Belize!

I got a few weird reactions when I told people I’d be spending a week in Belize. It’s like the country has two separate reputations. First: tropical paradise famous for scuba diving, fishing, birdwatching, eco-tourism, etc. Second: another one of those dangerous third world Latin American countries where people get kidnapped. Some people asked, grimacing, “Why are you going there?”

Er, yeah. Okay. I wasn’t really aware of the second reputation. I think it speaks to a bad attitude about travel in general. I concentrated on the scuba diving. I started the PADI certification process at a dive shop in Boulder and went to Belize to complete the open water dives in a place a lot more interesting than Carter Lake. Because the water in Carter Lake is cold. The water in Belize? Constant 80 degrees F. Oh yeah.

This turned out to be a great way to finish the certification because I was doing actual real diving right out of the gate, instead of trundling into the water, fulfilling a few requirements, then trundling out again, shivering like a wet cat. I trundled into the water for the very first time, saw a school of seven 6-foot long nurse sharks circling under me, fulfilled a few requirements, then swam around for another 30 minutes. I already have my best diving story for the rest of my life. (Who sees a school of nurse sharks on their very first dive?) Oh, the sharks were very very cool, not at all scary. Nurse sharks are slow bottom feeders, and these weren’t interested in me at all. They were circling, swimming very slowly and gracefully. I could have watched them for hours.

I’ve been going to big aquariums my whole life, all the really good ones: Monterey, Baltimore, Georgia. I’d stand in front of the huge coral reef tanks with the dozens of multicolored fish, thinking it can’t possibly be like this in real life. In the wild I wouldn’t see all these different fish together, and there wouldn’t be so many.

It turns out, actually, I would. In fact, I’d see more. And bigger. Foot long parrot fish. Angelfish as big as pizzas. Schools and schools of tang, damsel fish, parrot fish, butterfly fish, all swimming together, and coral reef in all directions, as far as I could see. Snapper swimming above, groupers lurking below. Occasional sharks, morays, lobsters, crabs, puffers, triggerfish, barracuda. I’d sit in a current and just drift past the reef, seeing fish the whole time. And the old timers kept talking about how there weren’t as many fish as there used to be.

I did 10 dives all week, including a night dive, and feel like I’m a much more solid diver than I would have been if I had done the certification without the trip.

I went on the Blue Hole trip, but I didn’t dive the Blue Hole because 120 ft sounded just a little too scary for a brand-new diver like me. I snorkeled the edges instead, and it was awesome. Here, the reef is close to the surface and the sunlight brought out all the colors. The Blue Hole is a collapsed limestone cavern about sixty miles off the coast. It’s over 400 ft deep and seems bottomless. Mainly, I loved being out on the water in the atolls, which are oases of calm, turquoise water in the middle of rough seas.

Here’s me diving. Cool, huh?

I stayed in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, which is apparently the island Madonna was singing about in “La Isla Bonita.” (I just watched the video. That’s not the Belize San Pedro.) There’s a cool mix of cultures here: Ambergris felt Caribbean, but there’s a strong Latin American influence — lots of Spanish spoken on the streets, a lot of Mayan heritage, and the country was a British colony until 1981 and English is the official language. You’ll hear people speaking Spanish, Creole, and English, everywhere. I’ve been to towns on Caribbean islands that isolated the tourists — in cruise ship ports, the passengers all get funneled to one or two streets with all the shopping. Two blocks away are all the local shops and local shoppers, with no tourists in sight. It’s not like that in San Pedro. Everything is all together. Locals sit on the beach smoking cigarettes right next to the hotel, and the local grocery store is right next to the tourist t-shirt/gift shop. At the hotel, the bartender would ask me where I had dinner and we’d trade opinions on the local restaurants.

Also: Pirates stayed here in the seventeenth century. Arrrrrrr! I have a pirate book I want to write.

Favorite Meal: Conch chowder and a margarita at Elvi’s.

Best Wildlife Moment: Three spotted eagle rays, huge, swimming in formation about twenty feet below me, along a coral wall at Turneffe Atoll. Oh, and the hawksbill turtles were awesome. Oh, then there was the red-footed booby sanctuary on Half Moon Caye, where the male magnificent frigatebirds were in full red balloon display… You get the idea.

The pier at Half Moon Caye. I have a lot of photos of palm trees, white beaches, blue sky, and impossibly blue water.

I also made a trip into the mainland to visit the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich, near the Guatemalan border. Very impressive, well-cared for ruins. And no crowds. My group almost had the place to ourselves.

This is El Castillo, the main temple at Xunantunich:

I have a lot of photos, a lot of stories. But the bottom line is I had exactly the trip I wanted: I relaxed, I saw a good slice of a country I’d never been too, I became a certified diver in probably the coolest way possible, and I returned home energized and ready to get back to work.

Life is good.

Advertisement