The locals have a great saying here: “Go Slow.”
Initially I had planned on lots of activities for the Cayes (pronounced “keys”) of Belize: snorkeling, sailing, diving off one of the many outer atolls… I even contemplated signing up for a 3-day sailing/camping trip all the way to the southern edge of the country. What I missed in all of this planning is the overwhelmingly laid-back nature of the islands. No one is in a particular rush, everything just kind of “goes slow”. It it ridiculously easy to do not much of anything at all. Even the weather is laid-back. A near constant breeze transforms what would be oppressive heat into nice temperature to hang out on the porch. So my finely tuned, activity packed itinerary morphed into something like this:
Day 1: travel day
Day 2: free day
Day 3: diving Blue Hole / Lighthouse Reef
Day 4: free day
Day 5: sailing / snorkeling Hol-Chan marine reserve
Day 6: free day
…that’s a lot of “free days”, which turned out to be just fine by us. Our activities boiled down to two trips.
Diving: We booked a 3-tank dive through an outfit called “Big Fish” after walking around town and doing some price comparisons. These guys weren’t the cheapest or the most well known, but they were decently priced and were close to our hotel. Most dive operators do the exact same circuit for the Lighthouse Reef dives: Blue Hole, Half Moon Key, and Aquarium… so there wasn’t much of a difference to choose from. The first dive is the one that is the most famous. The Blue Hole is kind of exactly how it sounds: it’s a deep, dark blue hole that sits in the middle of a shallow atoll… making for a spectacular visual contrast. Click Here to see what this looks like from the air. Many people opt for this dive because it is very deep (135 feet), making for a unique experience. They say that at this depth, divers get nitrous-oxide highs from the highly compressed tank air. Neither Ana or I noticed any side effects, but maybe that was because we were just loopy on nitrous (:-D). Anyway, it’s really eerie dropping down into the darkness, not able to see the floor 400 feet down below. Past 40 feet or so, it gets really difficult to determine how quickly you’re sinking… keeping one eye on the side wall and the other on the depth gauge becomes very important. At around the 130 ft mark you see stalactites and stalagmites and get to swim around and through them! Very cool. Total bottom time is limited to 8 minutes because of the depth, so we returned to around 80 ft where a slew of reef / bull sharks were swimming around us. These guys were pretty decently sized as well: around 8-10 feet long. It’s very disconcerting to look into the distant blue, only to see the shape of a rather large shark swimming straight towards you! Once you get over this fear however, it’s easy to appreciate how smooth and graceful they are in the water.
Snailing: This was cool as we were able to knock out some snorkeling and sailing in one trip. Most of the snorkeling out here is only accessible by boat, as the reefs are pretty far off shore. We headed out Hol-Chan: a nearby marine reserve. This place is known for manatees, and one is able to jump in the water and snorkel with them. Unfortunately, there were none to be seen the day that we were out there. No worries though: we ended up seeing lots of cool things. We stopped in one place called shark-ray alley, where unsurprisingly you can swim with nurse sharks and sting rays. We also got to do a little bit of free diving by swimming through some underwater cave formations (about 40 feet down). At the end of the day the boat sailed back to the dock with everyone listening to reggae music and drinking rum punch… now we’re talking! We met some cool backpackers on this trip: a Brit named Ben taking a 9 month sabbatical from his job in the UK… an Aussie named Bart who’s been on the road for 33 months… and a kid from Kansas who’s bicycling from San Diego to Buenos Aires! Insane! Check out his blog at: http://srekkin.wordpress.com.
…and check out our photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/CayeCaulker
Map of Caye Caulker: Click Here for Google maps
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