I fell in love with Belize!

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Let's get straight to the point - I loved Belize! I can't say I've seen alot, but Cay Caulker, a small island off Belize City was paradise. The streets are sand, crabs regularly cross the road at night, and local transport is golf buggies. You can walk from one end to the other in half and hour and see the sun rise and set while sitting in the same spot. The locals are incredibly relaxed, so you have to order your food an hour before you want it, and be patient with processes for getting things done. All of this added up, together with some phenomenal diving on the worlds second largest reef, and I walked away incredibly relaxed and very sorry I couldn't stay longer.

It was a long day's travel to arrive from Mexico. A 5 hour bus, a 3 hour wait and then a water taxi that stopped for an hour on the way in San Pedro meant it was a 12 hour haul. Luckily I met a lovely Canadian couple and their daughter doing the same trip so I had some company along the way! It was a case of meeting people who have seen more of your country than you have - Janice had worked in the outback cooking for 12 cowboys and sleeping in swags for 4 months about 10 years ago. Her kitchen was a campfire and they moved regularly. Amazing!

We finally arrived in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye which is the next island to Cayr Caulker. It's a bit bigger and was a great introduction to Belize. Local rastas were fishing on the pier and reggae music was everywhere. After clearing 'immigration' the first thing I saw was a huge stingray swimming in the water very close to shore. A good sign and I was very happy!

They announced we had an hour until tyhe water taxi continued to Caye Caulker so I made myself comfrotable in one of the bars on a pier and ordered some beer and wings - it was happy hour afterall! After watching the sunset we sped off on a boat to Caye Caulker and on arrival I was very glad that my hostel was right next to the water taxi pier.

I went straight to Yumas and ran into another group of travellers who had been on my bus from Tulum to Chetumal. The traveller community feels very small here - everyone is travelling with the Lonely Planet Central America on a Shoestring and tend to stay at the same places. It's nice - you meet new people but also see some familiar people frm place to place. I've seen some french guys I dived with in Cozumel, and a girl I roomed with in Tulum also. I kept seeing the Canadian family around Caye Caulker but that wasn't surprising as it is so small.

The group was an Aussie guy called Tom, a dutch girl called Lies and 2 Danish girls, Luna and Nanna, who had met in Playa del Carmen and kept running into each other on the backpacker route. I sat down and chatted with them for a bit and we headed off for dinner. Dinner was on the oceanfront at a restaurant called Bamboo and I had a small snapper with mango sauce and coconut rice - real island food and yummy! They did have some interesting cocktail names eg duck fart - not making it appealing for me to drink!

Our hostel was next to the island police station and someone was locked up overnight. Thankfully my fan drowned out most of the noise but when I got up during the night I could hear him shouting to be left out, that he didn't do it, could he please have some water etc. Most of the others in the hostel must have heard it too. He was still going at dawn!

The next day I woke up early enough to watch the sunrise, had brekky and set out to and trawl the dive shops to see who was going out that day. Whilst out early I encountered some interesting locals, including a lady drinking beer at 8am, a rasta who asked if my coffee had kahlua in it, and another raster pushing a cart singing 'man eater'. I booked a dive and hightailed it back to the hostel to get my stuff. I went out to the reef close to Caye Caulker with Belize Diving Services. They had a huge fast nice boat so it was a pleasure, rather than fighting for space with a bunch of other people and all your gear. We did 2 dives which were great - we saw a nurse shark at the beginning of the first one, and similar although not as many fish as Cozumel. The reef was gorgeous though with loads of coral fans, coloured corals, and other sea flora.

For our break time in between diving they took us to Shark Ray alley, which is off the island before the reef break. There, nurse sharks swim up to the boats along woth loads of stingrays. The water is only chest deep and you can get in and swim with them also. Amazing, and one of the highlights of my trip so far!

After coming back from diving I ran into the 'gang' on the way back and we tucked into some lunch. We headed up to the Lazy Lizard which is a bar at the Split or the swimming spot, to watch the sunset. There are tables in the water where you can drink and stay wet at the same time. We watched the sunset with some very potent rum drinks and bought empanadas of a young kid who said his auntie had made them. Once I was eating them he made the joke 'you ate my dog'! which of course wasnt true I hope and was a funny moment to remember.

As the sun set a huge boat pulled into shore and a bunch of inebriated Brits jumped off followed by the captain of the ship, a rasta called Ras Creek. They had been out with him for the day and had a great time so we negotiated to go out the next day.

The next day we met up with Ras at the arrangd time of midday. He had promised us snorkelling and fishing and we brought our own drinks with us. He was at his boat whch he lives on, but didn't have any bait so told us to chill out while he went in search for some. In the meantime we cleaned up the boat and wondered how long it would be before he returned. Thankfully this didn't take too long and we were on our way.

As we were pulling out of the harbour we could see huge stingrays in the crystal clear water, along with brilliant orange and red sea stars - much bigger and fatter than starfish and they were everywhere. We were lucky enough to catch sight of 2 dolphins frolicking and got up quite close to see them swimming around. Another highlight for me!

We went back to Sharkray Alley, which Ras says he 'founded' and he jumped in and started swimming with and holding the stingrays. We all had a go and the one we held was so beautiful - very placid and it felt like very smooth, heavy rubber. Very enjoyable!

Ras entertained us along the way with his bongos singing Bob Marley *of course* and other similar music, cracked open fresh coconuts for us to eat, and pointed out a private island where 'fancy arseholes' apparently stay. What a character!

We then did the 'bird tour' which consisted of us holding up fish for the huge firgate birds to grab out of our hands. We lolled around on the water drinking rum and relaxing, and then set off for what we thought was another bait collection before fishing. It turned out we got bait, but we didn't fish! Ras pulled back into shore and cooked us up some sausage sandwiches *random*! and some conch he had caught earlier. It was delicious but we decided to jump off the boat and head home to eat. Dinner was chinese takeaway - not interesting on its own but the weird thing about Caye Caulker is that there are Chinese restaurants and takeaways everywhere, and all the supermarkets are owned by Chinese!

The next morning I set out at 5.30am for the Blue Hole. It was a day of 3 dives with the Blue Hole first. It took us 1.5 hours to get to the site by boat, and even though we had all seen the aerial images of the hole we had no idea when we arrived there as only one other boat was there. The reef itself is of course all totally submerged and only when we realised where we were could we make out the faint blue ring on the top of the water which marked its shape. We had a very thorough safety briefing - you go down to about 40m on this dive and so we had to be reminded of the symptoms of nitrogen narcosis and what to do if we began to feel affected. I felt completely safe going down, and we had 3 dive masters for about 10 people watching us at all times.

We descended down a steep wall quite quickly to about 40 metres. The blue hole used to be above ground and is full of gigantic stalictites. It was like descending into a prehistoric world, it's dark and cold, and all you can hear are the sound of your bubbles, which sounded different at that depth. On one side you have the gorgeou formations, and no the other side we had some curious *and big!* reef sharks cruising by. You can only spend 8 minutes at 40m and we spent this time swimming through the stalictites. Once the time was up we slowly made our way back up to the boat. Total dive time is only 25 minutes.It was absolutely amazing - I had heard some people it weasn't worth doing, and there isn't much sealife there - but the whole experience is something I will never forget. Thankfully noone got ill and everyone also enjoyed it!

http://ambergriscaye.com/pages/town/greatbluehole.html

We then had a required safety stop while we drove towards Lighthouse Reef, where our other 2 dives were. We completed a dive at Half Moon Caye and then one at the Aquarium. I had heard these 2 dives were also supposed to be excellent and they didn't disappoint. The coral in Belize is stunning, and on top of this on the first dive I saw my first eagle ray - huge and charcoal with white luminescent spots. It was so majestic was it glided by. We also saw 3 turtles on the second dive, and not doing their usual thing of swimming away, but swimming all around and underneath us - amazing! Topped off with a baby reef shark, mini eels, trumpet fish and loads of other rays - it was amazing.

We had a lunch stop in between on a protected island which is a nesting ground for some birds (red footed something??) and it was good to walk around. Again, I met another great group of travellers and all with their own stories - a man travelling with his wife and now 11 month old son - they decided to travel no her maternity leave - brave! and a guy who is a photographer by trade, riding his bike around Central America for 2-3 years and hoping to make a book of it.

When I got back into the island the guys told me that Ras had promised to take us out onto his boat fishing again, so we headed up at sunset. Again, Ras didn't have bait, and was faffing around trying to get music sorted with a battered old boom box and a battery pack. We decided after waiting for a while it wasn't going to happen and aborted the mission!

We eneded up at a place called Little Kitchen - a recommendation from Claire, another friend who I have met - she and her friend Alex are from Manly and travelling together and so have joined our little group. Little Kitchen was in the middle of the residential area, very hard to find, but great. A mother and daughter run it, and we had lovely fresh seafood - snapper for the others and garlic butter lobster for me. Yummo - it was delicious and only about 7 pounds for 2 lobster tails. On the way back we spotted crabs wandering across the road as they do there at night (so cute!) and headed back to the hostel to drink local rum and play shithead!

The next morning we got up early to get a water taxi to Belize City and then a bus onto Flores in Guatemala. Loads of black pelicans were out for their morning feed and whilst waiting for the water taxi we were entertained by them diving for fish - slamming down heavily with their heads underwater and coming up with fish.

I was very sorry to leave Caye Caulker as it was so laid back and I had a great time. It was made a little easier by the grey skies that had come over. I'm now in Guatemala and will write more soon!

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Comments

[Neil Wright]

I hate you!
No content to this really. Just read the last post and felt that - with the advent of the cold weather here and me thinking I needed to bring out my winter coat already - reading your posts haven't really helped! Sound beautiful and glad you are obviously loving it! I miss you ... ;-) Neil x