Caye Caulker

For the last 4 days of our trip, we stayed on an island named Caye Caulker, in a resort called Ramon's Village.  In order to get to the island, we boarded a 7 passenger plane.  The airport was small, they took our baggage from our hands and loaded the plane immediately.  When all the passengers were there, we loaded the plane and left- 30 minutes early.  This first picture tells how I felt before we took off, I was a little nervous to say the least.

The flight to the island was actually really fun.  It was a low flying plane (relatively) and we saw the beautiful ocean below us.

Once we arrived on the island, we found that the primary means of transportation for everyone was golf carts.  We got settled into our room and then rented a golf cart to explore the island.  While we were exploring, we saw one of the police stations:

The primary reason that people visit Belize is to go diving.  There is a large reef right off the shore that is easy to get to and really great for scuba diving, so lots of people go there and go out several times a day to dive.  In fact, our resort was a special dive resort and there were diving boats going out all of the time.  This is the view of the beach and ocean.  Honestly, the beach and water had a ton of seaweed, so it wasn't so fun to go swimming.  The resort employed 4 men full time to remove the sea weed, but they mostly just moved it to a different part of the shore.

View of our lodge from the beach.

Part of our stay was meals at the resort restaurant.  They had some interesting meals- most were realy great, but there were a couple that were only so/so.  This was my shrimp dinner.

We went out one day to go snorkeling in Hol Chan Reef- which is a protected part of the ocean.  The reef is so shallow there, you had to be careful not to touch it with your feet as you swam over it.  We saw lots of colorful fish and even a sea turtle.  Then we went to another part of the reef just a little bit away that was called shark ray alley.  It is a part of the reef where there is a break in the reef and so boats can cross over the reef to the ocean.  In the past, a lot of fishermen would cross over and then drop their fish guts and extra bait into the ocean in this area.  They found that the sharks and rays in this area became used to the free food and so they congregated in the area.  They outlawed the dumping in this area, but then they realized that the fish were used to it, so they allow tour boats to go there and feed the sharks. When the sand sharks hear the boat's motors coming, they swim up to the boat and swarm the boat.  It was crazy how many sharks would come up to the boat. You could jump out and swim with them- which was super cool.

While we were out riding around the first day, we saw some people we had met when we were staying in the jungle.  He arranged with them to share a fishing boat charter, so on Friday morning, they went out deep sea fishing.  I get boat sick, so I opted to stay in.  I went shopping around the little town.  This is what the streets look like.  They are narrow and lined with golf carts.  Most of the properties are a little run down.  All the grocery stores are owned by Chinese immigrants.

It was fun.  I think overall, we liked the jungle better than the beach, but the beach was still really fun.  On the way back we got to the airport a little early, so I made sure to be first in line.  Then I got to ride in the front seat of the plane.  It was an amazing experience!