Going Deep
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2004
1
13
17
Trip End
Dec 23, 2004
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Cay Caulker, Belize
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
But it was a fun trip. From Belize City we took a water taxi to Cay Caulker, a little island off the coast with a very Caribbean feel. Every other man has a mane of dreadlocks, and every other woman wants to braid your hair. The sea and the little sandy cays are beautiful--the blues seemed bluer and the greens seemed greener than anywhere else Iīve been.
Early Saturday morning we motored two hours out to the Blue Hole, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was once an underwater cave, then the cieling collapsed, leaving a deep (400-foot) hole surrounded by an atoll in the middle of the ocean. It wasnīt accessible by boat until Jacques Costeau used copious quantities of dynamite to blast a passage through the atoll. Costeau doesnīt seem to have the best reputation around here.
It was my Second Deep Dive ever, and though I hate to admit it, thereīs something exhilerating about going deep. Light fades away, turquoise turns to midnight, and the regulator tightens up a bit just to remind you where you are. At points, you have no reference but the depth guage and the divers floating silently down around you. We glided down past enormous stalagtites, three-foot Grouper, and two Eagle rays swimming side by side. At 135 feet we hovered, staring down at the endless tunnel of blue beneath us. The profile didnīt give us much time, and we had already ascended to 80 or 90 feet when the sharks came in. This is the draw of the Blue Hole, and the reason I had come: Big Freaking Sharks. Iīm told they were Black-Tipped Reef Sharks plus, possibly, some Nurse and/or Bull sharks. At the time, all I knew or cared about was that they were sharks, they were bigger than me, and they were slithering in and out of my field of vision. At our safety stop, six of them came near or up over the lip of the shelf and swam around beneath us. Very, very cool.
Once we had all surfaced and boarded the boat, the captain chummed the water so we could watch a Shark Show at the surface. Personally, I think itīs a really poor idea to show the sharks a bunch of divers, then show them bloody meat, and see how long it takes them to make the connection. It seemed especially odd since we had just seen them underwater, which was much cooler than seeing them thrashing at the surface.
After Blue Hole we had two more dives, at Half Moon Cay and "The Aquarium." We saw more huge Grouper, several turtles (including a Hawksbill), lots of soft coral, some yellow-headed jawfish, two tarpin, six barracuda, and some Fire coral, which, by the way, feels just like a jellyfish.
We had planned on going big on Saturday night, but after a 6am start and three dives, all but one of us (there were 5 by then) called it a night at 9:30. Pathetic! I think Iīm unwillingly becoming a morning person. The trip back to Mexico was a little crazy, since our bus to Chetumal decided to leave us at the border instead of going all the way in. Anyway, we made it back, exhausted but in one piece. I think that will be my only foray into Belize, at least for now.
