Snorkelling Trip

As I hadn’t been able to go on the snorkelling trip on Friday, I was scheduled to go on the trip today instead. I tried on the snorkelling gear at 8:45am. As I have prescription goggles, I had to improvise to create a “prescription snorkelling mask”. I took my goggles apart and put each side into the mask which worked perfectly. Unfortunately, my camera isn’t waterproof and so I couldn’t really take any good pictures!

We left at about 9:30am. There were 5 of us along with the guide and his helper. The other 4 were all Israelis in a group together.

The guide was really good. He knew about the sea life very well and was very good at making sure we were at the right place at the right time.

As soon as we left Bella’s Backpackers, there was a place where lots of big fish were present. We watched them jumping out of the water as he fed them.

The first stop we made was at a place where we would see “Loggerhead turtles”. At each stop, we put on our snorkelling gear and jumped into the water to swim with the sea life. The place we stopped at was where some fishermen were cleaning what they had caught earlier in the morning – they were washing the lobsters and this was drawing the loggerhead turtles to them. We were lucky that we got there at the time we did because about 15 – 20 minutes later, the boats cleaning the lobsters left and the loggerhead turtles disappeared with them.

At the next stop we made, we saw two manatees. These are very rare creatures which are endangered and we were lucky enough to see a male and a female resting and then swimming around. We followed them for a while and watched them as they rested on the sea bed again.

Sharks and stingrays was the next stop!! The sharks were “nurse sharks” – they were small sharks which happily swum around with us! When the guide fed them they all leapt to the food and we followed them. The guide even held one of them so that we could pet the sharks! We were also able to touch the stingrays.

Our penultimate stop was at a large area where the guide took us around lots of corals and showed us lots of different types of fish. He explained what they all were and how some were protected fish which could not be caught.

Our final stop was where we were left to swim around as we wanted. A few of us had opted for “spear fishing” – where you get a spear gun and try to follow a fish and shoot it for dinner!

This was actually very difficult – and once you had shot the spear you had to fetch the spear from the bottom where it fell. None of us were able to actually catch anything but it was good fun trying nonetheless!! Even the guide struggled, but was able to catch one lobster.

We returned to the hostel at about 4:30pm. Soon after, I met with a girl who I had met travelling from Antigua to Lake Atitlan. She was planning to travel to the South of Belize just like me. We had decided that we would travel together.

At night, I spent some time with others at Bella’s Backpackers and we walked to the split where some people decided to go swimming in the middle of the night!