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| Island sunsets - we'll miss these... |
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| Unfortunately Prince Harry wasn't at the border crossing... |
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| Welcome to Caye Caulker |
No time to hang about, so woke up at the crack of dawn once
again – a proper bus this time! This excitement was, however, short lived when
we realised we were the last on – this equated to being on separate seats where
the incumbent had well and truly spread out…
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| Another island sunset |
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| The other side of the island at dusk |
Spent as little time as possible in Belize City, jumping
straight from the bus to a boat to Caye Caulker. We were greeted by another
tranquil isle, where golf carts replaced taxis and you could walk the length in
20 minutes. At least that limited our choices! Whiled away the afternoon
sunning it up – despite the lack of a traditional beach there were plenty of
places to have a laze, and have a snooze!
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| Location is a bit of an approximation... |
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| The wonders of the hole that is blue |
As we’d become accustomed to ridiculously early starts,
thought we’d make it 3 in a row and head to the Blue Hole the next day for some
diving. Had purposefully not looked into it much, so the dive (slated by some)
was a pleasant surprise with the amazing stalactite and column formations. We
didn’t get the ‘hole’ effect you see from the air, but at 40+m underwater was
by far our deepest dive to date – thankfully no side effects!
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| The highlights of the dive - not our photos - thanks Simon Marsh, Adventure4ever and other unnamed sources! |
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| They had a bit of a belly on them! |
The couple of dives that followed were brilliant – the coral
was even better than we’d seen off Little Corn (helped by superior vis), and a
lovely array of marine life. The highlight was seeing a pair of eagle rays
gliding alongside a wall (only 1000m drop off!), then a different pair getting
very close above the coral. A couple of minutes watching a green turtle
munching on the sea grass was pretty cool as well! An added bonus was the lunch
stop on the island on Lighthouse Reef, where we were directed to a bird observation point.
Here we were reacquainted with the red footed boobies and the magnificent
frigates, the latter of which were in the midst of their mating season and had
their red chests puffed out to the max. We’d missed out on such a strange
mating ritual in the Galaps, so was ace to see it here.
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| Don't lean back too much! |
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| If hot dogs are doing it, then we'd better too! |
Thought about a snorkel trip the next day, but decided
against it with the further diving plans we had coming up. Instead, Annaliza
had a massage – necessary given the state of the mattress we were sleeping on!
The sun threatened during the afternoon, but never really broke out like it had
on that first day – the rain had come down heavily the night before and the
clouds didn’t seem to want to leave the island. As a result, we had to follow
the mantra of Caye Caulker – go slow.
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| Island life - just ignore the big black cloud in the background! |
Key Learnings:
1. Bumping into people you’ve met on the gringo trail
is fine once or twice, but the forth and fifth times are a bit awkward –
especially when you didn’t get on that well to begin with!
2. Hot showers are regularly claimed in Central
America, but only seem to be delivered when the tap is turned on to a trickle…
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