Belize, 2024 day 2

So, I get COVID brain for a few weeks after I get COVID. A general fogginess where it’s difficult to focus for long and tasks take me a while longer than normal. (Unpacking here took an hour. Part of that was the excitement of being here and part C-Fog.) The fog gradually lifts over the course of a few weeks. I wanted to see how I did in the water just snorkeling before I did any diving. Scuba diving is very fun and relaxing but not a good place to be if you’re not at 100%.

I am happy to report I did great. Alert, aware and strong. I’ve been swimming all summer long and really felt the cardio fitness. We swam a ton while snorkeling, more than I would ever swim while diving, and it was easy. I’m ready to dive.

Since the resort is a little isolated the snorkel boat can right to the private dock to pick me up. (Sweet.) we headed to the marine reserve and jumped in at a spot called Shark and Ray Alley. This is part of the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world and the Alley is a break in the barrier where fishing boats used to come and clean their catch. That would attract Nurse Sharks and Sting Rays and they are still coming today. The Nurse Sharks, docile bottom feeders according to our guide, were pretty big.

The largest Nurse Shark I saw was around 7-8’ long. The Rays were beautiful and would just come swimming by. I’m still not sure why but we weren’t allowed to use fins while swimming in The Alley but we weren’t. Probably stir up too much sand? The water was shallow enough to stand in.

We made two more stops along the reef outside of the reserve. Coolest thing I saw from those two stops was a big green Moray Eel as seen in the video above.

If you watched the video to the end you saw me feeding the Tarpon. This, I guess, was part of the 1/2 day adventure package. “Feed the fish” they said. “It will be fun” they said.

You’ll notice the Tarpon engulfed my entire hand. As a puppeteer, that’s concerning. Fortunately, Tarpon don’t have teeth. Well, they do but they are like sandpaper. So my hand got sandpapered. It didn’t hurt until I used hand sanitizer to clean it. That hurt.

Matt and Lilli arrived around 3:30pm.

We hung out by the pool for a while and then headed over to the pizza place for some food and fun. We spent the rest of the evening watching the USA Men’s basketball team come back and win against Serbia in the semi-finals round. (Not really a sports guy but I’ve really enjoyed the men and women’s basketball matches. Games? Matches? Again, not a sports guy.)

A really nice day.

Thanks for following along!