from before the November 2024 increase — the old non-resident fee was BZ$10.00, and “$10” written with a US dollar sign is exactly what a stale BZ$10.00 looks like. It could equally be a rate negotiated for operators. If you are booking that tour, the number to ask about is whether US$10 is what you will actually be charged at the gate.

Getting there: the legs, and where operators disagree about them

Lamanai is reached by river. The Belize Tourism Board’s whole how-to-get-there entry is one line — “Boat up the New River from Orange Walk to the Lamanai Maya temples” — and it publishes no drive time, no boat duration, no hours and no fee.

The operators fill that in, not always consistently:

The disagreement is not between operators. It is inside one page. UpClose Belize’s Belize City page gives one set of figures in its step-by-step itinerary — an hour by road, a 45-minute boat ride — and a different set in the FAQ underneath it, where the same day becomes “approximately 1.5 hours of scenic overland travel” and “a one-hour jungle river safari”. Both were still live on 24 September 2026. Use the figure for the departure point you actually booked, and expect the longer one: there is no authority to settle it, because NICH and the Belize Tourism Board publish no duration for the road or the river at all. Belize Cruise Excursions, Captain Morgan’s, JM Belize Travel and Belize Concierge publish no boat duration either.

That also removes the tidy explanation for El Pescador’s 90 minutes. Its van ride starts from a mainland dock rather than from Belize City, and it is the only operator that does not name the landing it drives to — but UpClose puts 1.5 hours on the road from Belize City on the same page it puts one hour, so the two figures are not reconciled by where the drive starts.

Total door-to-door times, each operator’s own figure for its own departure point:

The Belize City row is the one to read twice, and it matters most to cruise passengers. UpClose Belize’s what-to-expect box answers “How long is the tour?” with “5.5 Hours to 6 Hours”; its FAQ, further down the same page, answers “How long is the Lamanai tour from Belize City?” with “typically running 8 to 9 hours door to door” and itemises the day to match. The same “5.5 Hours to 6 Hours” box also appears on that operator’s San Pedro page, whose own FAQ says the day “runs approximately 12 hours” — so the box reads as a template field left unchanged rather than a figure for either tour. Our Belize City cruise port page works the 8-to-9-hour figure against a ship’s all-aboard time; on a tender port that difference decides whether the day fits at all.

The Caye Caulker day is the one with a published clock: hotel pickup, the 6:30 am water taxi, a 9:00 am launch onto the New River, about two hours at the site, a 1:00 pm return river safari, a 2:00 pm overland return, and the 4:30 pm water taxi arriving back on the island at approximately 5:30 pm. The FAQ on the same page puts the return later, “between 6:00 and 6:30 PM”.

Flying does not shorten the day as much as the price gap suggests. UpClose sells an air upgrade from San Pedro departing at 7:00 am instead of 6:00 am and returning around 5:00 pm instead of 6:00 pm, and says of it that “the total tour time is about the same”. The two San Pedro water taxi departures that day are the same boats priced on our Belize City to San Pedro water taxi page.

What is actually at the site

Lamanai “sits on the bank of the 30-mile-long New River Lagoon in the Orange Walk District” and “was occupied for more than 3,000 years, up until European contact”, per the Belize Tourism Board. It says the site “was settled around 900 B.C and was still occupied two and a half thousand years later, when Spanish missionaries arrived to the site in 1544”, and that it holds “remnants of two (2) 16th century Spanish churches and a colonial sugar mill established in 1860”. NICH describes the same colonial layer as “visible on site”.

The Belize Tourism Board singles out “the well-preserved mask of a Maya ruler emerging from a crocodile headdress”, and notes that “Liquid mercury was discovered in an offering that was placed below the ballcourt marker at this site”. Belize Cruise Excursions guides visitors to “the Ball Court, the Jaguar Temple, and the Lag Temple”; UpClose’s Caye Caulker itinerary covers “all 4 main temple complexes”; El Pescador’s includes an on-site museum.

The height of the temple you climb is published two ways by the same operator. UpClose’s Caye Caulker page gives “El Castillo (The High Temple) — 108 feet tall, one of the largest Pre-Classic Maya structures in the world”; its San Pedro page invites you to “stand 125 feet above the jungle canopy”, and Belize Cruise Excursions says you “climb the Lag Temple of Lamanai 125 feet to the top”. A third operator, Belize Concierge, says the temple on its tour “is 33 meters tall” without naming it. Neither NICH nor the Belize Tourism Board publishes a height, so there is nothing authoritative to settle it against.

The “over 800 structures” figure that appears on Belize Cruise Excursions’ page is that operator’s, not a survey number, and no authority we checked publishes a count.

Lamanai or Altun Ha

The two sites are searched against each other, and the fees are close:

BZ$5.00 apart at the gate, our subtraction on the two published fees, and both were raised on 1 November 2024 — Lamanai from BZ$10.00, Altun Ha also from BZ$10.00. The excursion prices are where they separate: Belize Cruise Excursions sells its Altun Ha day at US$55 against US$123 for Lamanai. That is US$68 more, our subtraction on one operator’s two published prices, and what it adds is the hour north to Orange Walk and the boat leg up the New River. The full twelve-item shore-excursion card, and how each option fits a ship’s day, is on our Belize City cruise port page. Pacz Tours’ full card from the other side of the country, where Lamanai is the most expensive single day it sells, is on our San Ignacio and Cayo page.

What the operators and authorities don’t publish

These are gaps in their information, not ours. We looked and the numbers are not there:

• Any price from an Orange Walk operator on its own site. Lamanai Eco Tours Ltd., founded in 1999 and running from the Tower Hill landing, publishes no rate on its tour page, its booking page or its home page — only that “Park Fee, Lunch, Soda & Bottled Water included”. Its footer still reads 2022. Orange Walk is the closest gateway to the river, and it is the one departure point with no published price.
• Whether Belize Cruise Excursions’ US$123 includes the entrance fee. Its page lists lunch, transport and guiding and never mentions the fee either way.
• A boat duration from Belize Cruise Excursions, Captain Morgan’s, JM Belize Travel or Belize Concierge.
• Any drive time, distance or road route from NICH or the Belize Tourism Board. Both describe Lamanai as reached by boat and neither gives a figure for the road leg.
• Any height for El Castillo from NICH or the Belize Tourism Board, which is why the 108-foot and 125-foot operator figures cannot be resolved.
• A structure count from any authority.
• A duration, inclusion list, departure time or group minimum from Pacz Tours. Its rates page carries the US$225 figure and nothing else for that row, unlike several of its other tours.
• Time at the ruins from UpClose’s San Pedro page, from Captain Morgan’s, El Pescador, JM Belize Travel or Pacz Tours. Its Belize City page does publish one — “1.5 to 2 hours” — but only in the FAQ, not in the itinerary.
• Any concession beyond the ones in the Institute of Archaeology letter — there is no published student, group or guide rate.
• A separate museum admission. El Pescador mentions an on-site museum; NICH lists no ticket for it.
• Any evidence the fee has changed since 1 November 2024. NICH’s ticket store still charged the letter’s figures on 24 September 2026, and neither NICH’s Lamanai page nor its ticket store links a later circular or a change log.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not a visit. Every figure was first read on 9 September 2026 and re-read at the source named against it on 24 September 2026.

The entrance fees come from two independent government sources that agree. The per-category prices were read out of the NICH ticket store’s own variation data for the Lamanai product, because the rendered page shows only a “$10.00 – $25.00” range and hides the breakdown in a form; the currency statement comes from the store’s front page. The authority, the reference number, the December 2023 date and the 1 November 2024 effective date come from the Institute of Archaeology’s letter itself, which is served as a scanned image with no text layer — we rendered both of its pages at 170 dpi and read the tables and the signature block off the images. Its Lamanai row and the store’s Lamanai price match, which is what lets us say the increase is in force rather than merely announced.

Opening hours, last entry, the fifteen-per-guide limit, the conduct rules and the boat docking facility come from NICH’s own Lamanai site page. The setting, the occupation dates, the Spanish churches, the 1860 sugar mill, the crocodile-headdress mask and the ballcourt mercury come from the Belize Tourism Board’s Lamanai page, which we re-read in an ordinary web-browser visit on 24 September 2026, saving the page text and confirming every quoted line in it.

Every tour price, inclusion, exclusion, minimum group size, departure time and leg duration comes from that operator’s own page for that specific departure point: ten such pages, from eight companies, covering Belize City and the cruise port, Caye Caulker, San Pedro by water taxi and by air, Ambergris Caye by lodge boat, San Ignacio, and Orange Walk — the last of which publishes no price at all. Where one operator’s pages disagree with each other, or one page disagrees with itself, both figures are printed and neither is chosen, because there is nothing on the site that would let a reader choose either. Every page was read top to bottom, itinerary and FAQ, rather than down to the first figure: on UpClose Belize’s Belize City page the itinerary and the FAQ give different durations for the same day, and only reading both catches it.

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — conversions at the fixed peg, differences and last-entry times. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it.

Sources

• NICH / Institute of Archaeology — Lamanai site page — every ticket category and price, read from the store’s own variation data; the 8:00 am to 5:00 pm hours; the one-hour last-tour rule; the fifteen-visitors-per-guide limit; the conduct rules; the boat docking facility; and the Orange Walk / New River location
• NICH / Institute of Archaeology — e-ticketing store — the statement that “All prices are in Belizean Dollars (BZD)”
• Institute of Archaeology — Increased Entrance Fees to Belize’s Archaeological Reserves (PDF) — reference IA/S/7/23(02), dated 6 December 2023, signed by Melissa M. Badillo, PhD, Director; the 1 November 2024 effective date; the full non-resident and resident fee tables including Lamanai’s BZ$10.00 to BZ$25.00 rise; and the age thresholds and free-entry conditions
• NICH — Altun Ha ticket page — the BZ$20.00 non-resident and BZ$10.00 resident fees used in the comparison, and the 31 miles from Belize City on the Old Northern Highway
• Belize Tourism Board — Lamanai — the 30-mile New River Lagoon, the “boat up the New River from Orange Walk” route, the 3,000 years of occupation, the 900 B.C. settlement and 1544 Spanish arrival, the two 16th-century churches, the 1860 sugar mill, the crocodile-headdress mask and the ballcourt mercury
• UpClose Belize — from Belize City — the US$140 price and four-person basis, the 8:00 AM pickup and its pickup areas, and the inclusion and exclusion lists; and both sets of durations this page prints against each other: the one-hour drive and 45-minute river ride in its itinerary and the “5.5 Hours to 6 Hours” in its what-to-expect box, against the “approximately 1.5 hours” overland, “one-hour jungle river safari”, “1.5 to 2 hours exploring the Lamanai archaeological site” and “8 to 9 hours door to door” in the FAQ lower down the same page
• UpClose Belize — from San Pedro — the US$199 plus tax price, the 6:00 AM water taxi and 5:30 AM check-in, the 90-minute crossing, the hour by van, the 45-minute river safari, the “approximately 12 hours” day and the same stock “5.5 Hours to 6 Hours” box that contradicts it, the air upgrade and its timings, the excluded hotel transfer, and the 125-feet figure
• UpClose Belize — from Caye Caulker — the US$184 tax-inclusive price and the US$199 figure in its own FAQ, the hour-by-hour itinerary and the FAQ’s 6:00–6:30 PM return, the 45-minute crossing, the one-hour river safari, the two hours at the ruins, the 11-to-12-hour day, the 108-feet El Castillo figure, the inclusion and exclusion lists and the BZD$20–40 souvenir guidance
• Belize Cruise Excursions — Lamanai — the US$123 and US$106 prices, the pickup points, the one-hour drive north, the Tower Hill Bridge landing, the two hours at the ruins, the 5.5-to-6-hour day, the lunch and transport inclusions, the named temples, the 125-feet climb and the “over 800 structures” figure
• Captain Morgan’s Retreat — Lamanai Mayan Temple Tour — the US$175 price, the separate US$10 park fee, the eight-person minimum, the 12.5% tax note, the 7:00 am to 5:30 pm window and the boat-bus-boat itinerary via Tower Hill
• El Pescador — Lamanai Mayan Ruins — the US$310 and US$380 figures for the same air tour with their 7-hour and 8-hour durations, the US$190 boat tour, both minimums, the 90-minute van ride, the inclusion lists, and the rate note that excludes park fees
• JM Belize Travel — Lamanai River Safari — the “rates starting from” US$270 price, the two-passenger minimum, the 7:00 AM departure and 4:30 PM return, the inclusion list with the entrance fee, the 48-hour booking rule and the three-mile pickup limit
• Belize Concierge — Lamanai Ruins & River Cruise — the US$140–US$185 range and its English or Japanese guide options, the two-person minimum and single-traveller rule, the 08:00 hotel-lobby departure and 17:00 return, the inclusion of the boat and Lamanai fees, the 33-metre temple height and the 80-mile New River figure
• Pacz Tours — tour rates — the US$225 shared Lamanai price from San Ignacio
• Lamanai Eco Tours Ltd. — the Orange Walk operator with no published price; its 1999 founding, its inclusion statement and its contact number

Last verified: 24 September 2026. Entrance fees, opening hours and tour prices change without notice.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any operator or authority named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.