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BELIZE

- May 26th to june 13th, 2004 -

Among the Sula-Sula's and diving the Blue Hole

Belize is the ex-British Honduras, an independent country since 1981, even though its border are close to Guatemala it takes ages to get out of the huge bay after leaving Livingston. The current and the wind do not help us and we have to tack quite many times before seeing the coast disappear and see our first islands. We did no clearance in Belize and remained into the coral islands and along this gigantic 238 km long barrier reef.

Sailing in Belize requires to be cautious as reefs are everywhere and not always notified on the charts. Quite a lot of rental catamarans sails in this area and except these we did not see many sail boats.

After sailing 30 miles we drop the anchor in a poor site and decide to move the next day to a better one, lost in a green mangrove. Pretty place to anchor even though we have to do it more than once as it goes from very shallow water to very deep in a very short time! The water is extremely clear for a mangrove and we have been told there were Crocodiles!! Sorry we did not jump in to verify if true or not! No human being around here (probably eaten by the crocodiles!!!) it is so calm it sound strange after the busy Guatemala but completely invigorating! Birds are the owners of the green bushes emerging from the sea.

Tobacco Range is also a lovely peaceful anchorage with a difficult access through coral heads not easily visible, but then you arrive into a flat mangrove "lake". You can enter one way and leave the other way but you'd better have a shallow draft or wait for high tide as it is rather shallow! a bit stressful too! Anchored right in the middle, the breeze blowing here is cool and keep the mosquitoes away as well as the iens-iens. On the small piece of land an Eco lodge offering a few rooms await for tourists, the guy taking care of the place, a local, lives here with his two dogs, it looks like if the time has stopped.

Eco lodge in paradise!

 

Close to the boat a Manatee is diving. King of the free diving remaining around 5 minutes underwater and surfacing with an incredible regularity, the manatee eat grass turtle and would discourage the best free diver to follow him. The manatee has a very bad view, hair on his chin, but a good ear! and as soon as I jump in the water he disappear leaving me underwater with marks of his bulldozer movements and no more grass where he was.

Turneffe Island is our next goal. The wind picked up and is now blowing around 25 knots and if we were sailing under the reef protection, it is by now totally different. We have to tack a lot before we can see the Turneffe Island reef, then we sail along it on the outside until we get to the right path to get inside. Then in a very shallow water and surrounded with dolphins we drop our anchor. Many dive boats come and go, but is true that in Belize diving is the motto.

Turneffe Island Reef - fishermen house protected by the reef

 

A few resorts here and there and often exclusively offering diving packages. There is no airport facility here so there is a boat pick up for food and guests twice a week to Belize city, 20 miles away.

nothing else but a dream!

 

The wind and the swell dropped and we dinghy up on the reef to dive. No need to anchor we just grab a dive buoy. Turneffe islands are in a marine park so there are plenty fishes. We are not the only divers on the reef, almost every dive boats existing are there too. Even if we are on a buoy, they do not complain, probably the british fair play, and let us do our dive, their dive boat remaining onto its engines while his divers underwater.

A splendid eagle ray ignore us while swimming around - Head coral

After being a while in Turneffe island we sail to Lighthouse reef. Turneffe islands and its three lagoons are spread away and long to disappear, dive boats faster than us will get to Lighthouse reef a long time before us, to dive the reef and the blue hole. Getting to Long Key belonging to the Lighthouse reef, we can see the dive sites marked with buoys, we head inside the reef to be protected from the wind and the swell. The weather is beautiful and the water transparent. We remain there a while and fill tanks, dive, refill tanks, dive again until we get tired.

 

This wall is fascinating with life and activity. Fishes here are more shy and fishing is probably allowed here.

No spear gun here, poor hunter! - Sublime angelfish - quiet turtle

 

Live-aboard dive boats are offering trips to the blue hole and the reef, and remain moored on the wall. Must be a good spot!

After enjoying the diving and the area, we head to Half Moon Key. Here no resort, just two or three fishermen live here with the sanctuary volunteer responsible. To get in there is a real nightmare as everywhere you drop an eye there is a coral head awash, the entry is not clearly notify and the wind is blowing constantly! The anchorage is not too good either and we are parallel to the beach, but holding is good!

Half Moon Key's anchorage

 

Half moon key is the sula-sula's sanctuary! No it is not a war cry!, just a specie of booby having red feet . As everywhere you find a booby you find frigate birds, so here they are too. Dive boats make a stop over Half moon key to rest in between two dives and eat, bringing their own food and drink as there is nothing to buy from here. Once gone the island becomes the birds kingdom.

Sula-Sula !

 

Once the island back to the quiet, we get there to discover the sula-sula we never observed before. In the sky a fight is on in between two black terrible voracious but graceful frigates trying to steal the catch of a young booby. This is a lesson for that young booby to learn he can never make friend with a frigate when food is involved !

Frigates are the worth predator for boobies as they always try to get what they caught, flying faster and rarely moving their wings, best gliders ever seen, getting higher and higher in the sky to be able to notice mahi-mahi chasing fishes, and then touching the surface with their beak to catch bigger fishes' preys.

Black ladies observing us !

 

Booby are not less fascinating in their flight, able to get to 30 meters high and then folding their wings diving in at a surprising speed to enter deeper in the sea swimming under water using their fins to catch fishes while surfacing. Then a frigate await them!

In Half Moon Key there are no other booby than the Sula Sula, nesting on top of the trees. It is pretty easy to observe them unless it is them observing you!, skillfully installed on a thin branch, dropping their icy blue eyes on you. Adults are white and the end of their wings are black, their head with golden feathers. They look very stately and beautiful but their red feet give them a ridiculous look, almost clown-like. Some frigates managed to nest in the middle of the boobies colony and their offspring is so tall it looks awkward, but his long and already sharp beak is off-putting!! Young frigates birds remain 6 months in the nest as well as the boobies and at the time we are here they are loosing their downs for feathers and look like stuffed animals! With my 300 mm lens I take closer pictures than with the digital, to keep a souvenir of the sula-sula mainly visible in Indian ocean, west and central pacific and here for the Atlantic.

Sula-Sula

 

Half Moon Key is such a quiet place, while deserted by tourists-divers, Iguana can then laze in the sun trying to catch the mosquitoes they feed on. Regarding the number of Iguanas, there might be a huge population of mosquitoes!!

The dock and its security guard!

 

We leave this heavenly animals to get to the Blue Hole. The famous and nearly so perfect Blue Hole of Belize, so famous because of the team Cousteau diving it! Who has ever dreamed about diving the Blue Hole once in his life! We did! So we sailed Iritis to the Blue Hole, anchored 10 m away from it, put our gear on, tanks on and jump in the water, then regulator in ! And...

And what ? What would you expect about a hole! The visibility is so murky it is even hard to notice you are in The Blue Hole, the water is carrying so much of the sand from around the hole then it is stuck on to every little vegetation -so little vegetation-, on the walls getting to 128 meters deep. Fishes, what fishes?!! just a couple of huge groupers going up and down as in a lift, probably gotten mad of being stuck there, a moray eel so lonely on the wall greet us. The deeper you go the less you see something! and this is it!!! Sorry to disappoint you, but this blue hole is probably unique in its geological aspect, nobody can deny that, but no big deal in diving it , diving a quarry would have been the same!!!

In short, when you get to the Blue Hole, climb up the top of your mast with your camera and enjoy the perfection of this beautiful blue hole, the marvelous and exceptional different colors of blue observed. From there water is so limpid! Certainly a new business to settle "mast climbing over the blue hole"!

Mast too short to get the whole Blue Hole!

 

On the reef Jean luc will free dive and bring back a hog fish and a Nassau grouper before sailing to North Key. A tropical wave stuck us right in the middle of the bank where coral heads are everywhere, and the sky getting so dark every minute passing, we drop the anchor keeping an eye on a coral head at the front and another at our rear, waiting for the sky to clear up and continuing to Sand Bar Island. Here again, it is good to have a shallow draft. We get to such a tiny path, every minute we believe we are going to beach Iritis! Then once in, a coral head on our left a dock before us we are greeted by Rene one of the fishermen living on the island. As we want to anchor he advises us it would not be a good idea as other fishermen arriving would not have enough room to maneuver! The place is so small!

The island is inhabited with fishermen and a lighthouse keeper. Rene offers to go ashore anytime we want and visit the island. We find it is incredibly clean and Rene explains he tries to do his best to keep it like this. There are plenty Coconut trees and coconuts are all over the place. Hammocks have been installed in the shade to rest. There is a huge machine, no more in use, to extract the coconut oil where from a rancid coconut oil still emanate. The fishermen and the lighthouse keeper remain on the island all year long having only 3 weeks off the island per year, at xmas, independence day of Belize and Easter. At new year's eve they are altogether on the island.

Sand Bar Island

For living the fishermen sale their catches to the resort belonging to an American, on the opposite island. The resort only employs Belize citizens, mainly Rasta, whether they are working in the hotel, maintenance, diving, or else. The resort has an air strip which makes the resort running easier and sometimes the fishermen and the lighthouse keeper can benefit from the resort, a flight to get to Belize city avoiding them to sail 2 hours on their banana boat.

We enjoy spending our time here, sharing the fishermen life and time in a simple way, that we forget the time too as well as the weather outside this exceptionally protected mooring.

The most protected mooring we ever had!

 

Before the boat, at low tide appears a kind of natural zoo, with plovers and other birds trying to find food in the mud, White and grey herons fishing, and ospreys flying to catch a fish to eat comfortably standing on the solar panel on top of the lighthouse, to give some more cleaning work to Rene! Fascinating animal life fading away with the sunset.

We are now ready to sail to the yucatan peninsula and leave behind us this lovely paradise, to discover la Isla de Mujeres, final stop before United States!!

Belize revealed us some of its hidden islands. We deliberately remained away from inhabited area, as Ambergris and the mainland. We wanted to dive and we did it. Belize people are very courteous, and helpful, for the few we met and very British indeed, giving us all kind of advice. We loved it!

 

Needless to say that Belize needs more time to be discovered, and it invites us to go again! Coral landscapes are sumptuous, islands where the green mangrove never darkens the turquoise blue water surrounding it, gorgeous dives, friendly people, make it a destination to remember, especially as anchorages are not very busy and so calm! Keep it in mind, no one knows where your next trip is going to be!!