Snorkelling trip, swimming and sunset - Caye Caulker, Belize
Caye Caulker, Belize
Our first tour that was scheduled at a reasonable hour-10:30 am :) was a nice 3hr snorkelling trip only 5 mins out. Our first stop was "south channel" where I found it difficult to adjust to snorkelling after only diving. Oh the revelation that when you dive down you have to come up pretty soon as the snorkel is made redundant pretty fast.. Nonetheless it took a couple of tries to sink in. We saw massive 50cm puffer fish, lured a moray eel out of hiding by clapping at it, as well as our snorkelling leader telling us all the names of the other fish that we were seeing. The second snorkelling spot was only a couple of minutes later and it was aptly called Shark and Ray Alley- once we got to the spot we saw so many big shapes in the water. We realised it was only about chest deep so no need for flippers, just jump on in. Easier said than done! We were the first boat to arrive that morning and because the stingrays and sharks are here because fisherman used to clean their catch out here, they expect food when a boat arrives. So I swung my legs over the side of the boat and had to be careful to find the right moment to find a gap between all the animals to jump in!! When I spotted a gap, I jumped and was faced by a (Belizean) nurse shark-a far cry from our many-toothed nurse sharks. These were rounded, brown with whiskers? More like wobbiegongs I reckon!! We took videos of them swimming all around us, and we had to watch where to step. After a few minutes of this and grinning so much water kept coming into my goggles, they started moving away- a boatload of cruise ship passengers had arrived. They shook up all the sand and were loud and not at all calm so our visibility decreased significantly. Then one of their guides picked up a nurse shark to lift him out of the water and let everyone pat it *shakes head disapprovingly* and so low and behold we didn't see any other sharks after that. But we saw stingrays up and close as they hid fish parts in conch shells and they would hover over it, sucking it out. We were in the water for about 4mins then returned to the boat for a "booze cruise" to an area full of large tarpons that the fisherman also fed with their leftover catch. They were 1m long silver fish jumping out of the water for fish! That was the end of our snorkelling day, after which we hung out at The Split for swimming and people watching, leaving before Llew got too burnt-I burn (tan) a fair while after he'd be crispy! To finish off an amazing day we grabbed a canoe from out the back of our hostel (free!) and paddled the 30mins out of our little mangrove inlet to the flat open water where we saw/ and photographed a beautiful sunset. Not much happened with Christmas dinner although our hostel had prepared food we thought was for dinner but ended up being lunch. I was struck down by a solid headache, took a Panadol on an empty stomach which made me come to the conclusion that going to sleep would solve everything as Llew headed out in the sporadic pouring rain to find chicken stew ( so yum!) dinner.