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Published: September 6th 2006
Caye Caulker Beach Front
Some of the Caye Caulker beach front real-estate.... The First Border crossing - Mexico / Belize
After an overnight bus to Chetumal (on the Mexico border) arriving at 6am, i made the mistake of sleeping through (until the doors of the bus opened and people started piling out). Mental note, set alarm for at 1 hour before ETA. Why? Well staggering off a bus 1/2 asleep, battling various people to get your luggage and then finding a ticket office for your next leg across the border (most buses do not do though crossings, unless you are with one of those boring organised tours) with only part of your body functioning at 100%!((MISSING)your legs) and some parts not seeming to function at all…. Is well not much fun. The "wake before you arrive" method worked really well for all future overnight trips....
Belize was very quiet compared to Mexico. With a total population of only 250K, its tiny. The "motorway" is a two lane (one in each direction) road and although Belize city is 200KM from the border, we only passed about 10 cars.
Belize City, (pop 50,000) is pretty sleepy, with not really much happening except shuffling people to the barrier islands of off to
A couple of palms
Male and female palm trees caught on film.... 1/2 Moon Caye, the Caribbean. other places (a transportation hub really). When i arrived in Belize City, i parted company with Paulo, who was heading straight to Guatemala City and on to Antigua. So after saying goodbye to Paulo, i headed for the bank (i was Beliziandollarless) and then off to the wharf for a water taxi out to Caye Caulker. Believe it or not, Belize is on a different time zone, i think they just want to be different to Mexico which nearly resulted in me missing my water Taxi.
The trip from Belize City to Caye Caulker (which is basically a barrier island) is about 1 hour and this is where i met Andy (a U.S. marine) and Mike (a software engineer / game developer). Actually i enlisted Andy to guard my bags while i went to the Banos (bathroom in Spanish) he looked trustworthy and as it turned out he was ( i still have my bags ). One of the few downsides of travelling solo is that you cannot carry all your stuff with you everywhere (especially to toilets) so you need to use your instincts to select a suitable victim for guarding your stuff..... as it turned out, Andy
1/2 Moon Caye
The beach front of half moon caye, about 1km from the "blue hole". was only doing a day trip to the island, however Mike was staying for a few days, so after arriving Mike and i decided to share a place (save a few buckazoids) and so we found some very average (read affordable) accommodation and then the three of us headed for lunch and a few beers.
Mike was a diver, so this was kind of neat as we were both destined to dive the blue hole... Andy was a snorkeller and since he was not staying on he island (long story) we parted company....so the next day, we were off for a day of most excellent diving....
Quay Caulker
The island itself is pretty much touristo central. I mean it is designed to cater for tourists.... it is hard to avoid as most places on the Caribbean are like this (from what i can tell). There are lots of overpriced restaurants with overpriced beer (but there are also some affordable ones with cheap beer - my kind of place really). There were lots of Americans (well it is pretty close to the U.S. of A. after all) and well basically lots of gringos (foreigners).
However pretty
Hotel Caribbean
My accommodation whilst in the Caribbean. ;-) much all diving is organised from the island (you can do it from the mainland, but you will pay more more more) so you just have to be there…
The Blue Hole
Well, this is certainly the most expensive diving i have ever done. I will not go into details but trust me it was. The day plan was a 5.30am start, with a meet at the dive shop for a quick breakfast before boating it for 3 hours to the outer reef. Luckily i don’t get seasick and frankly it was pretty calm anyways. The dive plan was three dives
1. Blue Hole (the deepest dive at approx 40m+)
2. Half Moon Caye (this is actually an island and wildlife reserve)
3. The Aquarium
At 122m deep and 300m wide, the blue hole is a natural sink hole, and almost perfect circular cut-out in the middle of the ocean. For a closer look at the blue hole, please follow this link
The Blue Hole well it was a pretty awesome dive, with visibility at about 50m, sharks (some 10 footers) plenty of soft corals, gropers and a few barracuda I would say it was above average.
Team Caving
Some guys that i met in Caye Caulker... we headed for San Ignacious for some caving. Do you like my white socks?? Bit of a fashion statement ehh!! The highlight was probably the underwater caves complete with stalactites at about 40m.... we went inside for a bit and hit about 45m before turning back. At this depth you really cannot stay down for long on AIR (bottom time is only about 10 minutes) or you need to decompress (or do decompression stops on the way up) but since the was not a deco-dive we had limited time. Anyway, the other "highlight" or should i say "hiccup" of the dive, was when this British fella who decided to lose his weight belt (at 40m), i saw this flash of metal fly past me (lucky it didn’t hit me) and well if he wasn’t close to people, i think that would have been it for him! He would have got the bends for sure (two guys grabbed him and managed to keep him down).
Half Moon Caye was pleasant dive, however The Aquarium was by far the best dive. I managed to see an Eagle Ray (this is a sting ray with a 3 M girth), some big Jew Fish (these can grown to over 1 tonne) and dolphins amongst the myriad of other fish life and corals, it
The Cave Entrance
Cave entrance to ATM cave.... this underground complex stretches about 5km. truly was an Aquarium.
We had lunch at the wildlife reserve (Half Moon Caye) and had time to wander around and take some photos and look at the various wildlife including the huge “Frigate Birds” (note 3m wing span). We arrived back at Caye Caulker in the late afternoon pretty well stuffed (tired for the non Australian readers).
So after two nights on the Caribbean, i decided to head inland to San Ignacio (this is close to the Belize / Guatemala border) for some caving and canoeing.
San Ignacio
Getting to San Ignacio was very straight forward, jumped the morning ferry back to the mainland then a local bus (two hours) via the capital of Belize (Belmopan).
San Ignacio is a smallish town which has lots of tour shops for various activities from caving, jungle trekking to canoeing and tubing (floating on large rubber tubes down a river). Many of these activities can only be done with guides, in particular the tour of Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM, ancient Mayan caves used for various rituals). This was the only tour i was really interested in.
When i arrived in San Ignacio, i bumped into
Limestone Formations
Inside the ATM cave, some limestone stalagmites and stalactites.... Mike and two of the girls that were on our dive trip. These guys were all interesting in doing the ATM, so we hooked up and did it together (note the caving team).
The ATM tour was basically a full day, with a 1 hour "jungle walk in" and then about 5 hours inside the caves. The cave system is about 5km long (with openings at each end) however we only traversed about 850m inside (this is where most of the Mayan relics are). Note, once inside these caves there was absolutely no light source except your head torch, the caves do not break the surface. So, armed with "hard hats" and head torches, we waded into the caves (actually we had to swim in the first 20m or so) so after about 2.5 hours of swim throughs and a detailed explanation of the various rock formations and stratas, stalagmites and stalactites (our guide knew quite a bit about geology) we arrived at the ritual chamber.
To get into this chamber, we had to climb up about 15-20M. The site was pretty much untouched and all the artefacts of pottery, and human skeletal remains have been left as-is.
Queen of Limestone!
A 1000 year old limestone encased skeleton, found in the Mayan Caves The explanation of what the caves were used for was a little hazy, some say human sacrifice, others say a burial chamber of sorts. Whatever the use, there were lots of human remains (these have been dated at approx 1000 years old) and a separate chamber deeper in the cave system revealed the full skeletal remains of a human female, whereby the bones had been slowly encrusted in limestone over the centuries (perfect preservation).
About this time, it was getting pretty cold (we were all saturated) and so we made a speedy exit, taking about 1.5 hours to get back out and then another hour or so walk to the 4WDs.
The next day, Andy headed out for Guatemala City. I stayed one more day and did a canoe/cave tour before heading to Flores, Guatemala. The canoe tour was good, with lots more caves, rock and even a few bats and stuff but i wont bore you will all the details (you had to be there).
Border Crossing into Guatemala
The Belize / Guatemala border crossing was a little more interesting than Mexico / Belize. Firstly it was by-foot and secondly it was expensive (19
The Caves Have Eyes
One of many ancient mayan skulls found in the ATM caves of Belize. USD to leave the place on foot, talk about rip-off!).
Anyway, at the immigration office i met two Aussies and French guy. We were all heading for Flores in order to visit Tikal (one of the largest Mayan ruins) , so we hooked up for a few days....
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Liew KW
non-member comment
Huh! Glad you are still alive :)
Looks interesting ,Craig