Stopover in Belize

Caye Caulker's main road

We have been looking forward to going to Belize ever since we fell in love with scuba diving. The reefs around the northern cays are renowned for their sharks and the famous 'Great Blue Hole' is probably on every diver's list of most wanted dive spots. So we took an early bus from Flores to Belize City and went straight on to Caye Caulker by water taxi. We spent the day wandering around the little tropical paradise, feeling the sand between our toes, watching the pelicans dive for food and marveling at the sunset over the turquoise Caribbean Sea from a palm fringed beach.

The next day we had to get up early again to be at our dive shop “Frenchie's” for breakfast and ready to go before 5:30am. It took us 2 hours to get to our first dive spot of the day – the Blue Hole. This sinkhole was once a huge cave but when the sea level rose, the roof collapsed under the pressure of the water. Aerial pictures of the site reveal the true beauty: in the middle of the shallow, turquoise waters of the reef lies a huge circle of dark blue as the ground drops down along an almost straight wall to a depth of over 120 meters. Our dive took us down to 40m, which is pretty much the limit for non-technical diving. At about 25 meters depth we crossed the barrier between the warmer upper layer of water and the cold, dark lower level. At 40 meters there was an overhang from which giant stalactites pointed into the deep darkness below us and it was great to swim through these. A number of sharks appeared in the open water, but none of them came close and the visibility was limited so we didn't really get to see any of those in detail. After only 8 minutes, we had to leave the depth and start our slow ascent through the open water – not much more to see from then on. Although we didn't see lots of animals, the sheer depth of the hole and our dive in combination with the amazing formations we got to see the dive was definitely worth the trip out there.
The second dive of the day was at Halfmoon Wall, a normal reef dive – and just amazing! We have never seen so many huge members of different species on one dive. We saw our first 2m long green moray swimming in the open water with us (yikes, get away from me...), watched a laid back giant turtle feed on sea grass, got in the middle of a hunting school of big barracudas, followed a graceful stingray and met so many sharks that we stopped counting after a while. Some of them got a little too curious and came unnaturally close so the dive had its scary moments – but it also gave us our first real opportunity to see these giant fish from up close (if we wanted or not...).

After our second dive we stopped for lunch on Halfmoon Caye, a tiny island that is Belize's oldest National Park. It looks like taken straight from a commercial brochure for a tropical dream resort island and at times you feel like maybe you just can't take any more beauty. We had time to walk around the island and went to a lookout in the middle of its forest to see a colony of very rare booby birds (yes, that is really their name).

Afterward, we went to our last dive spot for the day, the Aquarium. And yes, it was like being in an aquarium down there. So many

Find the fish...

fish in such a dense space – they all played with us,came closer than anywhere else and were not even alarmed when being touched. The coral was beautiful and the afternoon light was perfect to see all the colors. It was a great dive to finish off the under water day!
On our way back to Caye Caulker, our boat stopped in the middle of the otherworldly Turniffe Atoll where we were served sweet rum punch, chips and dips and could go for an amazingly relaxing swim before continuing on. How wonderful!

The next day, we got ready to leave Belize again – yes, we really only came here for diving. After a great breakfast at the beach we took a water taxi back to Belize City where we had the whole afternoon to spend walking around and exploring the former capital. What we got to see might quite possibly be the poorest of the major cities that we have seen on our whole journey. Most of the streets were just dirt roads, the buildings were all damaged and old (probably hurricane damage?!), people were walking around barefoot and even the banks that usually occupy the nicest buildings in a city were housed in ramshackle buildings. Of course we only saw a small part of Belize City, only its center and maybe there are richer parts on the outskirts of town – there usually are. But still it was shocking to us just how poor this city and its people were. It made the difference between the touristic areas on the islands and the real life on the mainland very apparent. It would have been interesting to see some more parts of this small country to get to know it a bit better and find out, where the truth lies in between the glitter and sparkle of the coast and the bitterly poor cities in the country. Maybe the next time.
As it was, we left Belize that night on a bus to Mexico. A new, a great, a last country to visit for us on our trip around the world.