I’ve been in Belize now for a week. I started this trip in Caye Caulker, a small strip of an island with the motto, “go slow” painted and heard everywhere. And the motto really holds true. There isn’t a car on the island. The people of the island move around by golf cart, bike, and sandal. I tried to get by wearing my shoes or being barefoot but after a night at the bar dancing in bare feet I submitted to the sandal life.
By far my favorite part of Caye Caulker is the water. Its so warm and there’s no shortage of gorgeous marine life out there. I have never had a better snorkeling experience
I went on an all-day snorkeling tour in which we went to the marine preserve first. Around there we fed some little colorful fish some little less colorful sardines. For being pretty small fish they were surprisingly aggressive. We held the sardine in our hand and the colorful fish would dive at it and would pounce it really hard to take a bite. The spot where we fed the fish was just a blanket of conch shells on the ground. Some of them alive and moving around, most of them dead and eroding.
After we fed the small fish we got back in the boat and took of for the bigger fish. We stopped along a coral reef, threw some dead sardines in the water and waited. The sharks showed up almost instantly and the whole group stood hesitantly in the boat waiting to jump in. We jumped in and got an amazing view in the water next to a group of nurse sharks swarming to try to eat the sardines.
Being in the water you could feel the intensity coming off the sharks. It was such a frenzy I could see how if you cut yourself they could tear you apart in a minute as a group.
After the sharks we went on a long snorkel and got to see my favorite thing on this earth behind monkeys. Turts!! We ran into one that was just chilling on the bottom eating some sea grass. I dove down and hung out with him as long as my lungs would allow, then he surfaced with me. Definitely the most magical part of the day for me.
After the turtle we headed towards land to check out some of the local birds and look for some seahorses from the dock. We got to sea seagulls, pelicans, and frigatebirds. I didn’t know frigatebirds existed before but these pilots have absolutely enormous wingspans that allow them to roll on wind currents for weeks at a time. They also have the largest wing surface area to weight of any bird and can live up to 44 years!
There are also lots of manatee in the area and I even got to see a little shy pufferfish hiding under some coral.
By the time we saw all of this the whole crew was sunburnt and the sun was about to set. We pulled out the rum and it was one of the guys 25th birthday so we helped him celebrate by downing some warm rum.
