What an amazing day we just had off Caye Caulker Belize yesterday enjoying a DIP on the other Great Barrier Reef…..  the Belize Barrier Reef, second in size after ours.

Part of the Mesoamerican reef system, it runs from Cancun on the northeast tip of the Yucatan Peninsula  down the Belize coast into Honduras. The Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, includes seven marine reserves, 450 cays, and three atolls.

We did a four hour trip which included four stops around the Hol Chan Marine Reserve between Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker (Caye Caulker is where we are staying for a week, or maybe more… but more on that in another post…)

Less than 20 minutes from the dock, and just 15 minutes between sites, we were snorkelling in the gorgeous emerald green crystal clear water with the most amazing array of marine life that I have ever seen concentrated in one area.  The coral is pretty prolific here too, unlike what we had seen off the Caribbean islands during our cruise. However as the water is quite shallow on the reefs and the coral is still not as colourful as the Great Barrier Reef….BUT it felt like I was swimming in an aquarium and even if you put all the marine life together in all my previous snorkelling trips I still don’t think it would be close to what we saw in one day yesterday! WOW. The clarity of the water is excellent too.

Romeo, our guide/skipper, takes along an underwater digital camera snapping pictures of us and underwater points of interest. We were able to  purchase and downloaded his photos onto our camera SD card back once back at his office. We also have one of those cheap underwater cameras, but that we will have to wait until we get home to get the photos developed.

At the first stop we launch ourselves off the side of the boat and are immediately face to face with large loggerhead turtles.  These turtles have quite big heads, really strong jaws and they were really snapping! We had landed in the middle of the conch city – the ocean floor is covered in thousands of conch shells.  There is now only one fisherman now who has a licence to catch and harvest the conch.  The animal inside is like a sea snail and the Belize fisherman know that if conch shells were cleaned and dropped where they are caught it would stop the sea snails from frequenting those areas. So there is one dedicated site where the conch shells are taken to be cleaned and dropped thus preserving their normal travelling and breeding areas. I have never seen anything like it!

This cleaning and dropping of scraps brings the other sea creatures like the loggerheads, eagle rays, sharks and fish galore.  There were so many of these animals swimming around that it was quite overwhelming and I found it a bit unnerving, especially watching a loggerhead really snapping its powerful jaws!  It was like being on a really busy bit of the freeway and trying to watch and be aware of things moving all around you. OMG!

Our next stop was in the Hol Chan Marine Reserve complete with the ‘Park Ranger’ moored in his office (a boat the same size of ours) sitting there with his marine booklet, and everyone who comes into the reserve is required to pay the 20 belizian dollar fee per person ($10). We motor up next to him, hand over the entrance fees and take the marine ticket before proceeding to tie up to another buoy ready to follow Romeo, our guide into the water.

It seems a little calmer here, although just before jumping into the water this time a huge barracuda cruises by so I wait for it to get further away before plunging in.  We swim toward the reef with Romeo stopping and naming all the coral and fish we see.  He takes us to the home of the resident Moray eel for a real close up.  All the time schools of jack fish are following along behind Romeo – he is like the underwater Pied Piper!  Sometimes they seem to come straight at you before veering off again – I wish sometimes they didn’t invade my personal underwater space quite so much! We see a black tip reef shark and the occasional nurse shark – and still so many fish and sting rays.  Away from the coral areas is predominantly sand and plenty of sea grass that support all these wonderful creatures, especially the more sedate green turtles we also see.

It is here that we swim with a couple of groupers who seem to also follow us around too. Gosh this is incredible – it is like they are all domesticated animals and are so used to having ‘friends’ constantly stopping by.

We were so engrossed looking down at the wonderland underneath us that when we began heading  toward the boat I put my head up to check the distance back and saw the most ominous black clouds heading our way. All around us it had turned grey and the water was beginning to be whipped up by the small squall.  The water was the best place to be to ride out the squall but Immi had already decided to climb up into the boat.  I hunkered down with her under the protection of the biminy as the rain and wind come over, but soon we were cold so jumped back into the warm waters.  It passed as quickly as it had arrived and we were soon all back on board.

Next was the infamous Shark Ray Alley, still inside the Hol Chan Reserve.  At first, we were the only boat and the entrails Romao tossed into the water make the Nurse Sharks crazy – it is the only time of our day out that he issues a warning “don’t  put your hands in the water at the moment”. They pile on top of each other and we are eye to eye to them – and they don’t have very pretty eyes!  They are so close we can see (and touch) the salt and pepper colouring on their skin and soon the feeding frenzy is over.

Romeo is in the water with them coaxing us to come in too.  Although I can see they are pretty docile, well-fed and frankly the best opportunity to safely swim with some sharks (their mouths are actually quite small,  I still pass on the offer). There are just sooo many – I just feel ‘out of my depth’ (pun intended) to jump in amongst them and the girls are a bit frightened by all the activity too – I don’t mind being a wuss sometimes! David, however decides to join him and the girls and I watch them touch and nurse the sharks from the boat – better view up here anyway!

Romeo brings his pet shark over to us so we can touch it – it feels just like wet snake skin.  He then dives down and picks up one of the rays and brings that up to us to touch too – this time it is a slimy texture and we all recoil from the touch!

Dave and Romeo swim a bit further around the reef while we watch a sailboat crammed with backpackers repeating the exercise of feeding the sharks – with about 80% of them deciding to swim amongst the sharks. I think we have the better experience as a small group in a tinny, and Romeo confirms this when he says with so many people getting in together it stirs up the sand too much.  He always tries to keep ahead of the pack.

Our last stop was aptly called the Coral Garden and was a great collection of all types of coral and the most delightful fish – colourful parrot fish and the prettiest brilliant iridescent blue polkerdot damsel fish I have ever seen!

There was more coral to look at including plenty of the delicate purple fan coral – lots of the smaller colourful fish but less of the bigger ‘in your face fish’ that we had seen earlier, although we spotted a couple more rays resting in the sand under the boat as we climbed up for the last time.

Wow – what a day!