Belize-Part I
Well, I suppose I might as well start with some stories from my trip since I have to start somewhere. I got to Belize pretty much on my birthday, planning on at least some partying even if i didnt manage to get any monkeys to dance around me while clapping coconuts. After emailing for a while with the ever-amazing Cori, I decided against my original plan of Caye Caulker, since all the partying seemed to be located on the Ambergris Caye. Since I've heard of Ambergris as the "resorty" place and definitely as the "more expensive" place, I'd set about trying to find myself a roommate as soon as I got on the boat to the key. Found this seemingly normal tall bald dude, early 30s, seemed very laid back, who wasn't even going for the diving but just to check out the keys. Find roommate__x__. What I didn't expect was that most of the hotels I'd thought of staying would be booked (this as I'm lugging around a backpack worth half my bodyweight back and forth across town). We did eventually find a very nice room, even with a view of the sea off the balcony/patio thingie. Very very swank.
And of course I forget my PADI card at home. Let alone the fact that I'd never even sent out the advanced paper version to get the new card since oh, two years ago (they wanted a head shot, and what am i, an actress to have head shots lying around? then of course i did get some passport photos for the residency applications, but by then i'd forgotten all about the silly piece of paper, well, it WAS two years later after all). So anyway, I signed up for my dives and went booking over to the internet place to get a "replacement" card for my "lost" open water card (well, at least it gave me a number that the diveshop could look up).
Lucky me, I get to go to the famous Blue Hole for my first dive after not
having been in the water for two years. And boy, do I know I'm going to have issues equalizing. But they have a trip going and so I pretty much need to go, since who knows when their next Blue hole trip will be. So I drag my sorry sleepy ass out of bed at 5am (and this is 5am central time so it's even earlier!!) and spend the next 2 hours on the boat getting my internal organs made into a smoothie by the boat while my sitting bones try to make it out through the skin every time the boat comes down hard. We finally get there.... and I get in the water early, knowing it'll take me a while to go down.... and I get to about 45 feet and can't seem to equalize past that. I watch pretty much everybody else go down as i try to force my ears to pop, but instead they just hurt and make me go up again. Finally, one of the divemasters shows up and tells me that they dont have the time to wait for me since it's such a deep dive and to go back to the boat. I almost cried. I tried snorkelling with my fancy oxygen tank but the circle reef is really shallow and not all that to see, so a basically spent the dive sitting on the boat burning my nose (all 15 minutes of it, since it WAS a 120foot+ dive). I did get to go on the other two dives on the way back, but between the 17 people that went, so much sand got kicked up, the visibility went to squat. I did get to see a bunch of flying fish on the trip back as well as on the next day's trip to Tenriffe (again, the two hour pounding of sitting bones... it hurt to sit down for the next couple of days). Surprisingly, the dives I enjoyed the most were the dives that were the closest and the cheapest--the reef right along Ambergris. You name it, I saw it (turtles, sharks, barracuda, tons of pretty fishies, eels, rays etc. I took tons of pictures on my handy dandy 50 ft disposable which I've yet to develop). I didn't see sea horses, but rumor has it they're around mangroves, so maybe next time.
Well, I suppose I might as well start with some stories from my trip since I have to start somewhere. I got to Belize pretty much on my birthday, planning on at least some partying even if i didnt manage to get any monkeys to dance around me while clapping coconuts. After emailing for a while with the ever-amazing Cori, I decided against my original plan of Caye Caulker, since all the partying seemed to be located on the Ambergris Caye. Since I've heard of Ambergris as the "resorty" place and definitely as the "more expensive" place, I'd set about trying to find myself a roommate as soon as I got on the boat to the key. Found this seemingly normal tall bald dude, early 30s, seemed very laid back, who wasn't even going for the diving but just to check out the keys. Find roommate__x__. What I didn't expect was that most of the hotels I'd thought of staying would be booked (this as I'm lugging around a backpack worth half my bodyweight back and forth across town). We did eventually find a very nice room, even with a view of the sea off the balcony/patio thingie. Very very swank.
And of course I forget my PADI card at home. Let alone the fact that I'd never even sent out the advanced paper version to get the new card since oh, two years ago (they wanted a head shot, and what am i, an actress to have head shots lying around? then of course i did get some passport photos for the residency applications, but by then i'd forgotten all about the silly piece of paper, well, it WAS two years later after all). So anyway, I signed up for my dives and went booking over to the internet place to get a "replacement" card for my "lost" open water card (well, at least it gave me a number that the diveshop could look up).
Lucky me, I get to go to the famous Blue Hole for my first dive after not
having been in the water for two years. And boy, do I know I'm going to have issues equalizing. But they have a trip going and so I pretty much need to go, since who knows when their next Blue hole trip will be. So I drag my sorry sleepy ass out of bed at 5am (and this is 5am central time so it's even earlier!!) and spend the next 2 hours on the boat getting my internal organs made into a smoothie by the boat while my sitting bones try to make it out through the skin every time the boat comes down hard. We finally get there.... and I get in the water early, knowing it'll take me a while to go down.... and I get to about 45 feet and can't seem to equalize past that. I watch pretty much everybody else go down as i try to force my ears to pop, but instead they just hurt and make me go up again. Finally, one of the divemasters shows up and tells me that they dont have the time to wait for me since it's such a deep dive and to go back to the boat. I almost cried. I tried snorkelling with my fancy oxygen tank but the circle reef is really shallow and not all that to see, so a basically spent the dive sitting on the boat burning my nose (all 15 minutes of it, since it WAS a 120foot+ dive). I did get to go on the other two dives on the way back, but between the 17 people that went, so much sand got kicked up, the visibility went to squat. I did get to see a bunch of flying fish on the trip back as well as on the next day's trip to Tenriffe (again, the two hour pounding of sitting bones... it hurt to sit down for the next couple of days). Surprisingly, the dives I enjoyed the most were the dives that were the closest and the cheapest--the reef right along Ambergris. You name it, I saw it (turtles, sharks, barracuda, tons of pretty fishies, eels, rays etc. I took tons of pictures on my handy dandy 50 ft disposable which I've yet to develop). I didn't see sea horses, but rumor has it they're around mangroves, so maybe next time.
posted by Irene @ 1:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home