Diving experiences of Ruud & Odette
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Belize September 1999 |
| As we read on a t-shirt in a local souvenir shop "Where the hell is Belize? Who the hell cares?" we found that many people don’t have a clue as to where Belize is and what to do there. And it should stay that way, for if too many people could answer the question, an unspoilt gem in the Caribbean could go to waste. You betta Belize it. And an unspoilt gem it is, this Central American country, which only recently celebrated its’ 18th anniversary on Independence Day (it used to be a colony known as British Honduras). So if you promise to keep a secret, we’ll tell you about it. |
| We arrived during the rainy season, although locally they call it hurricane season (and don’t we all remember Hurricane Mitch). And even without the outskirts of a hurricane rushing by, this is a wet, wet, wet season! Luckily for us most rain fell during the night during sometimes fierce thunderstorms. |
| At Belize City International airport (near Ladyville) we decided not to linger in town, but to grab a local bus south, to Placencia. This way we could do some sightseeing without too many other tourists around. The ride first took us to Dangriga, halfway between Belize City and Placencia, where we spent the night in Pal’s Guest House. Dangriga is not an especially interesting town, so the next morning we headed out again to proceed to Placencia, a village on the peninsula. It was another great ride along the unpaved Manatee Highway (coastal route) in an old American bus, which speeded with some 70-80 km/hour (45-50mph) through potholes, narrow bends etc. Fabulous. Still a little shaken we got of at the final stop downtown Placencia. In J-Byrds, a little shack which is a local pub near the pier, we quenched our thirst and made some inquiries as to where to stay. We were advised to check out Harry’s Cozy Cabanas on the southern shore. We did and thus we found our new "temporary" home. The price was right (U$ 35 in low season for a double room with private bath a night, but Harry will negotiate if you intend to stay at least a week) as was the location. A friendly, elderly local guy named Shaky was called to take our bags with diving gear and clothes too Harry’s. Shaky was more than willing to help out for a small fee (which to him meant another couple of unexpected beers) and with his wheelbarrow he struggled through the heavy sand to get our stuff at Harry’s. |
| Next "thing to do" was to find a dive shop, because we had some serious diving in mind. Someone mentioned Seahorse Dive Shop, owned by Brian Young (www.belizescuba.com).Their location is ideal: they have a small, white-blue wooden building on the pier next to J-Byrd. Seahorse has two boats, plenty of rental material should you need it, and an enthoustiastic staff. Because most dive sites are on the reef (an hour or so by boat from shore) your two tank dive will take all day. Heading out around nine in the morning, diving, going ashore on an island (caye) for a great and tasteful barbecue lunch during a surface interval of 1 ½ to 2 hours, diving, a pleasant boat ride….this is living. |
| And the diving on the various sites near Placencia is absolutely worthwile. The reefs have not suffered from Mitch, rising temperatures or El Nino and look really healthy and life (both fish, corals, sponges and other reef creatures) is really abundant and varied. And the diving is never dull: wall dives, canyons, coral gardens, you name it. Visibility is good, watertemperatures are warm (about 30 degrees celcius or 85 degrees fahrenheit) and the current, if any, is neglectable to non-existing. Perfect conditions for pleasant and relaxed diving for all levels of divers. |
| We started diving at Silk Cayes, where on our first dive (North Wall) we were surprised by a couple of huge spotted eagle rays, elegantly cruising by at a leisurely speed. What beauty, what grace. But that’s not all, for we saw a channel flounder, a scrawled filefish, a smooth trunkfish as well as a spotted trunkfish, black groupers, yellowline arrowcrabs. During our second dive (While Hole, outer reef) a barracuda came to check us out, we spotted a fat green moray and various spotted morays, we were surprised by the beauty of a moonjelly, a caribbean spiny lobster, hogfish, a juvenile spotted drum, two southern stingrays (one in hiding under the sand) and, last but not least, the endemic whitestriped toadfish. Because of the beauty of these sites we went back there on another day and we were not disappointed. Remoras, black durgons, again a couple of spotted eagle rays, enormous schools of snappers (dog, gray, cubera) ceros, sharpnose puffer, bermuda chubs, they’re all there. We also went to Pompion Caye (Pompion Wall and Pompion Canyons), where the fishlife was just as abundant. We saw a school of atlantic spadefish, queen angelfish, christmas tree worms are a common sight, as are neon gobies, yellowtail and bicolor damselfish and squirrelfish. Keep a look out for the many banded coral shrimps and pederson cleaner shrimps, and sandtile fish hiding in the sand. |
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| On our way back from Pompion we had a little mishap. The engine sputtered and then went silent. And I mean silent. The damned thing just went dead. Finito. At 25 miles from shore, without a radio and with a cellular phone… at the dive shop. Forgotten to take along. So all we could do was hope that someone would pass us on their way to Placencia or that, after a few hours, someone at Seahorse would notice our missing. Great prospect, at three in the afternoon, with a blazing sun and no place to go for cover and with the knowledge that the weather can change at the spur of the moment. But thank goodness we still had some leftovers from lunch and Louis and Chris, our divemasters, started making peanut butter sandwiches, so that "we will not die hungry". Optimists. At about four or four thirty a fisherman living at Pompion speeded by with a sick baby, on his way to the doctor in Placencia. This kind fisherman could not help us on the spot but promised us to use his cellular to mobilize people to come and pick us up. Of course we were sorry that his baby fell sick, but to us it meant a certain "rescue" from the elements. Some hour later another boat came to tow us away, back to the safety of land. |
| The next dives took place at Laughing Bird Caye, which is also a national park. The Laughing Bird, a bird that really sounds as if it’s laughing and after which the caye is named, mostly hides out on one of the other islands, though. But instead of the laughing bird you’ll find more than your share of hermit crabs in various sizes crawling on the sand. It is as if the beach is moving. Here (north side, south wall, east side and Long Coco) too the diving was excellent and the reefs are a real coral and sponge lovers heaven. And not only for that, because the sites are absolutely bursting with golden chrinoids, blue bell tunicates, stocky ceriths (a kind of mollusk), flat tree oysters, atlantic thorny oyster etc. etc. |
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| We could have gone on diving here for ever, but it was time to move on, for we wanted to see more of Belize, at least of its coastal parts. We took a local flight with Maya Airways (they fly out every day some six times a day) to Belize Municipal and from there on to Caye Caulker. It’s an exiting trip in this tiny twin engine airplane, which sounds like a small motorbike and which has only room for eight passengers. Behind the last seats there’s some kind of cloth, protecting the passengers from shifting luggage in the back. And the airstrips are exciting too, if you’re not used to it: just a small sandy lane (if it hasn’t been raining, for then it turns into mud and pools). We had heard plenty of stories about Ambergris Caye and San Pedro to decide not to go there. It was supposed to be less relaxed, more crowded, both in town as on the boats and diving with 20-40 other divers on the same boat is not our idea of fun. If I want to see another diver, I can take a look at my buddy, that’s all the other diver I need. And with too much divers around, where will the fish go? Exactly! |
| And you know what? "They" were right. Caye Caulke is a great place to stay. There are more tourists though than in Placencia during this time of year, but you can still walk around and meet locals. We took a room in the Trends Beachfront Hotel, an adorable hotel on the beach near the main pier, where plenty of watertaxis provide transportation to Belize City or Ambergris Caye. Although most backpackers would shun this hotel (50 Belizean Dollars = U$ 25, plus tax for a double room with private bath is too expensive in their opinion) we just loved the green and pink building, which opened last March. |
| Brian from Seahorse advised us to check out Frenchie's Diving Service (www.belizenet.com/frenchies.html). And again we were not disappointed. Frenchie Novelo and his wife Gertraud run a smooth operation in a red wooden building on a pier near The Split (hurricane Hattie divided the island in two here). They have plenty of boats, plenty of equipment of good quality. And besides that, they are a great couple, surrounded by an enthousiastic, friendly and knowledgable staff, who will do everything in their power to make your dives worthwile and memorable. Thanks guys! |
| Our first diving day was a heavy one at Lighthouse Reef (because it takes two hours to get there, Frenchies offers three dives to make the trip extra interesting), where we would do the Blue Hole for starters. Bingo, jackpot, on the first dive! We were really excited about going there, but we would have loved to turn back halfway: it was raining cats and dogs, our wetsuits didn’t protect us anymore, we had forgotten our raincoat and we were freezing. But a real diver doesn’t give in and neither did we. And we would warm up soon enough, for water temperatures were around 30 degrees Celsius (85 Fahrenheit). The Blue Hole has hardly any fish life, apart from an occasional reef shark and some groupers. Sure, there’s fish life on the reef around the Blue Hole, but in it… It’s interesting though, this natural phenomenon, with its walls without any visible life forms, transforming into overhangs with huge stalactites at a depth of some 130 feet (appr. 42 meters). Stalactites so big that you need to join hands with at least one other diver to be able to embrace them. If you have a torch, take it with you. It will improve your experience, for it will show you even better how big the stalactites are. The dive is, because of its depth, a short one. After some eight minutes we had to ascend. And we didn’t mind because although the watertemperature at this depth is 27 degrees celsius (80 fahrenheit), it felt like swimming in ice cubes. Would we do it again? No, we wouldn’t. It’s a "must do", because you can’t go home telling your friends that you were in the neighbourhood but didn’t do the Blue Hole, but the dives following the Blue Hole - Half Moon Wall and Long Caye - are far more interesting. We won’t bore you any further with the names of the many fish, coral, sponge and other reef creatures. If you take Paul Humann’s Reef books, you’ll find almost every item in it in Belizean waters, and mostly all on the same dive too. And we’re not exaggerating. |
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| We also went diving in Hol Chan Marine park (Big Aquarium and Pillar Coral Garden), which lies between Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye. Here you can really see what a hurricane, or just a slight part of it, can do to a coral reef. Although it’s supposed to be all old coral, stirred up by the hurricane, there’s scaringly few living coral left, and even less sponges, but plenty of fish life. Quite a depressing, gray and dead (apart from the fish) site, like a cemetary. And although we know that nature sometimes is self destructive, and nobody is to blame, it’s not a sight I would crave to see again. . Thank goodness these were the only sites that looked that way. The rest of Belize, or at least the sites we’ve been to, were in good condition. A few of the other dives we did: at St. Georges Caye the Column and St. Georges Wall. Beautiful and with good visibility, at Turneffe Atoll (also a three tank dive with lunch aboard) we visited a few less known sites called The Black Hole, Playa Tranquilla and Rendez Vous point. Absolutely worthwile. |
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| And our night dive at Coral Garden, a reef just in front of Caye Caulker? What can we say about that, without making you want to jump in the water before finishing this story? Fabulous, wonderful, exciting, interesting… We went out just despite the bad weather. There was another thunderstorm coming in, with rains, lightning, wind. But that didn’t stop us. As long as you’re down under, it doesn’t matter. It’s quite an experience too, to see lightning from below. It was a shallow dive, maximum depth 5.4 meters (some 15 feet), but we got to spend some hour and a half diving there, just cruising around through the lush corals with its many secrets. Plenty of lobster, sleeping parrotfish, a disturbed and thus scared burrfish blwing itself up, two big and beautiful Caribbean Reef octopus in action. A stareye hermit crab with a cute little porcelaine crab as a room mate, several conches (the place is crawling with them), a small spotted moray eel hunting, and of course the bio luminiscence at the end of the dive, after "lights out", in combination with a nearly full moon. It was magic and I felt like a magician. I only had to move my hands to cause a shower of little green sparks! And what to think of a pleasantly disturbed divemaster (Alex) who took his fins under his arms and walked through most of the dive, while rearranging and rebuilding any damage he encountered as if he was a landscape artist. |
| In total we spent three weeks in Belize, which still is too short to see it all, even more so if you want to explore the inland. Would we return to Belize? You betta Belize it, we most certainly would (and most certainly will). Would we recommend it to others? No, absolutely not, never, no way! This is to be our little secret, just to keep Belize the gem it is. So hush and don’t tell anyone else. |
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For more information: Harry's Cozy Cabanas (Harry Eiley & Kay Westby) tel. +501-6-23155 or tel. +501-6-23234 Seahorse Dive Shop (Brian Young) email: seahorse@btl.net or tel./fax: +501-6-23166 Trends Beachfront Hotel (Wayne A. Miller) email: trendsbze@btl.net or tel.: +501-22-2094 or fax: +501-22-2097 Frenchie's Diving Service (Frenchie & Gertraud Novelo) email: frenchies@btl.net or tel.: +501-22-2234 or fax: +501-22-2074 |
| All pictures on this page are made by Ruud Koster with a Nikonos V camera, 35 mm standardobjective, Sunpak 3200 flash, Ikelite 5002 vieuwfinder and Fuji 200, 400 or 800 ASA film. |
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