Belize Part I – The Barrier Reef

Belize, a multi-cultural country the size of Jamaica and only 325,000 inhabitants, is home to the second largest barrier reef in the world and was a must-go destination for us because we love diving! 

Flourishing under the shade is the country motto…but it’s quite sunny here!

We left you with the 6hr overnight bus ride from Tulum. Once in Belize City, a pretty dodgy place (4 people were murdered there over Easter holidays), we went straight from the bus station to the docks with other travellers. There we took the 45min water taxi to Caye Caulker, a backpacker-friendly, caribbean style piece of paradise where push bikes and golf carts are the preferred ways to get around. 

 

Shrimp sticks – yummm

Caye Caulker’s place to be is ‘the split’, a channel of water with a strong current created by Hurricane Hattie in the early sixties, that cut the caye in two. Nowadays, tourists and locals party, launch themselves into the channel, drink and dance to reggae and disco hits at The Lazy Lizard in this spot, which is also a prime location for sunset viewing.  

 

Sal and I got into the island mood, where everything goes quite slowly with ease… but after a couple of days of lazing around, we had an early 4.45am start to gear up for the famous Great Blue Hole dive. Located at the Lighthouse Reef, around 2 hours south-east of Caye Caulker, the Great Blue Hole is a 124 metre deep cave that collapsed 153,000 years ago!

It became really popular thanks to Jacques Cousteau, who declared it one of the top10 dives in the world.  And he was right.. after an easy 15m descent to the sandy floor of the reef, you face a 300 metre in diameter hole that drops into an abyss of darkness. I felt like we were Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Gravity, so when we started the descent into the deep blue, I almost shat in my wetsuit! Once I got myself together, we cruised down to the depth limit for leisure diving (40m), where the hole opens up, and navigated in and around out-of-this-world stalactites under the watchful eyes of a few curious 3 metre reef sharks. All of our pictures turned out too dark, you need pretty good equipment down there.

We didn’t take this picture but the bird’s-eye view of The Big Blue Hole is really cool

The bottom time is short (8min), but the images will remain in our minds forever. Climbing the hole up to shallower and brighter depths felt like going back to reality. Overall, a great experience, topped off with 2 more dives where we saw plenty of tropical fish and turtles.

We had another bit of excitement on a canoe trip to explore the part of the island north of the split. After paddling a few hours against the current & wind crossing the channel to get back (not our cleverest idea to go with the wind first), we were ‘rescued’ by an American couple in their dinghy saving us a lot more hard paddling! Back at the caye, we ended our 3 day stay watching an American rap video clip being filmed (hilarious), learning new card games and meeting other backpackers at the hostel. 

Once returned to the mainland and after a week of exploring, we had crossed most of Belize’s coast and we were ready for our 2nd seaward expedition, to Glover’s Reef. Glover’s Reef is a partially submerged atoll 45km off the mainland. We stayed on North-East Caye, which barely takes 5min to walk around. On the way there we met a great bunch of fellow travellers, Anton & Lilly, Sylvan & Chantal, Romain and Nathalie to share the sunsets, drinks, activities and meals with, thanks guys! 

While the pictures may look as if we stayed in a fancy resort, the truth is that it’s pretty affordable and there are different accommodation options, from camping in your own tent, a dorm, beach cabins, up to nice cabins over the water. Sal and I enjoyed a dorm to ourselves (no farting teenagers this time, Furo). The rest of facilities were pretty basic (compost toilets, bore water showers, no electricity,…) so it felt a bit like our own Robinson Crusoe / LOST adventure. 

Our dorm for the week!

The stay was really cool, a real slice of paradise! To begin with, all the coconuts you can find/open/eat/drink are free. Sal turned into the Scrat (the squirrel from Ice Age) in coconut heaven and started trying to climb trees and stockpile coconut after coconut.

Sal is happy, very happy

Then we were trained in the opening techniques, either the machetes for the drinking ones (green and yellow on the outside, still hanging from the trees – great with coconut rum!)….  

…or the “peeling stick” & machete combination for the eating ones (already brown and fallen from the trees). Happy to say we still have all our fingers intact!   

Huy, new cooking utensil!

After lots of reading, lying on hammocks and peeling coconuts, we went for a couple of dives, but snorkelling was so good that we stuck to free diving after that. Tropical fish, beautiful coral, nurse sharks, eagle rays, lobsters… you name it, we were spoiled for choice.      

Queen Angel Fish

French Angel Fish

Scrawled Filefish

Lobster is a protected species so we couldn’t have it for dinner

Hi-five coral!

Tang fish

Sleeping nurse shark

Aaaaand it’s awake

Spear-fishing is very popular too. In fact, you could buy fresh fish almost every night from the locals that run the resort. Luckily for us we met an American guy who was happy to swap a couple of freshly caught red snapper for coco-locos…

Lilly and our red snapper

we couldn’t believe our luck, as his experienced local guide deboned and scaled the fish on the jetty for us.

We prepared them 2 ways: in a Jamaican curry sauce with coconut milk and coconut rice and just grilled over coals.  The 2 snapper fed our group of 8 and we still had leftovers for the next day, definitely the best meal of the trip so far! 

This has been a long post, so we will cover Belize by land in the next update! Thanks for following us!