Belize 2008


Introduction

In November of 2008 we made a scuba diving trip to Belize along with Mike and Karin.  While there we actually stayed in the small town of San Pedro which is situated on Ambergris Caye which in turn is located off the shore of Belize.  We were there for 9 days and, except for one day of rain, the weather was excellent. The temperatures were generally in the low 80s during the day and mid 70s during the evenings.

Land

We stayed at the Palms Resort which is located right on the beach and about a 100 yard walk from the airport.  We stayed in a large suite which had 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a full kitchen, and a large balcony that looked out over the water.  The resort was very clean and well maintained and the employees were very nice and very helpful.

From the resort it was a very easy to walk to just about anything you would want including several markets, gift shops, bars, outdoor fruit stands, and a large assortment of restaurants.  We ate at numerous restaurants and the food was all good.  We especially liked Wild Mangos for an excellent evening meal and the Tacklebox for something a little less fancy, more local, and equally as good.

Sea


We dove with Aqua Dives.  They were located about a 3 minute walk down the beach and were great to deal with.  We dove 7 days, 2 dives per day most days and 3 dives one day.  The majority of the dive sites are about a 5 minute boat ride so they normally do single tank dives at 9:00, 11:00, 2:00, and 4:00 and night dives if they have enough divers.  This is similar to the way we dove in Bonaire and we really like the flexibility and the fact that you get a little extra surface interval between dives.  They also do longer day trips to the Blue Hole and Lighthouse Reef Atoll as well as Turneffe Atoll.  We did the Blue Hole trip and, while it was a long boat ride (about 3 hours each way), it was one of those must-do trips.  The Blue Hole is an amazing site but it's hard to appreciate it while you're there.  You need to see it from the air to get a true appreciation of the uniqueness of the area.

We dove with 4 different dive masters and they all seemed very professional and took good care of us.  Most of the dives averaged 8 to 16 divers per boat and we never really felt overcrowded like we have sometimes in the past.

We found the diving to be excellent.  There was an amazing array of corals and - to our untrained eyes - they appeared to be in great shape.  Although I don't think there were as many smaller fish as some of the places we have dived, there was still quite a variety and certainly more larger fish and animals including sharks, grouper, eels, rays, and turtles.

Pictures


Mike and I both took pictures around town and the resort.  Mike also took pictures during the dives and a dive shop photographer accompanied us on some of the dives who also too pictures.  Finally Mike and Karin took a day and visited the ruins at Tikal and they took pictures there.  See links below for all of these albums.

Land Pictures
Mike's Dive Pictures
Dive Shop Pictures
Tikal Pictures


Home