We had no difficulty getting up early since we both got another solid 8+ hours of sleep. We rode the golf cart down to the end of our street to get some pastries at a coffee shop and got ready to go snorkeling. Pickup was not offered, so we had to drive about 12 minutes toward town to Ramon’s Dive shop, attached to a fairly expansive hotel. Nicole says it goes for over $400 a night, which is perhaps why it wasn’t on our radar. In either case, we knew it wasn’t going to be the most relaxed affair when there were more than 50 people waiting around at the dock.
Some of them were distributed to other boats, but ours still had probably around 30 people. This was a lot different from Palau when we had maybe 8. We were scheduled to make two stops — one in the famed “Shark Ray Alley,” and another at the Hol Chan Marine Reserve. We were supposed to go to the reserve first, but it was too crowded, so we went to Shark Ray Alley.
We were still very much not by ourselves. There were at least five or six other boats in the immediate vicinity. One of the guides was giving me crap about not wanting to take fins. In my opinion, fins in these situations just end up kicking someone or getting in the way. After all, we weren’t going anywhere, we were just jumping off the boat and waiting. Either way, Shark Ray Alley came to be because fishermen used to clean their fish off in this passage before coming back to port. Nurse sharks, who have a reputation for being lazy, would be waiting with anticipation to take the scraps. The sound of a boat engine is supposedly enough to entice the sharks to the area.
As 25 of us crowded into the water, occasionally I could see a shark, but I would quickly lose it behind a bunch of human flippers. After a few minutes, a few gathered right below me, so I was able to see them a bit closer uninhibited until everyone started drifting into me. I was elbowed, kicked, and at one point a girl dove down and her head made hard contact with my chin as she came back up. Fantastic. Everyone was on top of me like we were starting an Ironman triathlon. I’m surprised the sharks lingered as long as they did. If I were them, I would have been quite annoyed. As the sharks lost interest, they dispersed. Evidently, the boats were also chumming the waters, which I don’t love. The practice is controversial and no doubt interrupts the shark’s natural feeding habits. At this point, though, they are probably so used to getting their food this way, they don’t know anything different.
After the sharks, we went to the Hol Chan Reserve, where we were broken up into smaller groups since this one would be an out-and-back snorkel. Nicole elected to stay on the boat since such things make her uncomfortable. I got tossed into a group with a family that was arguing with each other. Lovely. The 45 minute snorkel gave me such exciting vistas as human flippers, human bottoms, and occasionally a confused fish. Despite dispersing into groups, it was impossible to avoid the other groups from the numerous boats. We would cross over each other awkwardly, get kicked and bumped, and get boxed into a narrow alleyway between corals. Everyone seemed oblivious to their own surroundings. It was without doubt the most pointless snorkel excursion I have ever taken part in.
On the plus side, it was short. We were back at the dock around 11am and carted our way back to Mahogany Bay after a quick stop to get gas and another to get some provisions at the market. We had an improvised lunch of digestive cookies and a bar of Belizean chocolate. That’s about as good of a lunch that one can expect to get around here anyway.
It was quite hot in our room despite the air conditioner running full blast. I think the sun coming in through the windows was just too much for it to handle. The heat felt extreme. Because of this, we had to leave our room for someplace cooler. We went to the main lobby area and sat outside because at least they had some big ceiling fans that seemed to do a better job keeping us cool. I worked on some Italian. Nicole read her book. It was a lazy Wednesday afternoon. To avoid the dinner fiasco of the last few nights, we ordered a 4:59pm “lunch” at the Hilton’s pool (not to be confused with the pool bar that charges $30 for bad sandwiches). 5:00 is when the menu changes over to dinner and you can only order things like steak. I had fish tacos and Nicole had a quesadilla. Neither of these items are available after 5. That would be too crazy!
We watched the sun disappear behind a layer of haze as we sat on a swinging bench and reminisced about our brief sojourn to Belize. It shouldn’t come as any surprise given the time of year, but all we see are tourists everywhere. I think it’s hard to avoid that around spring break unless we had gone to Yellowknife, NT, Canada, where it’s currently 21º (feels like 7º).
We didn’t do much today beyond the morning snorkel, but perhaps we just needed to spend the afternoon and evening sitting around and doing nothing. It’s been a long time since we’ve done that, so I suppose it has been a success in that regard. Tomorrow we head back to Los Angeles, or we think so anyway. There aren’t a huge number of seats on Alaska, and there physically aren’t many seats on a Cessna Caravan to begin with, so anything could happen.
passports & pepto bismol 