Wednesday, 28 November 2007

Belize

After catching the bus (if that's what you call it) to Belize City, we jumped straight on the boat and headed for Ambergris Caye (pronounce key). We both loved our first taste of the Caribbean. The people were lovely, the weather was great, the sea was crystal clear, the sand was white and soft and best of all everyone spoke English, a welcome relief after practicing our Spanish badly!

We signed up for another 3 day dive package. Two of the days diving (Turneffe and the Blue Hole) have been rated on various diving websites as being in the top 10 of the best dive sites in the world. We were not disappointed. The Blue Hole was amazing. We beat our deepest dive with our record now being 40 meters. Diving at this depth makes you really think about what you are doing and changes things such as colour, light and the pressure on your body. We saw a number of Caribbean reef sharks (picture below) which were about 4/5 meters in length. There were also fantastic rock formations and the endless drop below you made you wonder what else was lurking down there.

We made friends with the group of divers on the boat and on the 2.5 hour journey back to shore we managed to polish of two litter bottels of rum. It felt like a bit of a booze cruise.

Despite our hangovers from all that rum we were up early for our last days dive. On this dive we saw loads of nurse sharks It was such a cool dive and we even got to hold one (picture below). When they get picked up they almost go into a semi conscious state and just lie there as you stroke them on their back or belly.