We took a short flight on a small plane from Guatemala City to Belize City. There were only three of us on the flight; there were only about a dozen seats. From Belize City we took a water taxi for a 45 minute ride out to Caye Caulker. The motto for Caye Caulker is “Go Slow”. There’s a sign that states: “Go Slow. We have two cemeteries but no hospital. The island is about 7k long and has about 1900 residents. There are no cars, just plenty of golf carts and bicycles. It’s very relaxed.
Our friend Eric came down to join us for a few days. We somehow ended up at a place called “Bambooze”.
Eric and I went on a dive on the third day with a great local shop call Black Durgon. There were just three of us on the dive along with the dive master. It was just 15 minutes out to the reef for our first dive location: the Sand Trap. This spot was all about the reef itself, with awesome corridors to swim down and through. After a break for lunch, the second location (Caye Caulker reef) gave us a close encounter with a giant and evidently very old sea turtle. The turtle passed us by once. A few minutes later, as we were enjoying a green moray eel (totally exposed!), the sea turtle came back around and actually nibbled for a second on one of Eric’s fins. This guy was large and even had a couple of barnacles on his shell. The dive master said he (or she?) was likely 100+ years old.
Dinner that evening had a drink special for the ladies: Cosmopolitans! Eric somehow got one too…
There’s a cave just off Caye Caulker where tarpons hang out. From the dock by the cave:
A couple of days later we all took an all-day snorkel tour. We motored north for about an hour and saw a manatee up close at the first stop. Two remora fish were clinging to it. It just floated along without a care in the world as over a dozen snorkels surrounded it just a few meters away. After a while it went and just laid down on the bottom (perhaps five meters deep).
We also saw a sea turtle there, though less than half the size of the one Eric and I had seen diving.
The second stop was at shark and ray alley and we saw plenty of both. There are just nurse sharks, which are bottom feeders that eat by sucking in sea water and whatever else and filtering out the food. They don’t bite!
We made a third stop at a National Park. It’s pretty cool that they have a National Park out in the ocean for diving and snorkeling! We saw two green moray eels, and one of the guides coaxed the second one out into the open for a good look.
We came upon a small cavern, or tunnel. The guide said that it was five meters down and that we were welcome to free dive through it. I’m always up for these things, so I was the first one down and through. The cavern was FULL of gray snappers, some of them quite big. They scattered just enough that I didn’t run into any, though I thought I might. It was just three or four meters long and I surfaced after I passed through. A few more folks went through and I made a second pass, though the fish had pretty much scattered by that point.
After a long day of snorkeling with an awesome boat full of folks (seriously, there were several other couples also on multi-month or year-long trips), Leena and I posted up at the back of the boat for the ride home.
I guess sunset brings this out…
For the final stretch, we took a small boat to the dock from the snorkel sailboat.
