Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2006
Edit Blog Post
The Blue Hole
Not my photo obviously. It´s from http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/galleries/belize/photo2.html We left Cancun after loading up the huge wagon that Clint and Royce (the guys from Texas of course) were driving down to Costa Rica.
We stopped off after about 5 mins to fill up with petrol and then the car wouldn´t start...they explained that when they went to Cuba they left a light on so the battery was fairly tempramental...there´s me in the back wondering if this was such a good idea!
After a quick jump start we were off, cruising down many a long, straight empty Mexican road with only the fierce speed bumps to keep us alert. We got to the Belize border with no problems, and went to the Immigration desk for the guy to ask why we had no exit stamp from Mexico. We´d managed to somehow drive straight past the checkpoint and enter Belize! A quick walk back into Mexico (again this wasn´t a problem...?!) and we had our stamps.
We dropped off Mike at the Trekforce base and headed into Belize City. We instantly made a new friend as we cruised around looking for a hostel as a guy called Harry jumped in the car and took us round to a
The Chevy Suburban
And this only cost them $2000 in the US...! couple of places. Belize must be the best place to travel if you´re English, as because up until fairly recently it was still a British colony they still have the Queen on their money, speak English and when they find out you are from England are so happy and lay on the "Aaah, well you will feel right at home here man" in a thick Caribbean accent!
We went out for a Chinese for dinner (another bizarre thing about Belize, there are millions of Asian there, and they seem to own every restaurant/business etc) and again picked up another "friend". Belize City is not what you could call the most relaxing of places, with every guy on the street sporting huge dreads/tattoos etc and thinking that they´ve walked off a hip-hop video...Anyway, our new friend, Capone (he insisted on showing me his full back tattoo saying this), spent the entire of dinner telling Royce and Clint how wrong America were about everything, that WWIII was going to be between the US and the UK over Belizean oil ("this place will be the end of the world my friend"!!) and about how he had shot people when he was in
the Cripps and been deported from America 4 times...nice. I was glad to have a couple of big all American guys with me!
The next morning we were pretty relieved to catch the boat out to Caye Caulker. We arrived I was pleased to see that it was yet another little town with sand streets and golf buggies for cars (seem to be a lot of these in this part of the world!). Although it is quite fun to be in the Caribbean proper, where everyone has the same languid Anglo-Caribbean accent and piles of dreads and the only music you hear is reggae. After finding a place to stay we went and organised some diving for the next few days. We did 8 dives over 3 days, including the Blue Hole, which is probably the most famous dive site in the world. Although it is nearly 1000ft deep you drop down to 130ft (still pretty deep!) and see all these crazy stalagtite cave systems, before coming back up. The best bit of the dive when just as we were ascending, out of the gloom a shark appeared (the visibility isn´t that great because of the freshwater mixing with
the saltwater)...when I swum a bit closer to get a better look I suddenly realised that there were actually about 10-12 sharks all cruising gently past!!
On another dive we descended straight from the boat to avoid the surface current, and as Clint, Royce and I waited on the bottom for the others to come down, another 2 sharks came over to investigate...! ps. they were all only reef and nurse sharks so don´t panic. Bit gutted not to see a hammerhead though! The other main things of note that we saw were a couple of spotted eagle rays (finally, after not seeing one in 2 months in Honduras!!) and a turtle.
That was pretty much all we did in Caye Caulker other than sleep and eat, although on the last night I wisely decided that the sensible thing to do before having to catch a boat at 6 30 the next morning would be to stay up until 4am drinking a bottle of rum...I only left 2 things behind when packing still drunk on 2 hours sleep...one of which was my Ipod speaker cable so I now have limited music for the final week which is pretty
rubbish.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.111s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 9; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0458s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb