Belize: 11th November - 18th November

After a night in Chetumal I crossed the border into Belize. Was strange to suddenly be back in a place where the bus drivers speak to you in English. I got a bus straight through to Belize City, and arrived there late in the afternoon. I normally like to spend at least one night in the main cities of each country I visit but Belize City has a fairly bad reputation, and as it was getting on in the afternoon with only a couple of hours of daylight left anyway, I decided to jump straight onto a boat out to the islands. I didn't even walk from the bus station to the dock, I paid 3 dollars for a taxi. There was a time when I would have laughed in the face of a place like Belize City, but I seem to be getting softer in my old age. Anyway, half hour later I arrived at Caye Caulker. There were some accomodation touts but they weren't very hard to shake off because the place I wanted to stay in, Tina's Backpacker's, was right by the jetty. In fact, you can see it in this photo. It's the place with the blue roof.

Caye Caulker has no beaches as such, but nevertheless is a wonderful place to chill out in a hammock under the palm trees.

Belize is a small bastion of the English language in the midst of Latin America. But although they might speak English, it's not exactly the same brand that the Queen speaks...

I intended to spend my first day on Caye Caulker just relaxing, reading my book and maybe learning a little Spanish. By lunchtime I was bored silly so I signed up for a snorkelling trip to Shark Ray Alley. First stop was a section of the reef where a couple of big morays lived. But these big daddies were used to being fed and bloody well chased me back up to the surface when I dived down to have a look at them.

There were no sharks at Shark Ray Alley but plenty of stingrays. At least two dozen, swimming so close you could reach out and touch them. Thoughts of Steve Irwin were in everyone's minds...

They told me it couldn't be done, but I managed to get an over-water, under-water shot with the 1 cm lens on my Panasonic FX-01.

Next day I was off on a dive trip to the famous Blue Hole. Plenty of people tried to tell me it wasn't worth the money, that there wasn't much to see, but as far as I was concerned, how could a diver go to Belize and not dive the Blue Hole? And besides, Jacques Cousteau said it was a good dive and who am I to argue with him? Well, I can confirm here and now that it is a great dive. We could see the sharks from the boat before we even got in the water. There must have been at least a dozen big grey reefers, as well as some big groupers and plenty of jacks and barracuda. Then it was a rapid descent to 40m where the water is inky blue and there are giant stalactites dangling from a slight overhang. Just eight minutes down there then a slow ascent back up the wall, all the time in the company of those sharks. Like I said, a great dive.

Another shark in the blue hole. Later on, I heard a rumour that the sharks are there because some boats feed them {ours didn't}, and although I didn't know that at the time, I did still wonder how easy it would've been for a shark to mistake the shiny white and silver camera in my hand for a fish...

We had lunch on the boat and spent the rest of our surface interval on nearby Half Moon Caye. The entire island is a nature reserve, and home to a sanctuary for red-footed booby birds and red-throated frigate birds. It was mating season, and the trees were full of mating pairs.

Second dive was on Half Moon Wall. Absolutely gorgeous coral growth, great visibility and lots and lots of fish. This would have been a better dive than the Blue Hole even if two dolphins hadn't swum past us half way through.

Here I am in the garden at Tina's, about to leave to head down to Dangriga.

Dangriga is one of the main towns in the south of Belize. It is a major centre of the Garifuna people, and a fascinating place. Like much of Belize, the clapboard buildings look picturesque but are not built to survive the frequent hurricanes.

Next stop in Belize was Placencia, a sleepy village at the end of a long peninsula. Good beaches, chilled lifestyle but really not much to do and not much to keep me excited. More nice photo opportunities through the palm trees, but that was about it.

Looking inland from Placencia, the Maya mountains were all that stood between me and Guatemala. Thankfully, due to wonderful things called "buses", I would cross them the next day, and after a night in Cayo, cross over into Guatemala the following day.

Next page: Guatemala
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