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
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