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Published: July 13th 2009
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Wow! Wow! Wow! is all I can say!! Absolutely loving where we are, on the island of Ambergris, in the town of San Pedro in the Belize Barrier Reef. The Barrier Reef here is the 2nd largest in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We arrived here on the 7am ferry from Corozal after staying there for our first night in Belize. It's exactly what I imagined a tropical paradise to be like; crystal clear blue-green waters, white sand, coconut trees everywhere. But it's much more than that, it's the great food, relaxed, laidback atmosphere and most importantly the great friendly people. Everyone is so helpful and friendly and we seem to know half the people on the island after only 3 days; just stopping to say hello to someone here, waying at someone else half way down the street. And the craic, everyone we've met so far have been so funny and quick witted with a total gift for the gab! We've ended up in fits of giggles everyday over some rasta rhymes or other, just brilliant! I never thought I'd say this, but Madonna was right when she sang 'tropical the island breeze, All of nature
wild and free, This is where I long to be, La Isla Bonita' about the island. We love it so much we're half contempleting forgetting about Guatamela altogether and just staying here for the rest of the holiday!! But we'll just have to make do with another night here instead.
So after we arrived on Friday we had a wander round, really liking what we saw. It was then we bumped into Danny (the President) and David from one of the many dive shops, who gave us a walking tour of the town, it was very funny and we went to this pier beside a restaurant where there were lots of Tarpin fish. These fish swarm round the pier when some one rings a bell and you can then feed them with bits of fish ends, they jump right of of the water when they see them, so it gave us all a fright when we first saw it. Dara was the only brave one of the 3 of us to feed them herself, it was great, they're massive fish!! After a bit more banter and walking round we went for dinner in a lovely Lebanese restaurant, where the
The dogs of Estel's restaurant
Cooling down in front of the fan food was gorgeous but the portions unfortunately where tiny, not enough to fill a gap in your teeth. We were a bit worried that the portions were going to be small in general as we all like our grub, but have been delighted to find that this is not the case and we have been more than well feed in really cutie quirky beachside restaurants and that veggies are really well catered for, so I haven't been relying on just rice and beans after all!! That night we hit the town, on the hunt for some good reggae. The place that was recommended to us first wasn't up to much, just full of ex-pats, but then we moved on to another place that had great music. We were just about to shake our stuff on the dancefloor when there was a power cut, so that was the end of that, but a good night all the same. Saturday was again spend wandering and sunbathing, but we booked a snorkel trip out to the reef early on the Sunday morning. The snorkel trip was amazing, we went out in a small speed boat with a guide and we had two stops;
the first was to the reef where we saw all the coral and the most brightly coloured neon fishes, we were there for about an hour snorkling around with the odd massive turtle joining us for a bit. Then we got back in the boat and went a further 10 minutes to 'shark-ray alley'. This is a natural channel in the coral which sharks and stink rays and lots of other fish use as a channel through. I was quite nervous about swimming with the sharks and sting rays but it was brilliant. I'm not sure what type of sharks they were but they were really gentle and our guide was holding them and getting us to pet them! I was surprised at how rough the sharks skin is, like sandpaper and the skinrays felt really weird and floppy. The guide was going under the sting ray and putting it on his head like a Mexican sombero, weird. It was really brilliant though, fabulous experience! That afternoon we took a short hop in a water taxi to another one of the Cayes, Caye Caulker. This island is like a mini version of Ambergris and even more laid back (if that's
Shark Alley
We took lots of underwater shots, but with a disposible camera so have to wait to get them developed possible). Really cute with a great atmosphere, definately would like to stay there if I come back to Belize, was just a pity we didn't have longer there!
Still on the hunt for more reggae, we went out to Tackle Box last night to hear some brilliant live music, great night, brilliant island, what more can I say!!!
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