Belize Diving Trip

We stayed at Ambergris Caye for 7 nights and spent 5 days diving on the barrier reef, on the outside Atolls and in the Great Blue Hole. We then spent the rest of our vacation in the tropical jungles. Most people would reverse our itinerary by going to jungle first and beach later. But we wanted to dive in our best conditions.

Our first dive was on Sunday morning, June 25th. The weather wasn't very promising. Having not done any dives in almost a year, I was very nervous on the first dive. Plus, the sea was very rough and the wave was as high as 20 feet (I guess). I never saw such big wave before, let alone jumping into it. The situation was a bit chaos to me. But after I started to descend under the water, I didn't feel the surge at all and everything came back to me naturally. The first dive was a spectacular wall dive on the barrier reef, and I dove down to 100 feet. The visibility was not the best in Caribbean but it was good enough. It started to rain after we ascended and back in the boat. Our second dive of the day had to be cancelled due to the thunderstorm.

We did three dives this day. The last dive was night dive, also the first night dive for Joe and me. (Too many first times and too many records were made in this trip). I was nervous and afraid to dive at night. The dive master gave me some advice, such as not to shine the flashlights into the fishes' eyes and everyone else in the group gave me lots of encouragement. Diving with experienced friends helped me a great deal to overcome my fear. The night dive was wonderful. Although in the same site, what we saw were so different between day and night.

That night, we spent the night at Half Moon Caye. It was a small island without any resort facilities, also home to the Red-Feet Boobies. We could hear them, but couldn't see them until we climbed on an observing tower on which we had a spectacular view of hundreds of birds nesting on the treetops. The island was so original that I felt like a shipwreck survivor floating to this remote island and survived by drinking coconut milk and hunting fishes? Were it not a thunderstorm predicted, we would have spent the night on the beach counting stars.

Approaching it by boat, Blue Hole was a bit disappointing. The ring-like coral on the edge was under water. It was no way near impressive like the picture taken from air. But I had no time to feel disappointed. We were asked to get ready and jump into the water. To conserve the oxygen, we snorkeled to the planned descend point on the top of the wall. We were asked to descend quickly to 130 feet within 3 minutes. Buddy system didn't work in this dive. We had one lead dive master in front, and another dive master stayed behind. If you couldn't descend within 3 minutes because of ear clearance problem, you would be asked to abort the dive.

We first descended to the shallow bottom on the edge. Joe had problems of clearing his ears as usual. I had to make a decision to catch the first group or stay behind with him and another dive master. I decided to follow the first group. The sheer wall was straight down to about 120 feet deep. I never saw such sheer wall other than the face of the Half Dome in Yosemite. Although we did many so call "wall dives", I never dove in front of such a straight 90-degree bare wall like this. Used the wall as reference, I quickly descended to 130 feet in less than a minute and caught up with the first group. Joe later told me that he was so upset that he could not clear his ears quickly and saw everyone else including me disappeared into the deep blue water. If Joe could not make it, it would be a big disappointment for both of us because we could not share the special experience together. But I had no time to worry about that at that moment. Everything just happened so fast and you could only hold on to your own dear life and expect your loved one and your friends take good care of themselves. If anything, even tiny thing goes wrong, whoever trying to help puts his own life into great jeopardy too.

After I descended below 100 feet, I started to feel like breaking though the thermocline and felt freezing cold. When I descended to about 130 feet deep, I started to feel a little dizzy and short of breath. I told myself to remain calm and adjusted my regulator and I breathed easier. I ascended a little bit as dive master told me beforehand and the dizzy feeling went away. After we descended to about 135 feet along the wall, we started to see some 20 to 50 feet long stalactites mounted to the wall and form an underwater cavern. I tried not to descend deeper and swam though the stalactites. The water was very still and dark blue. The visibility was not good and the flashlight came out so handy that it made me feel more comfortable. There were very little marine life down there, except some Horse-eyed Jacks and three large Lemon Sharks quietly circling around about 20-30 feet down below me. The feeling was very special, cold, still, quiet, dark blue, bottomless, sharks as companions. I wasn't afraid but I was awestricken. I had to respect the human limits. It was so close to the edge of life and death although I wasn't in danger in the whole dive.

When I looked at my gauge, I saw my maximum depth is 141 feet. I pumped more air in my BCD and prevented myself descending any deeper. Joe went down to 145 feet. Peter took his chance and went down to 150 feet. Even Regis who is the most experienced diver in the group thought Peter took his chances to stay so below others. You won't feel much difference between 60 feet and 100 feet. But after 130 feet, one foot deeper could make huge differences. I was never in any ways to compete with my fellow divers. I knew that I made a deepest record of myself in this dive and had no intention to break my own record later.

We only stayed at the bottom for 8 minutes because of no decompression dive limit. The dive master signaled us to ascend. When I ascended back to 100 feet, I suddenly felt so much warmer. I felt like back to life again. The Blue Hole dive was awesome, wonderful and very special. I only felt that I stuck with words and could not express my special feelings in any ways.

Joe and I were so glad that we both made it in this Blue Hole dive. We were also so pleased that we could share this special experience with our friends, Peter, Regis and Scott. The Blue Hole provided a special bond among us and the special memory would remain for many years to come.

It was a regret that Jingqing couldn't share this with us because she was still taking her scuba class. But I believed she enjoyed her new scuba diving experience very much like the rest of us.

We did three more dives after Blue Hole. We felt we had enough fun already, but still enjoyed swimming with fishes, and wrestling with nurse sharks. One of the dive was our first wreck dive for Joe and me.

The second part of our vacation was jungle adventure. We visited the Corocal, the biggest Mayan ruin site in Belize. We explored some caves on our own and hiked in the jungle. These were all very special experiences, so different from our routine Californian life and outdoor activities. The drive in the jungle was rough but much better than expected. The mosquitoes were not as bad as we had imagined. We enjoyed our jungle trip very much.

On July 4th,, we had to say goodbye to Belize and headed back home. When our flight was descending into San Jose International Airport, I watched firework displays in at least 20 to 30 different places from the air. One firework even exploded just right next to our flight. The firework was so wonderful. It drew a beautiful conclusion to our vacation.

Thanks for sharing our experiences.

Janet

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