Tourists are friends not food!!!

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We arrived in Belize City yesterday, but it was a dive, accomdation double the price of Mexico and quarter as nice (infact just not nice at all), people dodgy and out to scam and everyone offering Kev drugs because of his hair style! Needless to say we just stayed the one night and got straight on a water taxi to a nearby island the next day.

The water taxi was a rather bumpy experience on a speedboat surrounded by american missionaries but still a very cool ride resulting in arrival at a beautiful sandy island surrounded by crystal blue waters, hammocks everywhere and where people get around by foot or golf buggy rather than cars! We were here to go snorkelling in the world's second largest coral reef. We easily located a tour and then chilled on the beach with a typical Belizean breaky of stewed chicken and fry jacks. Very tasty but also made our stomachs like lead weights just before we were about to head off to swim.

This was my first snorkelling trip so it took me fifteen minutes or so to get used to breathing in and out my mouth, and trying to dive down under the water ended up with me breathing in water (need to practise that bit!). We went to three areas with our little group. The first was a deep coral trench where our guide pointed out lots of different creatures with his little stick: we saw lobsters, spider crabs, and all manner of other brightly coloured fish and coral. We then headed to the shark and sting-ray alley which was nice and shallow.

Pretty much as soon as we jumped in the water we saw a shark, it wasn't particularly close but it swam straight towards us. This was a little worrying at first as we had not recieved a shark-attack safety talk when we were in the boat!! But the shark just seemed to be curious and happily swam right under our legs enjoying all the tourist attention, I think the guides occasionally bring food out with them so they probably know they have a good thing going on! Soon after the shark encounter we saw a family of Sting Ray's glide past, we were in the alley for about half an hour and saw several more families swim past us. We had bought an underwater camera with us and were trying to keep up with them to get some good pictures - we've not developed it yet but will add the photos later (assuming we get some good ones!!)

Our last stop was a shallow coral garden with absolutely loads of colourful fish. We had a quick guide through the coral during which the guide dilgently made us aware not to touch the coral with hands or fins and we were then let loose on our own for about half an hour. Kev and I generally spent this time chasing fish with our camera - we think we have pictures of a particularly big parrot fish amongst other fishy delights! You will have to wait and see.

We had a fantastic day and then headed down south on the bus to Dangriga for a couple of days chilling out with the locals before our first project. We also had to recover from the sun burn we had gained from snorkelling - yes we did use sun cream, just not enough!

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Photos

Belikin Vision
Kev discovers the Belizean equivelant of stella vision

the one that got away!
After talking about the massive paot fish this was the best picture we had! It was huge though honest!!

spider crabs
our guide shows us some of the marine wildlife