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Published: July 27th 2011
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We have reached the final stop of our little Caribbean trip. We made it to Belize for some serious diving aboard the Sun Dancer II.
I know some of you are awaiting the pictures and adventures of Tiffany and Leslie, those are coming next entry...as soon as I take care of the pictures.
Our last liveaboard with Mari was two years ago in Thailand. At the time, Mari was a "fresh" open water, and she saw her first whaleshark on her 12th dive. Today, with few more dives logged-in, here is our latest diving pictures.
We left Flores for the five hours drive to Belize City. We arrived just before lunch time in Belize City, with our boarding time on the Sun Dancer II at 3pm. Three hours to walk the capital city, this was our original plan. Well, this could have been the plan, but Belize City is not a pretty place to walk around, even at lunch time. Our tour was done in less than an hour. We couldn't find a nice restaurant open, so we retrived to the Radisson for a little lunch before boarding the Sun Dancer II. Sorry to say so, but it
is actually pretty well-known, downtow Belize City is a shaddy place, a clearly non-happening capital.
This is Mari second liveaboard, I'm getting closer to ten of them. This time we are on for 7 nights, and 5 days and a half of diving. On the program, we could have done 26 dives maximum. Mari dived 23 times, 25 for myself, so yes, we spent a lot of time under the water. If you do not dive, this is an average of close to 5 hours each day below the water.
Water was between 29 to 30 degrees! Visibility, nice, between 20 to 30 meters on each dive. Season... it's the begining of the hurricane season, and we faced a total of 5 minutes of rain... pretty cool, and really lucky to be honest!
The Sun Dancer II is part of the Dancer Fleet. I already dove with those guys in Grenada/Grenadines as well as the Galapagos. This time, or shall I say one more time, the boat is pretty nice and comfortable.
The crowd....very nice local crew. We have also 19 guests on board. Mari and I are the only non-americans. First time on a liveaboard
I've got to admit, we had around 12 guests which we didn't even socialised with. not sure if it has to do with the fact that they were coming from Texas. Luckily for us, we met Chip.
Chip is from around Seattle. He could have been my Dad by age. Former Navy top-officer, but better, a true diver. I've dived in 31 countries, he dived in 30! So thanks to Chip for helping us to get our wish list of dive sites a little longer. But better, we have to seriously thank Chip. We now hold the secret of calling sharks. This is something, thanks Chip, and hopefully we are going to dive again together!
Put it simply, and this is something, we now know how to attract sharks that are in the area. Ok, it can look a little scary when these big guys start to check you out...when we are down around 30 meters, and they "climb" below us to our level...this is something. Info, we have no intention to share this secret to those not diving with us. It was actually an experience to have dive masters following us just to witness it. We are
speaking of divemasters who have years in the area of diving.
The Sun Dancer II have few nice divermasters, but basically you dive on your own with who you want, and people follow you or not, as they wish.
So, you are going to ask me, what are the highlights of 23 to 25 dives...
First, we saw dolphins while diving...magical, there are no other words. We would have loved these 30 seconds to last minutes, and to happen again on other dives, but it was a one-off experience....and what an experience!
Second, night dives with sharks! To put things into perspective...my little under water camera has a flash with a range of maximum 3 meters. I saw a lot of these "nice" carribean reef sharks. They come close, very close...as close as to be less than a meter from us. This being fully dark, you see them once you put you torch lamp on them, so sometimes, this means really spotting them at the last second. I've got 2 "nearly" clear pictures of them. But I did encounter way more of them, the camera was simply not ready most of the time. Diving with sharks
by night, that's something!
To top it up, we saw reef sharks on most of our dives. Same point for eagle rays, southern stingrays, turtles, and other tarpans....impressive!
We also witnessed the sad invasion of lion fishes. Those should not be in the Carribean. They have no predators here, so they multiple fast. Good news, the diving community is here to give an hand, in the way of hunting these guys in the carribean waters.
We mainly dived the sites of the Lightouse Reef. The place is full of fishes and corals. And for those who ask, yes we dived the Blue Hole. I'm not really convinced by the Blue Hole. Yes we did dive to 42 meters down, yes our computers did beep like crazy, yes it was only an 8 minutes down there. But put it simply, there is not much down there. The Blue Hole is simply a great marketing exercise, but it's just a very average dive site.
I've so far dived few places in the Caribbean... Turks & Caicos, Grenada, Grenadines, Bahamas, Cuba, Los Roques Venezuela...and to put it simply, Belize is way better. Not top 1- in the world for
sure, but a great experience, way ahead of places such as the Maldives or the Red Sea.
Let's put it simply, the pictures do speak for themselves. Most important, there is no photo shop here. What you see, is what I saw...ok, maybe I saw it a little clearer as visibility was pretty nice.
Happy to have been able to dive Belize. More diving to come in 2011, but for now, it's time to focus on Leslie and Tiffany...because at the end of the day, the smile of a child worth a thousand dives! And a million when is he diving with you!
With love, from way up north!
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denidax
Deni, Dax and Ella
dolphins OMG!!
That was so lucky that you encountered dolphins in one of your dives...amazing!!