My friend Arturo proposed a diving trip somewhere you don't have to make sure you come back out the same hole in the ice you made to get in the water (i.e. not Monterey :) ), and we ended up in Belize.
Most of the time was spent on the aggressor diving, but we also visited things around Belize a little bit.
Here is the GPS track of our trip including the dives and flights, showing a good visual overview of the trip:
Nice view over Miami
Belize City
Ok, so Belize City isn't great to visit, but there were a few nice activities not too far from it.
Belize is where cars go to die, they're stripped for parts and left where they were
want fruit?
Cave Tubing
Cave tubing was nice, we got to hike through a forest with our tubes and come back down going through caves. Nice, relaxing, and pretty. Thankfully insect bats did a good job of eating most of the mosquitoes.
nice caves
fruit and insect bats
Lamanai Mayan Ruins
Those were a bit farther and included a 1h boat ride down a river to a place where driving would have likely taken longer.
The boat ride was actually pretty fun, including the monkey visit, and the ruins that are only very partially excavated due to lack of funds, were pretty impressive (the guide also did a good job of describing the Mayan culture and history). The mosquitoes in the forest were however very numerous and fierce...
natural glue
Diving off the Belize Aggressor III
Oh yeah, right, we were there for diving originally :)
keeping track of where we went and our dive sites (used to make the map above)
It was gatesfest where we got to try Gates housings and equipment
Between the dives, we got to visit Half Moon Caye, which was a nice little excursion:
juicy hermit crabs there too
But back to diving: Belize was not the best place we've been to so far, but it was still enjoyable to dive and the water was a nice 29C. They did have very juicy sizeable lobsters and crabs though :)
lionfish are pest with no predators there
juicy crab
nicely sized groupers
very juicy lobsters :)
we got to try DPVs
that turtle was very bright, it went straight into those weeds
the famous blue hole
stalactites in the blue hole
cleaning shrimp
nice eagle rays
did I mention lobster? :)
gates equipment at work
All good things...
Come to an end...
