Day 46 - Ultimate dive

4th March, 2009

Following Caye Caulker where we intended to dive the Great Blue Hole - a widely talked about and unique experience in the diving world. Updated visual journey map.

An areal view of the great blue hole.

Source: Wikipedia

To get to the island we had to leave Herbie in Belie city on the mainland (a place we're glad we decided not to stop after driving through). Caye Caulker itself was a pretty little island, narrow but quite long, it was severed in two by a hurricane back in 1961 leaving a 'split'. The southern half of the island populated with about 20 hotels, including many bars and restaurants, however it was pleasantly quiet considering it's party reputation. But we didn't come here to get trashed and top up our tans, once settled we set about finding the best dive shop in town. We decided to go with a firm called 'Frenchies' who seems to be together, had good gear, and their own boat on the island. We booked ourselves in for the following morning.

Our dive shop on the beach.

The following morning meant a 5:30AM start at the dive centre, heading out to sea as the sun seemingly rose from it's depths at the horizon. The Blue hole was a deep dive (40m/130ft), so had to be first. We descended to 12m and instantly saw two 2.5-3m reef sharks! Further on our way down we passed many large Groupers. Once in the hole life became scarce, but the current disappeared, the light levels dropped, our eyes adapted and suddenly we were in another world. It was once an ancient roofed freshwater cenote covered in Stalactites that collapsed-in when the area flooded millenia ago. Many of these massive structures still survive in a ledge around the periphery. Some the size of houses! It was incredible; you could swim around and in-between them. The nitrogen narcosis at that depth gives you a slight feeling of being high, further amplifying the experience. You also burn air at a greater rate at such depths ending this part of the dive within 8 minutes, after which we spent around 20 mins slowly resurfacing/decompressing. But what an experience! Wouldn't have missed this for the world, and if we had time I'd do it again and again! On the way up we spotted a third reef shark, and a host of friendly tropical fish.

The day consisted of three dives, with the following two in shallower waters over reefs and walls that dropped off 2000m. On these we saw 2 Green turtles, Spotted Eagle Rays, Moray eels, Lobsters, thousands more fish, beautiful corrals, and even a family of 5 Pilot Whales (large Dolphins) on the journey back who continuously surfaced around the boat to say/squeak hi; a rare sight indeed in this area! Without a doubt, the single best day of diving in my life so far! Incredible experience. Lukas was equally blown away.

We celebrated well that night, and were tired enough now to allow ourselves a chill-out day, sleeping in, exploring the island, reading books in swing seats on the beach.

With no cars, everyone on the island gets around with golf carts!

Following our day of rest, we caught a boat back to the mainland, picked up Herbie, and headed west towards the Guatemalan border. En-route we stopped briefly at the Belizean zoo (more a rescue center reserve than typical zoo). An interesting experience, where we saw example of most the countries exotic wildlife. Jaguars (of many different shapes & sizes) were the most impressive to see, as well as Eagles the size of a small person!

Howler monkey wandering what I am doing, snapping his picture :)

'Junior' a young Jaguar at the zoo. Beautiful.

Before hitting the border we stopped briefly in a small town named San Ignacio for a night, finding a funny little place to drink and play pool & table-football.

The border crossing was successful, and we encountered fewer issues with having the car this time. Our first stop is a town called El Remante on a large lake, from where we will tour the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal. Updated visual journey map.

So far, Guatemala seems like a friendly place. The scenery is beautiful; dense rainforest, river lakes and hills, with many small villages dotting the landscape. The roads are the worst we've driven yet, but will hopefully improve as we progress through the country.

So country number three successfully reached, car intact, and many more exciting experiences still lay ahead in our last 3.5 weeks.