Caye Caulker

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Yesterday was a lazy day. We rode bikes around the island in the morning and went for a swim in the pool. We sat on the porch a bit and went for a swim in the ocean. There is a falling down pier that had some cool fish swimming around by it but the whole split area where it is good swimming is filled with trash and beer bottles. We cooked up some of the fish we caught for lunch. It was good but had lots of bones in it. For dinner we brought the rest of the fish to Roses where they grilled it up for us and we just ordered some sides to go with it.

Today we went on a full day snorkel tour on a big sail boat. Our first stop was at the reef where we saw a huge lobster, lion fish, parrot fish and tons of other fish. This was a good stop because we could go away from the group and weren't crowded. Back on the boat we were served lunch and then made our way to the next snorkeling stop. This stop was in shark ray alley. The nurse sharks and sting rays come here to feed. To get them to come near the boat the crew pulled some conch from their shells and dropped them back in the water upside down. The sharks and rays attacked the conch shells. The guides picked up a shark and a ray so we could pet them. The ray was rubbery, the shark was fuzzy. There were also a bunch of one eye jacks swimming in the area. These are really big fish and they would swim all around you. Our last stop was the Hol Chan Reserve. Here we saw turtles that were basically planted in the reserve. There were so many fish here. We saw a green moray and box fish and huge schools of fish. At this stop we had to follow close to a guide and it was really crowded. There were 8 boats mored there with about 10 people each, our boat was the biggest with about 24 people. This area was policed since it is a protected area. It was harder to see everything since we kept getting kicked by people's fins. Back on the boat the sails were hauled up and we started back to Caye Caulker. They served us shrimp ceviche, I had the mix without the shrimp. They also made a 5 gallon bucket of rum punch which the people on the boat polished off. We had dinner at Sid's, two cheese burgers and two drinks for about $15, pretty good.

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