The 7 gates of hell lead to Paradise – Belize

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The 7 gates of Hell

Our nightmare journey takes over 36 hours for us to travel approximately 1500km (not exactly sure but it felt like much more). We start at 6am leaving Tamarindo in our trusty Toyota Yaris driving the 4 hours to San Jose. After returning the car, we realize that the bumper is actually hanging off the front of the car - thank god for fully comprehensive insurance - and by the way its not our fault that the Costa Rican government are too cheap to pave their roads!

The journey continues via a two hour flight to Guatemala City, a place that we originally thought that we might spend a couple of days investigating, but nearing the end of our travels and the distances involved we decide to head straight to Belize. You would think it is easy considering the countries border each other and country sizes are equivalent to England and Wales - so 4 hours right???? NO! We wait in the bus station (heavily guarded by policemen with Kalashnikovs (big guns) for 4 hours for the bus leaving to Flores at 9pm. The bus thankfully leaves on time and we are finally on our way once more. At 6am we are rudely awoken by the chav behind us, blaring music out of his phone - has he not heard of headphones? At 7am we arrive in Flores (STILL in Guatemala) to spend another couple of hours waiting for the next bus which is meant to take us over the border and into Belize City.

Little do we know that at the border, we have to collect our luggage, have our passports stamped and then walk the 1 km of no man’s land ie the border to try and get our passport stamped again on the other side. Woo hoo we have arrived in Belize. There is no sight of our bus however, Heenz is pleasantly surprised that Innz actually isn’t losing her cool (she must have changed!). We are informed that we need to find a minibus that is heading to Belize City - erm…..we have paid for the whole journey and we were not expecting to carry our bags in the heat like this. Thankfully a fellow Mexican passenger helps us find the right minibus, but our driver is too old to carry the luggage and tie it to the top of the bus. Heenz plays Superwoman and climbs up the minibus, 15kgs strapped to her back and hoists her rucksack up. Whilst at it, she plays first mate to the bus driver and offers to lift everyone else’s luggage up there too! Some of the guys pathetically agree! WHIMPS! Where are the real men in the world?!

So you would think that we have made it…….three hours on the minibus with no air conditioning and we finally arrive to Belize City. By this point we have been up for 31 hours, not eaten - well if you don’t count the two little bags of cookies (126 cal EACH!) - and are immediately whisked into the ferry terminal to buy tickets to get to Ambergris Caye - our final destination. We run through the terminal sweating like pigs but at least we don’t have to wait around for the next ferry 2 hours later. We have to admit that we have very little recollection of this as we are so tired by now! 1.5hours later we have arrived in Ambergris Caye, in other words PARADISE! WE DO NOT CARE RIGHT NOW - WE NEED SLEEP!

The island
Our hunger pangs however do not let us rest and we head off to the best restaurant on the island which thankfully turns out to be Indian making food just like Heenz’s Dad!!! YUMMY! Food is delicious but just to prove how tired we were, we couldn’t even order the bottle of Montrachet that was only GBP50!!! We haven’t had that delicious wine for 5 months.

The next day we explore the island - its 1km wide and 15km long, but the city of San Pedro can be covered in about 1hr. There are no cars, only golf buggies and all the roads are pretty much sand. We book our diving course - of course just being an open water diver isn’t enough for us both, we have to become advanced. Whilst still tired, we do notice that there is a group of boys hanging around the dive shop who speak ENGLISH ie not American. We are excited but still too tired to process this information - have we become asexual? - and settle in for the rest of the day of sunbathing.

Paradise
We wake early the next day slightly apprehensive about diving as we can barely remember how to put our scuba gear together. Our dive instructor (there are only two of us in the group - woo hoo), Jex, is over the moon that he has two beautiful girls to teach and will get to spend the next two days alone with us underwater. We head off after a briefing to do our first deep dive to 40m (the whole point of the course is to become comfortable diving to large depths so that we can dive Belize’s famous Blue Hole - more later!). Jex does a good job of calming us down and we settle right back into the flow - belize style - take it easy! We have no problems with the descent, no nitrogen problems at depth and generally seem to be like fish to water.

The second dive that day sees us underwater navigating with a compass, which we practice on the beach first looking like idiots walking backwards and forwards and then in squares - all very useful as we need to show competency underwater. The practice pays off and we finish the tasks and settle in to watch the fish for the rest of the dive.

Coming back we are euphoric as we have seen so much wildlife including sharks and turtles, (will write a full list of what we saw at the end of the blog) but mostly due to the success of our deep diving and how comfortable we feel. This clearly shows on our faces, as a couple of the guys from the group that we noticed yesterday come up and start talking to us about our dives. We talk over each other with sheer enthusiasm for what we have just accomplished. Oh, and wait a minute, OMG DOES GOD ACTUALLY MAKE MEN THAT LOOK LIKE THIS???? Good thing that we didn’t register that before we started talking as otherwise we would just have been dribbling and speechless.

We arrange to take our instructor out for a beer that afternoon to thank him for such a great day (we also mentioned that we were going for drinks to the English guys). Unfortunately for us, it looks like Jex may have misinterpreted our invitation as he shows up with a friend and we are now on what seems like a double date. As its day time we are still in our bikinis at the beach bar and soon are starting to get pretty happy on the local rum and unfortunately so are the instructors who begin to get a little too touchy feely. One of the English guys comes to the bar but doesn’t try to save us….however we start talking to him and soon Jex and his friend get the message that we are not interested and leave. Thank God. We continue talking to the English guy (note that names will not be mentioned as if we tell you any more we will be found and killed and then they will come after you! ;o)) - this is because we find out that the boys are here on a break after a training mission with the British Army.

There are 11 of them aged 25-40, all looking like they just stepped off a Mr British Army monthly calendar photo shoot. We will call the above guy Mr A. We invite him to have some dinner with us which he kindly accepts and off we go to the Thursday sushi night at his hotel. Mr A gallantly offers to pay for dinner which we would normally not accept (you know us), but since we are backpacking and have paid 7 years of tax, we are happy to reap the benefits. The restaurant is packed and after a few drinks we are getting into the swing of a big night out, not caring that you are not supposed to drink 12 hours before your next dive. Oops. After dinner we all (Innz and Heenz with 10 men!) head to Fidos - the local Gringo bar where we end up for the next 4 nights! Being the sensible girls that we are, we leave at 1am to try and sleep off some of the 6 vodkas we have just drank. (Don’t forget the 4 rum punches prior to that!)

Not feeling so good the next day we head out again to dive. The weather has turned slightly so the sea is much rougher than the day before, which is fine until we finish the dive and head back onto the boat. The rocking motion (plus the hangover) makes Heenz almost throw up into her scuba breathing gear (would have been messy!) and Innz turn green literally. Don’t think that we will be going out again today. Thankfully as Belize life is very Caribbean this doesn’t pose any problems and Jex is happy to have another day diving with us!

Sleeping off the alcohol in the afternoon, we wake feeling ready for another night out and head off for dinner at the boys’ hotel - no, we are not stalking them!;-) After dinner, we all congregate around the bar for a few more drinks before they ask us to join them at Fido’s (surprise surprise!). After Fido’s, we sample further delights of the local nightlife at a local club called Jaguar’s. We are reasonably sensible with drinks (ie we don’t join the boys for rounds of tequila) and get home by 3am (ish…we think) - thank god we booked the next morning dive for 11am!!!

2 more dives and some snorkeling on the following afternoon sees us complete our Advanced Course - surprisingly we don’t even feel too bad after the last night out! We are over the moon - is it wrong that one of the main reasons we are happy is that we can go out properly tonight and not worry about diving with a hangover the next day??? As we get off the boat, the guys invite us over to laze around their pool and the afternoon is spent in pleasant conversations (and few vodka tonics) that for once involve more than just 2 people (ie us two!). Surprise surprise - we all agree to meet at Fido’s later! We are feeling significantly better than the rest of the group and drink most of the boys under the table! Haha! We are not so scared to go back to our welcome back party anymore. Most of the boys call it a night at 1am (wusses!) but we push on ahead convincing a couple of them to keep us company………..

Next couple of days are spent in between sleeping little, lounging by the pool, drinking, chatting, dancing, and generally having a good time….think Top Gun meets Cocktail….PARADISE! (Apart from one incident where a 60year old man actually invites us beauties to come and decorate his pool the next day! YUK!)

When its time for the boys to leave couple of days before we are due off, we are thankful that we still have the amazing Blue Hole dive to take away our blues at being left at the mercy of the local dive instructors, who, by the way, have still been following us around the island and getting a grab and feel here and there when they get an opportunity or even when they don’t!!

Unfortunately for the bars (thankfully for us) we have to leave at 6am for the Blue Hole dive day, as it takes 3 hours to actually get to the first dive site. The Blue Hole is 1km across and over 400ft deep (we only dive to 140ft - 42m) and is an unusual formation as it is a cave which was above sea level at some point, leading to the creation of 6ft stalactites (tights go down!). As we are diving so deep we only have 8 minutes of bottom time (including our descent) so that if we take 2 minutes to descend we have 6 minutes at 140ft before we need to start ascending to a safer depth due to the limited amount of air that we are allowed to carry. We follow the wall down to approximately 110ft, at which point the overhang is and where we begin to see the stalactites.

We both look like our eyes are about to pop out of our heads as we are amazed by the visibility at this depth and the site of large stalactites that we can swim through. As we approach one, we both burst out laughing underwater - not an easy thing to do - as the stalactite looks like a hand giving someone the finger only upside down. All of a sudden Heenz comes out of the stalactites and decides to look at the surface (always a good idea to know which way you need to go!) and desperately tries to get Innz’s attention. 50ft above us there are 8 black tip reef sharks each about 8-10ft in length swimming above us. Can you imagine our delight? This is the image that all divers want to see, looking up towards the sunlight and seeing sharks swimming above. Thankful that we are a group of 10 divers and look too scary for the sharks to come too close, we begin our ascent. At our safety stop of 20ft, we hover waiting for the nitrogen to release itself from our body and see the sharks somewhat closer. Whilst you would think that we would be scared the scene is so surreal that people can barely wipe the grins off their faces. We climb onto the boat all talking to each of the other divers on board about how lucky we have just been to see such a sight! Thank you to Carlos our dive master!

We then set up ready for our next dive at Half Moon Caye. Being the first ones back into the water we are lucky enough to spot lots of wildlife first, and see a shark upon entering the water. They are so graceful underwater that it is not difficult to respect these magnificent creatures. We see a variety of wildlife and come back on board just as excited about the second dive although a little more tired.

Lunch is served on an island where there is a colony of Red-footed Boobies (a species of bird - they are actually called this!). For those of you that read our Galapagos entries you will know that Galapagos is the only place to see Blue-footed Boobies and this island is one of the rare spots to see the Red-footed Boobies. We pathetically inform people about which bird is which as we are now experts thanks to Galapagos and look like real bird twitchers. Well at least we have some stories that no longer start “when we were drunk…..”.

The final dive of the day is another 45minute dive where we spot fish that we have not seen before. We are complimented on our diving abilities by some professional divers who say that we look like mermaids in the water as our technique is so good. Taking the lessons has paid off! As the instructors prepare the rum punch cocktail for our 3 hour journey back, the bad water is negated by the rum and we start chatting to two guys that have just sailed across the Atlantic on a Catamaran for a delivery in Belize. We all decide (after a few rum punches) to head out for dinner later that evening but to have an early night as we are all exhausted!

Things seen while diving: Black tipped reef sharks, nurse sharks, loggerhead turtle (1.5m long), giant barracuda, moray eels, giant crabs, lobsters, pulse worms (they look like little Christmas trees), hogfish, angelfish, butterflyfish, sergeant majors, groupers, parrot fish, hermit crabs, shrimp…the list is endless.

Reflection
Our final day is spent lying around the pool, reminiscing about our 5 months traveling. We are feeling slightly blue that the trip has come to an end as we couldn’t have asked for a better ending in Belize. It lived up to all expectations and exceeded on many as well. We think about what we have achieved in the past 5 months and can’t believe the change (even if only subtle) in us both. We haven’t had any life altering moments and are sure that a couple of weeks back in London we will be how we used to be but with a new sense of adventure, perspective and ambition. One thing that we swear to do in Miami is have our eyebrows seen to as over the past few months they have been neglected (wait till you see the photos!) and book ourselves into a salon as soon as we land in Miami!

All there is left to say is that we had an amazing trip, seen and done so many things that so many people never the chance to. We hope that you have enjoyed reading the blog and keeping up to date with all that we have done and I hope it hasn’t been too painful for some of you to read. We would like to thank everyone especially our parents for providing the support and love that they did, the girls for keeping us in touch with London life and being there for us along the way and the rest of you for your comments of encouragement.

We are now on our way to Miami and New York and whilst not really traveling may put a final entry up with photos of our antics there. But for now……over and out.

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