Touristy Activities

After we got off of the atoll, we came to our hotel (and I use that term loosely) about 15 miles outside of Belize City.  On Sunday, we took part in our first touristy activities ever on vacation.  We did zip lining and cave tubing.  It took about an hour + to get to the place because the last little 5 mile job was the most washed out bumpy road we've been on so far.  We did zip lining first.  They had a 'bunny hill' for us to start with to make sure we could really handle it.  Then we climbed up higher in the rain forest to zip line.  They showed us some interesting parts of the rain forest, like the tree they used to use to make chicklets gum and a vine that they use the bark for all spice.  We had lunch at this little area and then we went cave tubing.  We started at the end and had to walk all the way to the beginning to start tubing.  The walk through the rain forest was very educational again.  We saw an old termite home, trees that had thorns on the bark, a tree whose sap is little poison ivy, a cashew tree that actually has cashew fruits (and that if you eat the actually nut it makes your lips go numb and turn red-they actually take the cashew nut out of the whole nut...if that makes any sense).  When we got in the water, we floated on our tubs through the cave and saw some bats and a cenote.  It was a great day!  We are sitting at breakfast now all packed and ready to fly home.

Last Day of Diving

We did three dives again today and it was actually sunny for most of the day.  We're all a little red from it, so it probably is better that we didn't have sun all week.  We would be lobsters otherwise!  We saw our very first scorpian fish down here in Belize.  We also saw a balloonfish, which is a type of puffer.  We saw a porcupine fish the other day, which is another type of puffer.  Both were fairly skiddish, but we got a couple ok pics of the balloonfish.  We saw manatee on our way back to the lodge after our dives.  Really awesome!  They were mostly underwater and it was more of an idea of the sight then an actually sight of the manatee.  Now we're trying to get everything dry so that we can be ready to go tomorrow when the boat leaves at 7:30.  It will be interesting to see how all 140 pounds of stuff we have will fit into our bags with the 100 pound limit!

Great Day!

Well we still haven't had that day of sunny 80+ degree weather yet, but it was still a great day.  We saw lots of turtles and Eagle Rays and eels on our dives.  We even saw some dolphins swimming around as we came back to the resort.  They were swimming with a baby.  It was super cool!  We saw a green moray eel, something we've seen many times before, but I have never been as nervous about one as I was today.  It was free swimming around on the dive.  It kept coming after the divers instead of avoiding us.  I have never seen anything like it.  I asked the divemaster about its behavior when we came up and he said the eel was waiting for us to feed it.  The divemaster catches lion fish (which are an invasive species) and feed it to the eel.  I decided that although it was out and about for taking pictures, it wasn't worth it because we have enough pictures of green moray eels!

Little by little the weather is getting nicer

Still not what I would consider a typical day down here, but we definitely saw more sunshine again today.  We did three dives today and then a night dive.  We saw more turtle and moray eels today.  We saw an eagle ray swim by at a distance...always very cool!  Our night dive was just a little out from the resort in VERY shallow water.  It was on some smaller coral heads with lots of white sandy bottom between.  We didn't see as much as we typically do at night because of this.  It was also hard to stay underwater and look around because we were in less than 10 feet of water and getting a major surge pushing us around.  We did see 2 octopus but didn't get any great pictures of them.  Tomorrow we are hoping for great weather so we can go to the Blue Hole.  Otherwise I don't think it is going to happen.

Finally able to get in 3 dives

On Tuesday we finally got to get all 3 of our dives in during the day.  It wasn't that great of weather but we did briefly see the sun!  We saw small baby turtle tucked up along a wall reef.  There was some really big crabs that we usually only see on night dives that we saw today as well.  Lobster season just opened down here, but we've still seen a few on the reefs.  Also saw fisherman throwing them in their boat though...
One of the gentlemen that we're diving with we've learned is the reason people from other countries think Americans are obnoxious.  I'm sure he is going to lose a finger on one of these dives.  He wiggles it at all the eels, crabs, and barracuda.  I'm not sure what his purpose is in doing it but the only one I can think of is to have something nibble on it.  He is kind of like driving by an accident on the highway where you don't want to look but you can't help yourself.

Tropical Depression

Well we found out it wasn't just bad weather yesterday.  It was actually a tropical depression.  We had wind gusts 50mph yesterday.  It is still cloudy and windy today but MUCH more calm than yesterday.  We will probably have to dive on the west side of the island because it won't be as choppy as the east side that we're on.  I'm afraid the water is going to be really merky from all the sand that the storm kicked up underwater yesterday.  We will just have to shoot picture very close up-no long distance shots of bigger fish.  At least we'll get to dive today though since we didn't do any of it yesterday.

Weather

Well we got up this morning and it looked similar to yesterday.  They thought we could get out at 8am and get one dive in.  Before 8, the wind started blowing so hard and sending rain horizontally that we didn't even get out today.  The wind just hasn't stopped all morning.  There are white caps outside of the rock barrier they have set up to protect the island.  I'm not sure if this will blow over and we'll get any diving in today.  Bummer.  Ryan is so antsy, he doesn't know what to do with himself.  It's hard to even be out of our room because the rain is blowing under our roof and hitting our sliding door about halfway up.