Wow – it’s already been more than 2 weeks since I posted part 1 of my Belize/Guatemala trip recap! I’ve been teaching some summer session engineering courses which has kept my days full so time has flown by. I’m glad I finally found some time to finish up part 2 though. It’s been fun to reminisce!
Last time, I covered the first half of my trip (the dry land part). Now, I’ll talk a bit about the second half – the underwater part! For this part of the trip, we were based in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, the perfect location to use as a home base for diving parts of the Belize Barrier Reef.
Side note before I get started: if you want to see underwater photos but don’t want to read this long recap, have a look at my underwater photo album.
Day 6 – Great Blue Hole and Half Moon Caye
I hadn’t originally planned to do the biggest dives on my first day of diving, but due to weather-related concerns, I decided it was best to do it today to be sure I didn’t miss it.
If you’re not familiar with the Great Blue Hole, here’s what you need to know about it:
- It’s a giant hole in the ocean off the coast of Belize
- It’s more than 350 feet/100 meters deep
- It opens up horizontally around 100 feet/30 meters down, and there are giant stalactites underwater
- Jacques Cousteau called it one of the greatest diving sites in the world
- It’s full of sharks
Now that you know all that, you can see why I didn’t want to take any chances of missing out.
The Blue Hole is too big to fit into a photo unless you take an aerial shot, and since I don’t have a helicopter these postcards will have to do:
Blue Hole near the edge of the atoll (it’s near the bottom of the photo).
A closer view of the Blue Hole.
I did take a picture of the Blue Hole from the boat, and it gives you a sense of how big it is. You can just make out the rim near the horizon.
Blue Hole from the boat. You can just make out the rim near the horizon. It’s a big hole!
Since it’s so far from the mainland and populated islands (about 3 hours by boat from Ambergris Caye), the dive operators that take groups to the Blue Hole usually make stops for 2 additional dives in the Lighthouse Atoll: Half Moon Caye Wall and the Aquarium dive site. In theory, this should be an incredible day of diving.
Unfortunately, this was not my experience. The dive sites themselves were great, but the divemasters on the trip were unprofessional, rushing the divers and operating in a generally unsafe manner, which I find unforgivable.
But I like to focus on the positive, so here’s a bit of info about the three dives: the water for all three was about 30C/86F, which is nice and warm. Visibility was somewhere in the range of 70 feet. We didn’t see a ton of wildlife at the Blue Hole, but that’s to be expected; that dive is more about the geological uniqueness of the site rather than brightly-colored fish. We did see several sharks though. My max depth on the dive was about 40 m, and we only stayed at that depth for about 5 minutes. Overall, the dive was a short 25 minutes.
Inside the Great Blue Hole. Not very much light down there!
Half Moon Caye Wall was shallower, with my max depth coming in at 22 m. It had lots of reef fish, and there was a good-sized reef shark hanging out with us for a while. Dive time was about 45 minutes.
Caribbean reef shark.
We had lunch on the boat as we docked at Half Moon Caye for our surface interval. I walked around for about half an hour and saw most of the island (it’s tiny!). Here are a few pics:
On the beach at Half Moon Caye.
The dock at Half Moon Caye.
After the break, we hopped back on the boat and headed to the final dive for the day, the Aquarium. This dive had the most nature of the three I did that day. We saw several large green moray eels swimming, butterfly fish, puffers, and many more reef fish. I also caught a cleaner shrimp dutifully watching over its eggs. The dive was 20 meters deep and lasted 50 minutes.
Pederson cleaner shrimp.
Goby hanging out on brain coral.
Sharpnose puffer.
The day ended with one of the most unusual things I have ever witnessed: the chicken drop. This event, put on by a local bar every Thursday, consists of a chicken and an “arena” with numbers from 1 to 100 written on the floor. People bet on the numbers, and if the chicken poops on your number first you win. We watched a couple rounds, but didn’t feel compelled to put any money in. I prefer games with a bit more strategy.
The audience cheers on our chicken as she prepares to “drop” (poo).
Day 7 – Diving
After my poor experience the day before, I went with a more reputable dive outfit for my local dives. The shop, Chuck and Robbie’s, was recommended to me by the owner of our vacation rental, and diving with them was a far better experience than my Blue Hole trip.
My friend Maggie was also diving (although she didn’t go to the Blue Hole), so I had a good dive buddy too 🙂
We met at 8:30am and left around 9 for the first of our 2 morning dives, at a site called the Tackle Box.
Here, we saw loads of nurse sharks and groupers, as well as a couple Caribbean reef sharks, and a bunch of reef fish. I got down to 88 feet and we stayed down for 50 minutes. Again, the water was a warm 86F – I didn’t even wear a wetsuit!
Nurse shark.
Grouper.
Our second dive was at Esmerelda Canyons. Again, there were a ton of nurse sharks on the dive. Other highlights included a lizard fish, a cute tiny trunkfish, and a cuttlefish. Depth was 67 feet and dive time was 55 minutes.
Trunkfish.
Green moray eel.
After a quick lunch, I rested up for my real adventure of the day – my first ever night dive!
The night dive was at Hol Chan Marine Reserve, which is a wonderfully preserved area of the Belize Barrier Reef. I didn’t take my camera, because I didn’t want to get too distracted since I’m not used to having to hold a flashlight while diving.
We saw several octopus, including two that were fighting over a hiding spot, some trumpetfish the size of my arm (not exaggerating – I promise!), a cuttlefish, several barracuda, channel clinging crabs, spiny lobsters, a flounder, and dozens of southern stingrays.
The stingrays’ eyes reflected the light from my flashlight in the same way a cat’s eyes reflect light at night. Looking out into the darkness and seeing dozens of stingray eyes looking back at me was definitely a unique experience!
The depth was only 30 feet but that’s all it needed to be because there was plenty to see. The dive lasted about 65 minutes. I loved my first night dive and will be sure to do more whenever the opportunity arises.
This also happened to be Maggie’s birthday. I missed the birthday dinner due to my night dive, but we celebrated with some cake from the local bakery when I got home. Happy birthday Maggie!
Day 8 – Diving
Due to fairly rough conditions, we returned to Esmerelda Canyons for our first dive of the morning rather than venture further out to a different dive site. This time, I went down to 80 feet and stayed under for an hour. We saw lots of the same creatures as the day before, including nurse sharks, a Caribbean reef shark, and some green moray eels. The coolest thing we saw was probably the drum fish, which I’d never seen before.
On Who’s Your Daddy?, our scuba boat in San Pedro (captained by Big Sexy, of course).
The captain wasn’t sure if the conditions would be good enough to do the second dive until we reached the site, but when we got there (San Pedro Canyons), he decided it was safe. The group had reduced from 12 divers to 5 due to seasickness (I had a little bout myself but didn’t want to let that keep me from diving!) and Maggie and I both enjoyed the smaller group size.
The highlight of this dive was the cowfish that hung out with us for a few minutes. I went 65 feet deep and we stayed under about 55 minutes. It was a great way to end our diving for the trip.
Hey look – it’s me!
Day 9 – Relaxing and snorkeling and relaxing again
Even though we were done diving, we weren’t ready to be done with the ocean. So we went with a group from Chuck and Robbie’s on a snorkeling trip, which took me back to Hol Chan and also included a stop at Shark Ray Alley, which is part of the marine reserve as well. Becka and Lisa had actually done the same snorkel trip a few days earlier, but decided to come again with Maggie and me. This made it the first (and only) aquatic activity that all four of us did together!
The snorkeling was a blast. I took my underwater camera to get some practice in and ended up getting in quite a good workout diving down repeatedly for photos. We saw loads of cool stuff – I’ll leave it to the photos below to tell the story!
Trumpetfish at Hol Chan Marine Reserve.
Loggerhead sea turtle at Shark Ray Alley.
Southern stingray at shark ray alley.
Oh yeah – I almost forgot. This was also my birthday. I am now 30 years old! I’m not big on celebrating myself so we didn’t do anything special. Well, nothing special other than being in Belize and doing some awesome snorkeling, which I think is plenty special! Happy birthday to me.
Day 10 – Just relaxing
Everyone else left Ambergris Caye in the morning, so I decided to make great use of my alone time: I napped. I napped and I napped, finally deciding around 2 pm that I should check out of our condo and check into the smaller place I had booked for my final night in Belize.
Once I got my bags moved, I went to a beach bar, had some snacks and made friends with a dog. When it started getting dark, I headed back to my hotel and worked on this recap. That is literally all I did that day – a perfect last day of vacation!
Day 11 – Travel
Not much to report for this day – I caught the water taxi from Ambergris Caye back to Belize City at 7:30 am and went straight to the airport when I arrived back on the mainland.
I did nearly miss my connection in Houston, just like I had back in January on my return from my scuba trip to Cozumel. Just like last time, though, I did make my flight. Also just like last time, my bag did not. Fortunately it was delivered to me the next day, so no worries there!
All in all, I’d say it was a successful birthday trip. Now I’ve got to figure out how to top it next year!
Dives this trip: 8
Total dives: 31
A good reminder.
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