Belize, 2024, day 4

Today we finally went scuba diving! And it was incredible.

I was concerned they weren’t going to take Matt since he hasn’t been diving for some time but his pool refresher course got him in easily. For me they weren’t having it. I thought my last dive was around 3 years ago and they require a refresher if it’s been that long.(I looked at my calendar when I got home. It’s only been since March of 2022.) I accepted it and apologied to Matt. I made one more attempt mentioning quietly that I’ve been diving for 25+ years and my last dive was an advanced dive. (See Maui 2022 Blog.)

The dive master cam over and quizzed me a bit and could see I knew what I was doing. He said we were good to go. YAY!!

It was a reasonable sized group for this boat. 8 divers plus the guides and the crew. Everyone was super friendly.

We headed out to the Esmeralda Dive Site off of San Pedro. The barrier reef acts as a…barrier…so the water inside is quite calm. We headed outside of the reef where the waves were sometimes 8-9’ high. I don’t get motion sickness, fortunately.

The first dive was great. We went down 86’ and swam around what the guides were calling finger coral formations. Basically, mountains of coral fingering out and sand space in between that kind of looks like your hand spread out on a table. Only…bigger.

The second dive was amazing. There were times I couldn’t figure out where to point my camera.

That grouper was huge. Probably the size of my torso. Matt liked his expression and I thought he should have a cigar hanging out the corner of its mouth.

At the end of the 2nd dive a remora (the kind of fish that attaches to sharks) got friendly with us, trying to attach to my chest.

Three feet long? Maybe longer. Really sharp looking teeth and a sneaker tread on the top of its head. Neat experience.

Here’s a bunch of the things we saw including a really big reef shark and nurse sharks that seemed like they just wanted to swim around with us.

The second dive was certainly in my top 5 diving experiences.

In between the two dives we stopped at San Pedro for our surface interval. Matt and I walked around a bit and bought a couple of trinkets and chilled. I’m glad we didn’t stay in San Pedro. Too many people. Too gritty. Too touristy for me.

We made it back to the room around 1:30pm and I ordered a room service pizza so I could watch the men’s Olympic basketball gold match. Then it was nap time. Diving puts a lot of nitrogen in your blood and that makes me tired. Scuba naps are the best.

We went to dinner at the Lotus Restaurant here at BluZen and I had a delicious batch of fish and chips. I booked more diving for tomorrow so I went to bed kind of early.

Diving was one of my big goals for this trip. Mission accomplished. More tomorrow.

Thanks for following along!