Belize - Chilling Out on Caye Ambergris and Caye Caulker

Having abandoned our plans for travelling overland through Mexico due to the outbreak of swine flu we flew from San Diego to Belize City and moved immediately onto Ambergris Caye, one of the larger islands offshore of the Belize mainland.

Our main goal was to dive, and in particular to dive the ‘Blue Hole’ one of the most renowned dive sites made famous by Jacques Coustau. It was an amazing experience, as much for the trip out there as for the diving itself. We made the 2-3 hour boat journey in a small boat rather than the large one we had been promised and the rolling waves turned everyone on board a tad green. It didn’t help that we broke down twice, only to be saved by the boat captain who jumped into the hull whilst the engine was running with nothing but a knife in his mouth. Whatever he did it worked and we finally made it to the blue hole after a gruelling 4 hours.

The dive was amazing but far from what I had been expecting. Rather than abundant marine life we swam into a rather gloomy cavernous hole with huge pillar like stalactites falling from a large overhang. It was like diving in a great underwater cathedral, very atmospheric and a little spooky. The silhouette of a huge bull shark in the distance topped things off nicely!

The two dives after the blue hole were just as amazing , but for very different reasons. They were teeming with marine life and the colours were so vivid. It was like diving in an Aquarium, which coincidently (or not) was the name of one of the sites.

The journey home wasn’t as bad as the journey out, the tiredness and motion sickness was quick to kick in but we soon perked up after the crew broke out the rum punch and sailed home singing!

We did a few more local dives from Ambergris Caye, we even got to pet nurse sharks and stroke huge sting rays.

Aside from diving, we spent most of our time chilling out on the beach, or for myself, spectating as Sam took undertook to learn how to kite surf, which mostly just meant getting pulled face first through the sea....hours of fun!

From Ambergris Caye we caught a water taxi to Caye Caulker, a much smaller island with far less infrastructure. In fact there was little else to do but swim and chill out with a book in a hammock. So we did...for a week!