Smile and wave! The formations at this depth in the Blue Hole were amazing.
I haven't gone back and adding pictures to all the Belize-trip posts yet, but here are some of the best ones. I think if you click this you'll see them:
About 45 minutes outside Belize City is the "Baboon Santuary". So named because it is a sanctuary for howler monkeys (which are not baboons). It's basically a bunch of people's backyards who have collectively agreed to leave a bunch of trees there for howler monkeys. The land-owners (and guides) all derive some benefit from visitors and the monkeys get a place to stay.
On our guided tour it was just Angela, me and our guide. Awesome. Our guide looked like a homeless guy in San Francisco, but had perfect English and grammar (not perfect for the way he looked, unqualified perfect). It was almost jarring to hear him talk about how the leaf-cutter ants made their trails from formic acid or how the howler monkeys have a special bone in their throat that they make vibrate when they're sucking air in--I just didn't expect someone with teeth that bad to be that smart. If I'd been listening better, I would've learned a lot about native plant species as well.
Made me doubt that I could get to where I am today if I'd been born in the country-side of Belize.
Anyhow, the point of this trip was the monkeys. Check this out:
Notice our goofy expressions? That's because it was really cool to be so close to these animals and we were giddy with excitement. Another one of the monkeys was just inches from my face when he reached out and gently touched my nose. It was a nature-communing experience. Maybe he was checking out my birthmark.
Rough draft:
The ride to the zoo:
* Learned all about our guide, Mark and his Mayan family (his uncle is a bush doctor in a jungle village, no shit)
* Mark speaks five language: English, Spanish, Ketchi, Mayan and Creole
* Mark's younger brother picked us up from the airport and drove us
* Mark has five sisters who work at the super market across from our condo
* Gas is 9.70BZ ($4.35US) per gallon
The zoo:
* The zoo is extremely quaint.
* Almost no staff
* Almost no visitors ( we were one of two couples in the zoo and the only ones to sign the guest book in two days )
* Cute signs written in Jamaican-eque (Creole-eque?) English in the first-person as the animals. e.g. (paraphrasing the jaguar sign) "Hey mon! Don't shoot at me! I don't eat cows. Look mon! I'm an important part of keeping nature balanced!"
* The exclamation point is the national punctuation mark
* The most fun animals were these white-and-black land otters (not what they're called, but they're related to the otter). The pair ran around their cage the whole time we watched, stopping to do tight circles around nothing in particular. They seemed a bit crazy. Constant motion and lots of circles.
* Our guide, Mark, had a funny story to tell about petting these creatures. He used to scratch them behind the ears and play with them. He showed us a scar on one of his fingers and said, "Now I'm not playing with those guys no more!"
* None of the cages have anything to prevent you for sticking your fingers in there
* The otters were a lot of fun. I think they get fed pretty often by visitors because they came right up to the fence when we arrived.
* The ocelot and one of his smaller cousins were really pretty. Just like house cats...
* The baby jaguar (8 months old) was adorable. He was hunting a dragon fly while we watched him. Extremely cute watching him chase this thing (dragon fly was faster)
Cave tubing:
* We jumped in the river off the mini-cliff! (maybe five feet...)
* Had to hike to get to the start of the adventure (you walk one way and float the other)
* Very neat cave
* Saw fruit bats!
* Heard (but did not see) Howler Monkeys
* It rained
* Stopped in the middle of the cave and got out. Our guide helped us clamber around on the rocks and showed us (up very close) some of the pretty formations. It was awesome. I felt a little bad, though. I don't think it helps the rocks grow when you step on them.
* Went through "rapids"! Slightly faster sections (compared to the almost standing still sections) where you have to lift your butt out of the tube to avoid rocks
* Saw an iguana on the shore
* Chewed on some wild sugar cane that our guide (Mark) found us
* Came out and showered up
Yesterday we rented bikes from "Joe's Bike Rentals". We went as far north on the island as it's possible to go without a boat. North of where we're staying there is a lot of construction going on. Almost everything is under construction up that way. There are a few already-completed resorts, but there are a lot more on the way. Many are condo developments (on the South side of the island locals try to get you to attend free lunches and time-share pitches).
The ride: we went North along the beach (in hard-packed sand) up until "The Split". The sea cuts all the way through the caye at one point and bridge connects the two sides. The bridge is a semi-recent development. On the North side of the bridge nothing is paved. We went over some pretty bumpy and puddle-y roads on our way to "Journey's End" resort. Journey's End resort is a little bit before the road ends (I'm using "road" generously here). I'll upload the picture later, but the path we were on descended into a swamp and just went under water. So we turned around and headed South...
On the way back South I took a picture of a couple of the completed houses on the beach. These things were beautiful. Like a scaled-down Pac Heights home, but on the beach. All the more opulent when compared to the "ritzy" neighborhood of Belize city which we saw the next day.
The locals, for the most part, live on the South side of the island. We ventured off of the (two) paved roads and into the "suburbs" of San Pedro. The houses there are mostly on stilts (sometimes just a couple cinder blocks high) and they're universally small. Our ride would've been noticeably different on a bike with shocks. We went through puddles that blocked the whole road, around (and through) big ruts and depressions and ultimately came to the path that leads to the water tower.
We didn't know it at the time, but the town crocodiles (there are five or six) live over by the water tower. The locals feed them every day around 4:30pm and bring tourists out to see them eat dead chickens. We missed the show, but got to ride through a bunch more mud!
When we finally got back, it had been about 2 1/2 hours of straight riding and we were covered in mud splatters from the paths and roads of the island. All smiles. Thanks, Joe!
Addendum: Angela wanted the record to state that we road over a fallen palm tree.
We've been having a lot of local (we think) produce: cucumbers, mangos, carrots. I've tried the conch burrito, soursop yogurt (yum!), soursup custard (also yum!), some street-vendor papusas, street-vendor chicken tomales, random-dude BBQ chicken with rice and beans, fish burrito and some guava. A lot of rice and beans, actually. Quite a bit of chicken too--we even saw the chicken truck delivering.
Yesterday we had a picnic on the almost-deserted Half-Moon Caye where they have a Booby bird sanctuary. Chicken, rice and beans, but the real treat was cocunt pie afterwards. "Delicial! Really!" as they say on the Chinese Square Cookie packaging.
Photos of that experience to come later (this laptop doesn't have a card reader :-( )
The main tourist attraction of Ambergris Caye is actually a two hour boat ride away over the open sea (read: choppy). The Blue Hole is a giant limestone sinkhole just below the surface. Outside the sinkhole, the water is only a few feet deep, inside it goes straight down to 400 feet.
We were a little scared to try this dive since the sights don't really start until around 130'. That's about twice as deep as we've ever gone and we'd only done nine dives up until that point (ever). If you're reading this then you know that we did it and survived!
The dive follows a shelf at 45' and then hits a ledge. The ledge drops straight down to bottom. Which you can't see. So you're sinking down, with absolutely nothing below you (that you can see) for hundreds of feet. The water is totally still and crystal clear. There are no (or almost no) fish. It's totally surreal. Angela and I stayed very close to the dive master the whole time.
One of the scary points of the dive was towards the bottom when Angela had a brief bout nitrogen narcosis. All of a sudden she got dizzy and light-headed. Luckily the cure for nitrogen narcosis is to just kick up a little ways. So that's what she did.
At around 120 or 130 feet we saw the sight above. This picture isn't from our dive, but I'm hopeful that one of the other guys on the dive is going to upload some shots from our adventure to his site. I'll update with links to his images when I've got them. Anyhow, this is what you see. It's crazy. There are these giant limestone stalagtites that are... huge. According to some unknown criteria this dive is (by some) included in the top three dive sights in the world.
Because we were so deep (our maximum depth was 131 feet) we couldn't stay down there for very long without going past the decompression limit. Someone else can explain it better than me, but the bottom line is that if you breath super-compressed air for very long you end up with too much nitrogen in your blood and you'll get the bends if you ascend too fast.
We ascended very slowly.
At any moment there were 4 or five Caribbean reef sharks in view. These sharks look like sharks. Nurse sharks are a lot slower-looking and have smaller mouths. These reef sharks are grey on the top and white on the bottom and they look like serious predators. They look like Jaws. But only 5 1/2 or 6' long. I say "only", but Angela and I were guessing they were 8 or 10 feet long until someone on the boat corrected us. They looked bigger.
As we sat there, hovering at 15', these reef sharks got closer and closer. Since no one else seemed bothered by it, I was more excited than scared. When we got back to the surface we learned that some of the dive masters chum the sharks so they were checking us out to see if we had any food.
Anyhow, the experience was nothing short of awesome. Swimming with sharks was a big deal for me (I saw Jaws when I was too young) so I was pretty thrilled that it turned out to be more fun than terrifying.
"Downtown" San Pedro is either quaint or run-down depending on your perspective (as one of our tour books put it). We found a quaint spot that does burritos and other dishes from locally caught food. Since I've never had a conch burrito, I thought I'd give it a go. Delicious! I can't remember the name of the "restaurant" other than to say it's on San Pedro St and begins with a "G".
In the afternoon we went out with "Joe" to a couple new snorkel sites. Visibility was just so-so, definitely not as good as Aquarium in Maui. These were both really shallow swims. I was hoping for something deeper so I could see how deep I can go. Oh well.
Angela has amazing eyes and spotted a bunch of smaller critters:
* A tiny blue shrimp
* Christmas tree worms
* An under-water stick bug looking thing
* Bunch of spiny star fish
* Sea urchins
* Conch
We also saw a barracuda and a small-ish ray. Actually, we've seen barracuda on every single dive and snorkel that we've done so far and I just haven't mentioned it. They're really fast and they don't let you get very close.
The challenging part of the trip was on the second stop we were navigating (in strong current) through a jungle-gym of coral rocks in 5' water. We made it through okay, but it was a little dicey.
Phrase of the day: "sea legs: the feeling that you are still on a boat after disembarking". Sea legs also means that you're good at standing on a pitching boat, but it's the former definition that applies right now.
Snorkel One
We had a great guide this morning. He took us out to Hol Chan, some random spot outside the reserve and then Shark-Ray Alley. Giovani, the guide, was as much a highlight as the marine life.
I'll start with his story: he was literally born on a boat. His dad ran a deep sea fishing boat for tourists with his (then pregnant) mom. One faithful trip, his mom's water broke and some tourists delivered him on the high seas. Before switching to the tourist industry, he was a licensed lobster fisherman. What that means here is that he free dove down 60' to 80' and snagged live lobsters out of their hiding places with a specially designed hook. This was outside the reef down the wall.
He tells us that, out there, you're diving with reef sharks--not nurse sharks. From the pictures, reef sharks look a lot more predatory and a lot less puppy-dog than their nurse shark cousins. I asked if he would take us out there (I want to see how deep I can go with my new fins!) but he told me our boat would capsize in the waves outside the reef. Oh well. We could've gone out past the reef with a licensed fisherman, but they won't let you go out with a lobster diver unless you're licensed.
Giovani said he used to bring back 50 or 60lbs of lobster (at $15US per pound) in a day. He also said that free-diving all day long takes a lot out of you. He can hold his breath for about three minutes he says, but he seems quite happy to ferry tourists around instead for a living.
Another thing about the Hol Chan marine park--it's an official marine park. Part of the fee for going out there goes directly to the Belize park authority. This point was driven home when we saw a marine park ranger. He sits out there during the day and makes sure no one take anything out (definitely no fishing). A helicopter even came by a little later--our guide explained he was just there to "make sure everyone was all right".
Back to snorkeling... we went to the same place we were last night, but this time without scuba and in daylight. We saw another green morray eel (or maybe the same one), lots of yellow-tailed jacks, and ... fish of different varieties. Giovani brought us straight to this particular eel's home and got him to poke his head out by clapping his fists under water. Apparently, the eel comes out to investigate the sound.
The high light of this trip--by far--was running into the conch fisherman parked outside the park. These were two locals in a small boat cleaning their catch of conchs. It was a shark and ray bonanza. We swam with a dozen or so nurse sharks and about that many rays. The nurse sharks don't like to be bothered, but I chased a couple to see if I touch a tail. Giovani, who has an ecologist streak, asked that we not grab them tails. But I did touch a few tails. The rays were a lot easier to pet, they just cruise by below you and you can feel their tops (rough!). We stayed away from the tails, though.
Today's realization was that the sharks will come up to your boat when you park. So it was no coincidence that on the previous days' dives we always saw sharks in the beginning of our dives--they were hoping to get fed. Once they realized you don't have any food, they head off to the next boat.
And then the mega-highlight: a giant turtle with a couple remorrah fish escorting him around. This was the biggest turtle I've seen. Front-to-back his shell was longer than my arm--excluding his head. He came right up to me--Giovani asked that we not disturb him so I didn't touch him. Being face-to-face with a turtle that size was a little unnerving--that beak looked like it could take off a finger. Angela later told me that there was food behind me and he was actually headed that way--he ended up swimming just a foot below me while I floated out of the way.
The other uncommon fish we saw was a large puffer. We saw these in Maui, but this one was quite a bit larger. Maybe from my elbow to my finger tips. Giovani told us that when the inflate (puff) they float which makes them vulnerable to birds so he always discourages divers from pestering them.
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Recent Comments
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Kevin G. said:
On the previous days' dives we always saw sharks in the beginning of our dives--they were hoping to get fed.... read more
on Feeding frezny! Snorkel one -
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rockstarist said:
man, you think I can figure out how to get google to spider my vox site... read more
on Google indexes Vox really fast
on Feeding frezny! Snorkel one