One of the many reasons we decided to head to Belize for our honeymoon was to experience the diving - Belize has the second largest coral reef system in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland of course!!) including the amazing Blue Hole - a large submarine sink hole or cavern.
Blue Hole was an amazing but QUICK dive due to its maximum dive depth of over 45 metres (which is beyond the allowable recreational dive limits). There was very little marine life due to the depth apart from a couple of sharks and groupers but we did see some MASSIVE stalactites and did a couple of swim-throughs at around 40 metres. My poor little Suunto D9 was going crazy with alarms the entire dive and quickly ended up in decompression mode due to the depth limit breech but the guides deco'ed us on the way back up - meaning a number of people had to swap tanks while still under 6-8 metres of water at the end of the dive to safely complete the decompression stop.
The Blue Hole
Our second dive site for the day was called Half Moon Caye - we saw lots of barracuda, parrot fish as well as a gorgeous spotted eagle ray... however the highlight of the dive, and in fact the day, was right at the end of the dive. We'd just completed our safety stop and where planning on beginning our accent when we started to hear a whole heap of musical clicks and whistles and two dolphins began to circle around us, playing... I looked at my dive computer and cursed... I only had 30 Bar left.. but being only 5 meters from the surface decided I was going to suck my tank dry to be able to experience this.. after all I could easily pop to the surface having completed my safety stop already!
Our last full day in Belize saw us head out to Hol Chan Marine Park (Hol Chan means 'little channel' in Mayan) for a shallow dive at the cut followed by a snorkle with docile nurse sharks and stingrays at Shark Ray Alley.
The dive never had us any deeper than 7-8 metres but it was the best dive we completed while in Belize for marine life. We saw parrot fish, grouper, snapper, trigger fish, huge schools of horse eyed jacks, a cute little puffer fish, grey angelfish and a couple of absolutely massive tarpon as well as hawksbill turtles, spotted eagle rays, sting rays, nurse sharks, moray eels, octopus, as well as these crazy crustaceans that looked like spiders!!
A school of Horse Eye Fishies
Although we had to be careful of snorklers in a number of places and I struggled with my buoyancy due to the shallow water and I was struggling a little having imbibed a little too much the night before, it was a thoroughly enjoyable dive - even if I didn't feel up to the snorkle afterwards....
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