You'd Better Belize It!

            In mid May, my husband Paul and I, along with three other friends (Guy, Neil & Marnie), went on a 6-day/5-night dive vacation to Belize.  We’d heard so much about it from other divers and were definitely craving some warm water diving after a 55 degree F dive off of Catalina in March in Southern California.

We arrived in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, (pronounced key), landing on the short dirt airstrip where we were greeted by the resort taxi, a golf cart.  We loaded ourselves, and all of our gear, into two golf carts that took us a few blocks to our resort, a wonderful place called Ramone’s Village Resort.

San Pedro is a great little town that offers plenty of restaurants, gift shops, and dive shops without the crowded streets and fast-food chains everywhere like most tourist cities.  There isn’t even a high-rise in sight, unless you count the occasional 3-story resort.

All the good things we heard about Belize were true.  The people were friendly, the weather was warm, and the reefs were colorful and so full of life!

We booked all of our dives through a guy named Chris at Blue Hole Dive Center.  Chris didn’t go on the dives with us but each boat operator he assigned was either a dive guide or had one on board.  Robbie was with us on a few dives and Russell was with us for the rest.

I did a total of 10 dives, while Paul did 11.  Most of the dives were deep wall dives with the exception of one drift dive, one night dive, one wreck dive, and Paul’s additional dive was the same place as the night dive, about 30’.  The deepest dive was the Blue Hole at 130’, a must for every diver that goes to Belize!

The water temperature on all of our dives was a constant 81oF, with no current or surge to fight, and the average visibility was 70-100ft.

Here’s a quick summary of our dives:

Our first five dives were local dives, on the reef off Ambergris Caye, ranging from a 10 to 20 minute boat ride from the resort.

Day 1 - Dive #1: Tackle Box was our first dive.  Reaching a maximum depth of 92’ this was our first deep dive, ever.  We swam through canyons that jutted out of the sloping sandy bottom.  This is where I began trying out my new underwater camera.  We saw a lobster, trumpet fish, and a brown eel.

Dive #2 was called Esmerelda, with my maximum depth being 65’.  This was the ‘drift dive’ we did with more canyons and swim-throughs.  (Although they called it a drift dive, if you didn’t kick you didn’t go anywhere, because like I said, there weren’t any currents, the boat just picked us up at a different spot.)  Our big sightings were a large Spotted Ray gracefully ‘flying’ through the water as well as a small Gray Ray resting on the bottom.

Dive #3 was another first for us, a night dive.  Hol Chan Marine Preserve – Inner Reef - was the spot where we pretty much stayed at 28’.  The nightlife was awesome.  We saw an octopus, huge parrot fish and grouper, several moray eels, a sand ray (that I touched), 2 crab, and another moray eel fighting a spotted eel!  We also saw a grouper snatch up a fish right in front of a moray eel that was preparing for his attack.  What a shock to the moray!

Day 2 - Dive #4 was Amigo’s Wreck at 75’.  This was an awesome dive but unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures, (Photography Rule #1, TURN CAMERA ON BEFORE DESCENDING.)   But I still have the memories and pictures in my head!

On our swim to the wreck our dive guide, Robbie, was chumming the water so we had two 6-foot long nurse sharks following us.  We had a third one join us as we reached the sunken tugboat.  We passed a smaller ray on the way but he wasn’t too interested.  The tugboat wasn’t impressive but the deck made a great stage for feeding the nurse sharks, touching them, and for others to snap all the pictures they could.

Before we did our fifth dive, we went to Shark Ray Alley for our surface interval.  There we snorkeled in 8 feet of water with10-20 rays! 

Shark Ray Alley has become a favorite snorkel spot for the tourists to snorkel with nurse sharks and rays.  The guides chum the water so there’s always an abundance of friendly rays who have gotten used to tourists.

Our dive guide Russell, (a bit adventurous), likes wearing the rays on his head like a hat!  Paul & I both touched some rays but kept our distance from the tails.  Paul also managed to hold a 2-foot long juvenile nurse shark.

Dive #5 was Hol Chan Marine Preserve – Outer Reef – 63’.  We saw some great coral and huge tube sponges.  You can really see that the reef is old and untouched by the size of the coral and sponges. 

Our friend Neil had a remoré following him (don’t they usually follow whales and sharks to eat their leftovers?).   It followed our group on most of the dive, so I got some great pictures of him.

Paul and our friend Guy did their extra dive that afternoon while the rest of us relaxed by the pool and did a little shopping in San Pedro.

One interesting thing Chris did for us was combine five of our dives into an overnight trip doing 3 dives on the way out to another caye where we camped, and two dives the next day on the way back to Ambergris Caye.

Day 3 –Boarded the boat at 6:45am for the overnight trip.

Dive #6 Turneffe Reef – Barrel Sponge where my maximum depth was 88’.  We swam through canyons and some very tight tunnels.  Some were too tight for comfort so I swam above the coral and closer to the tops of the canyons.  There were great coral formations and lots of colorful fish of which I’m still looking up their names.

Dive #7 was Lighthouse Reef – Long Caye Wall 61’.  Here we swam through more canyons on the way to the wall edge.  These canyons had larger tunnels to venture through; one empties out of the wall into the deep blue.  Wow, what a sight!  I got a great picture of a squirrelfish and another of a large pink vase sponge.

Dive #8 was also on Lighthouse Reef – Half Moon Caye Wall - 77’.  As we descended at the beginning of the dive, we saw grass eels which look like grass waving on the sandy bottom.  Carefully approaching, we watched them for a while before swimming to the wall.  This was another awesome wall to explore, full of hard corals and several different kinds of gorgonians.  After shooting more pictures, we headed back towards the boat where we saw a turtle on along the way.  He was pretty timid so we couldn’t get too close, but it was just thrilling to sit and watch him.

We camped out on Half Moon Caye where the crew provided tents, mattresses, pillows, and a great Bar-B-Que. for dinner.  On the caye is a National Bird Preserve of the Pink-Footed Boobies.  We took a walk through the preserve and go up to the observatory deck.  Right at the very top was a baby booby covered in his baby down feathers just sitting there peacefully (great picture).

O.k., back to diving:

Day 4 – Dive #9 THE BLUE HOLE – 130’.  Just a 30-minute boat ride from Half Moon Caye is the Blue Hole.  For those who don’t know, the Blue Hole is an underwater cavern where the roof caved in, forming a cylindrical reef in the sea.  The Blue Hole is 1000 feet in diameter and 450 feet deep, with the depth giving the hole a deeper blue color than the surrounding water.

I had trouble clearing my left ear at 15’-20’ and was afraid I’d have to abort the dive.  Being such a deep dive, you’re only supposed to have a total bottom time of 8 minutes so if you couldn’t get down fast you were supposed to abort.  Luckily, Russell was patient and waited with me while it finally cleared, then down we went.  Zoom!

At about 100’ depth, the steep wall angles out creating a sloped ceiling at 130’ that you can swim under.  Following is the major attraction in the Blue Hole: from this ceiling are gigantic stalactites measuring 8 feet in diameter that go down to a pinpoint tip.  Imagine how old those things are to be that big!

We took some pictures trying to show that we were at 130’ but be careful that you get neutral and stay at 130.  Fumbling with your camera can be distracting and if you’re not neutral you can drop to 150 in no time (Oops). 

There’s not much else to see at that depth except for some lemon and reef sharks below.  They’re not as friendly as nurse shark so we kept a close eye on them.  We had about 3 8-foot long lemon shark circling/following about 20 feet below us.

As we started to slowly ascend (30 feet per minute), the sharks stayed down and didn’t bother us.

We explored the reef as we did our safety stops at 30’ and then again at 15’.  (Boy I love dive computers!).

The Blue Hole, what a rush!  And in 28 minutes!

Dive #10 – The last dive of the trip was at Turneffe Reef again at a site called Rendezvous Point where I reached a max depth of 69’.  Along this reef were more great coral, tunnels and fish.  I spent a lot of time just taking it all in… for I knew that soon I would have to come back to reality.

The following day we headed home after a fabulous dive vacation with wonderful memories swirling in our heads.

I want to encourage every diver, if you’ve never gone to Belize, and get the chance to go, you’ve GOT to do it!

DIVE BELIZE! 

                                    -Nikki Pieper