Belize it or not: Diving the Blue Hole

by Iva Skoch on

Greetings from Belize.

Yesterday, I made one of my life-long dreams come true. I dove the Great Blue Hole, a submarine cave about 45 miles off the coast of Belize. They say after diving it, divers are usually either utterly disappointed or absolutely blown away. I found it absolutely amazing.

The Great Blue Hole is circular, over 1,000 feet (330 meters) across and 400 feet (120 meters) deep. It was formed as a limestone cave system during the last ice age. As the ocean began to rise again, the caves flooded, and the roof collapsed.

The trip

To get to the Blue Hole, we booked a diving with the operator Aqua Dives Belize. They offer a $199 per person special now, which was the cheapest deal going, from what I could see. It includes the boat trip out there, breakfast, lunch (on a tiny caye on the same atoll) plus yummy rum punch (after diving), purified drinking water, 3 tanks and weight belts.

(We’d tried Ambergris Divers earlier, and found their staff friendly and competent, but we preferred Aqua Dives and their newer equipment.)

You start out at 5:30am, and make a 3-hour boat ride from Ambergris Caye to Lighthouse Reef. After a total of three dives, they get you back at 5:30pm.

The trip to the Lighthouse Reef, which the Blue Hole is a part of, goes through some rough waters. People were getting sick on the boat, which is always the “fun” part about diving. Isn’t that funny that there is always that one girl who throws up on the way to the reef. (That girl is typically me, but it wasn’t yesterday. I took half a Dramamine, which is not a great idea before diving since it makes you drowsy, but I survived!)

[Here is a question for you. Why is it always girls who get seasick? You never see guys throwing up from fishing boats.]

The diving

We parked the boat right in the middle of the Blue Hole. Eight divers with two instructors (one in the front, one in the back) descended with us to the depths of 140 ft (45 meters). As you descend, you see great stalactites which cover the cave. You don’t see a lot of fish. In fact, we only had couple of solitary bull sharks swimming with us, which was way cool.

The sheer drama of swimming among the stalactites makes it almost a religious experience. I caught myself forgetting I was under water. Some people might see the “lack of fish” as boring, but I found it incredible. Never saw anything like that in my life.

This was the deepest dive I have ever done. I, naturally, found the breathing much harder than breathing at, say, 80 feet. The air is denser and you feel like you have to breathe harder.

Since it is a pretty deep dive, I’d heard some people experience nitrogen narcosis, which–using the dive master’s term–means they get a “little crazy.” They have had people taking their masks off at that depths, taking their regulator out of their mouths, wanting to go deeper and deeper, and cut themselves from hugging the stalactites. Obviously, going to the full depth of 400 ft is not possible, but that apparently doesn’t prevent some people from trying. Several people have died diving the Blue Hole (I knew of one of them).

You’re only in the water for about 25 minutes, and down at 130-140 feet for about 8 minutes (due to the depth), but every second was worth it. A sandy ledge slopes down from near the surface, down to about 50 ft. Then, it’s straight down a vertical wall to about 110 ft. Then, you’re in the cave. You swim in and around stalactites that are easily 3 ft or more in diameter, and underneath the old cave’s “ceiling.”

Below you, at about 170 ft, you can see another sandy ledge. It looks so close that you could reach out with your leg and touch it. It’s like you’re swimming in a cathedral, with the stalactites forming statues hanging from the arched ceiling.

It’s magic how you can watch the bubbles ascend the walls, and see the light and wall above you. You can see tiny creatures living on the walls and stalactites. A diving light is not necessary due to the clarity and complete lack of current.

Recommendations

I thought the dive masters did a great job preparing everyone for the dive, repeating all the underwater hand gestures, safety instructions, etc. I was surprised that me and my buddy were the most experienced divers on board, having been certified for only 6 years. The rest of the divers all had less than two years of diving experience. Those are some gutsy people. I don’t think I would have gone down 140 ft with that little experience.

I actually would not recommend the dive to beginners. Not because it’s that difficult (although the depth makes it more technical), but because I don’t think as a beginner, you quite appreciate how special the Blue Hole is. As a beginner, all you want to see is big and colorful stuff – fish and corals. Plus, you should be very relaxed in order to really get the most of it. As an experienced diver, you have seen all those things that beginners want to see– sharks, turtles, eel, lobsters — and seeing something as stark as the Blue Hole is actually quite powerful.

Belize it or not: Ways to use a golf cart

by Iva Skoch on

Greetings from Belize!

In San Pedro, “the big town” on the Belize island of Ambergris Caye, the preferred form of transportation is a golf cart. (Most of the roads are not paved and the main inhabited part of the island is only a few miles long.)

Although golf carts don’t have seat belts, there are some rules associated with using these things.

Most importantly, the first two weeks of each month, you are supposed to park them on the right side of the road. The second part of each month, they should be parked on the left side. It’s only fair to those who live on those streets, I guess.

So far, I have seen a golf cart used as a vehicle for:

  • grocery shopping
  • place to conduct cell phone calls while driving (with a toddler or two on one’s lap)
  • doing “donuts” in sand
  • place for local youngsters to kiss
  • a way to distribute “sticky green” to those interested
  • and, of course, preferred form of transportation for lazy tourists who can’t walk a full mile into town.

Belize it or not: The World Soymilk Development Index

by Iva Skoch on

Greetings from Belize!

Something just dawned on me today while walking through “downtown” San Pedro, Belize: you can judge the “development” of an area by whether or not it has soymilk readily available in grocery stores. Sure, I’m waiting for a flurry of criticism on this post, but hear my logic first.

I’m not lactose intolerant, but a lot of my friends are. Seems like everyday, I hear about someone, or their child, being unable to drink milk.

The generally accepted idea is that early Europeans developed enzymes to digest cows milk, which helped get them through tough northern winters. Much of the world doesn’t have this ability. Why? They don’t drink cows milk. Babies drink mother’s milk, and there it ends most everywhere.

In the West, you see milk everywhere there’s refrigeration. And most people drink at least some. But now, it seems, more and more Westerners are developing allergies, and developing intolerance to milk. So, they switch to soymilk…if they can afford it.

And where did it all start? Probably China, where soy has been widely used for many centuries…but not generally as a soymilk drink. From what I can find, the first soymilk factory was founded in Paris around the turn of the last century by someone of Chinese origin, and some production followed in the U.S. and elsewhere. It took off in Hong Kong too, where it beat out Coke for a while.

But the big production of soymilk didn’t come until the 1990s, and it seemed to start only in the most affluent, urban areas. (A ten-fold increase occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.) Where did I see it first? San Francisco, then Seattle and Portland, then Manhattan. It followed in most other cities in the U.S., from what I can tell. (You want to test me? Ask for it in every Starbucks outside major metro areas.)

Hence my “soymilk development index”: where you have Westerners with the most money to burn and increasingly discerning tastes, you’ll find soymilk.

Can you find it on Ambergris Caye (the most touristed area in Belize)? You bet, two brands.

Belize it or not: The shark petting zoo

by Iva Skoch on

Hello from Belize! What a beautiful little country this is.

I have wanted to come here forever, being a diver and all. As you probably know, the Belize Barrier Reef (stretching from Yucatan all the way to the coast of Guatemala) is the second largest reef in the world, after the Great Barrier Reef.

We took our first dive trip today, right off the Ambergris Caye island. It was just a shallow dive with a bunch of snorkelers who desperately wanted to “see some sharks.” This part of the reef is know for its abundance of nurse sharks, pretty harmless types of sharks who eat by suction (hence the name). Still, they are sharks, aka beautiful creatures.

The dive instructor threw in some bait (an enormous fish head) and a few minutes later, a bunch of sharks (I saw five, the largest at least two meters long) and sting rays (the largest was over a meter across) came by for the feast. It was an incredible sight.

I don’t know how I feel about the whole “petting the shark and sting ray” aspect of the whole thing. The instructors caught a couple of the sharks by the fin and let everyone in the group touch them. Same with the sting rays. I felt a little bad for them. I can’t be good for them to have a hundred people a day touch them, right?