Caye Caulker - Belize (aka paradise)

We came to Cay Caulker and met up with Chook and Kristy for a night, and then stayed and enjoyed the sun for the next three days whilst they headed down south for a stint at another coastal town. Were worried about the prices to start with (the Belize dollar being fixed at a rate ot 2:1 with the US dollar) but didn´t find it too bad. Managed to get our standard awesome accomodation overlooking the water for not much, (starting to get a little spoiled) however after two solid days of 12 hrs a day travel on 16 different chicken buses to get there, thought we were well deserving of it.

Really took it easy whilst staying here, did limited except laaaay back, read a book, eat fat lobster, cop about 15 hours of sun a day, and cool ourselves in the unbelievably turquoise waters surrounding the island. The diving here was literally three times the price of Utila, and so due to a few monetary issues, and the fact most of the sea life could be seen in about only 5m of water, decided to go on a snorkelling tour instead.

We opted to go on a sailing tour to three different sites around Caye Caulker - The Coral Garden, Shark and Ray Alley, and Hol Chan. The latter of the two sites were within a marine reserve, and had been for the last twenty years, so the amount of fish and coral reflected this. We thought we might have a chance at seeing a few rays, or maybe even a glimpe of a shark - weren´t dissapointed. At the first site we saw the standard fish and coral we had seen at Utila, but on our way back to the boat Ebs stumbled across the second shark she had seen (having seen one before but that had swam off), came over and grabbed Richo, and showed him the shark. After a brief look, we used the excuse that we had to return to the boat to leave quickly, not that we were scared shitless.

The next stop was shark ray alley, and as soon as we arrived our guide threw a bit of fish over the side (which he was not meant to do), and immediately the water next to the boat was full of activity, see the photo. We spent the next 45 minutes being passed by eagle rays, bull rays, sting rays, nurse sharks, tarpin, and schools and schools of various colourful fish. This place was incredible, a definite highlight of the trip.

Hol Chan was the final stop and just as impressive as Shark Ray Alley. It was a little deeper, and we could see the scuba divers from the surface (glad we didn´t fork out the cash to see the same stuff). Saw much of the same marine life as the site before, and Ebs had a field day playing in the bubbles emitted by the scuba divers below. Our guide was a big rasta guy who was constantly giving stick to the other companies doing the same tour at a more expensive rate, funny stuff.