Blue Hole diving and sailing to Placencia

I've found wireless! I'm writing from Placencia, Belize. We just arrived here last night after three days of sailing. More on that in a moment, but first to wrap up my time in Caye Caulker...

I enjoyed my time there, but it's so easy to spend money there! As it's an island, everything's a bit more expensive than the mainland, and Belize already has the reputation of being basically the most expensive Central American country. That means that a beer costs about US$3-4, as opposed to Nicaragua's $1 beers and Costa Rica's $1.5-2 beers. I had my own little cabin for my time there (at Ignacio's), which was one of the best deals on the beach, and I managed to score it for less than US$15/night. It just meant that I had to walk 10-15 minutes to get anywhere I needed to go in town. It was slightly run down, but I had my own bed, a bathroom, and a fan, which is really all you need.

So, the Blue Hole! I really didn't have any major expectations for the Blue Hole dive itself, but I was pleasantly surprised! It was one of my shortest dives ever, with a total dive time of 22 minutes, and it probably was the longest/roughest rides out there (2 hours) that I've done for a dive, but I'm glad I've done it once. It was quite cold, but once we got down to the 130 feet, it was one of the most unique environments I've dived in. Stalactites and Stalagmites covered in colorful lichens and things. There weren't many fish, but at the top, as we were doing our decompression stop, we saw some reef sharks not so far away. After that dive, we did two more dives - the first I thought wasn't so great, and the second was pretty decent, although I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed by the visibility here. Perhaps it's just the time of the year.... but at any rate, I love being in the water, so I enjoyed the dives. Another 2 bumpy hours later, we were back in Caye Caulker.

My last night on the island, my tour leader friend Ellis cooked me and a few friends dinner, and it was excellent! Fresh barracuda in a tomato, onion and pepper stew with lots of spices. Afterwards, we had a night out on the town with his sister and a few other friends. It was good, but probably not the best idea right before my 3 days' sailing trip. Oh well.

On Wednesday, I boarded the sailboat with 9 other people plus two staff. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best of groups... most people kept to themselves and didn't mingle all that much. And we were on a small boat.... there was Cheryl and myself who spoke English - she's a Canadian chick i shared my tent with and is a little annoying but overall bearable. There were 4 Norwegian guys who seemed cool enough, but they just sat around speaking Norwegian to each other all the time and didn't mingle much. Then there were 2 fantastic older ladies (late-40s, 50s?) from Italy who seemed like lots of fun, but there was a huge language barrier. And last but not least was what we though was a Czech couple, but they turned out just to be friends... she seemed like she was maybe fun, but she hung out with him all the time and he was BORING. I think he said like 5 words to me the entire trip. (No, it wasn't against me - he didn't talk to anyone.) Last but not least, we had the two crew members - Patrick was the captain and Dice was his crew. They were very cool and a lot of fun.

Despite the lack of interesting people, it was an amazing trip! The company really has a fantastic trip planned out (Raggamuffin Tours)... each day basically entailed a fantastic breakfast, sailing for a bit, snorkelling stop, snacks & sailing, snorkeling stop, lunch, sailing, snorkelling, arrive to an island, rum punch, set up tents, etc, dinner, more rum punch, hang out, sleep in aforementioned tents. Sailing was anywhere from 5-7 hours in one day. We had fantastic weather the whole time, and I've got a decent all-over tan now!

The first night, we were on a tiny island with nothing more than a few palm trees and a couple of palapas. Bathrooms didn't exist (they were called bushes), and it was reallly windy. That plus the fact that the crew forgot the tent pegs to hold down the tents meant a not-so-refreshing night of sleep, seeing as the tent was trying to blow away despite me and a Canadian girl inside of it!

Second night, we were on an inhabited island (English Caye) that had houses, hotels and even 2 bars! It was still tiny, but I really enjoyed that island - probably one of my favorite places in Belize that I've been to so far.

Yesterday, we arrived into Placencia at about 5pm, and I shared a room with the Canadian girl for the evening. We caught up with the two crew members for dinner and some drinks, and then the boys headed back home at about midnight. They had about 12-18 hours of sailing in front of them, poor guys! Long night, I'm sure.

Now I'm going to be heading down to Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras, which means that first I'm going to go to Punta Gorda here in Belize, and then I'll hop aboard a boat to Guatemala, which should be about an hour or so. Placencia is quite touristy and pricey, so I'm excited to see how Punta Gorda is - i think it's a bit less touristy and it's got more Garifuna culture. I'll probably only be there for a night, but you never know!

Check out the pix I just posted from Caye Caulker on my flickr site. That's all for this time... you'll probably hear from me next from Utila!