Hasta La Vista to La Isla Bonita

After an extremely exhausting day on Monday, it was all that much harder to get up in time for our next dive outing.  SCUBA School Belize was to have a cab pick us up at 8:00am. And, as has been the drill every morning, we had to pack up our bags and get them in storage and check out. We were on our own for breakfast, but found that the hotel next to us served breakfast. So we enjoyed an early  morning meal on the beach.  It doesn't get any better than that. 

Breakfast on the Beach

We ate quick, and got our bags pulled together, and the manager gave us a key for the storage shed on the beach for us to keep our bags in until we were done SCUBA diving.  We returned to the front of the hotel at 8:00 to meet our cab.  He was about 15 minutes late yesterday, so when 8:05 came, then 8:10 and 8:15, I wasn't worried yet.  However as it got closer to 8:30, I thought it was worth emailing the office. They responded right away (as they always do) and apologized profusely, and said they contacted the driver who said he was on his way.  Another 15 minutes went by and still nothing.  It was no 8:45.  Just then a person came walking towards us that looked familiar.  It was Junior, the owner of SCUBA School Belize.  It took a while for this to register, as his shop is a couple miles away, and I didn't expect to see him here.  He walked up and saw us still standing there, and said "The guy has still not come with the taxi?"  Nope.  So he found the first taxi he could, put us in it, and told the driver that the office would take care of the bill.  He said they had been using a new taxi driver the last few days, but they're finding he's unreliable. 

We made our way to the office, and picked up our equipment, and headed over to their dock, which

Pre-Dive Briefing

was 2 blocks away.  At the dock, our assigned Dive Master for the day was the same one as yesterday: Jovan.  Both Jovan and Junior are extremely thorough in their pre-dive briefing and went over all the very basic safety precautions as well.  Repeatedly everyone from the dive shop asked how I was feeling today.  Though my stomach was still a bit sore from all the issues the prior day, I was otherwise good.   I had put on the antiemetic patch that Junior had given me the day before, and hoped that would alleviate any seasickness problems.  The water was choppier today than yesterday, and so they said I would be the first one into the water, and should descend right away so as to minimize chance of getting sick.

When we got to the dive sit and I suited up and jumped in, Allie was right behind me.  We both descended slowly to the bottom of the ocean at this point, which was about 45 feet deep.  Half way down I had looked up and saw Kalyssa and Jovan's feet in the water.  Now that we were at the bottom, Allie and I began looking around and could see no one anywhere.  Visibility was pretty good (though no where near what Hawaii was last year), but yet we still couldn't find anyone.   We decided to hang tight a few minutes, but my anxiety began to grow at that point of being "lost" at the bottom of the ocean.  I started debating different approaches at finding Jovan and Kalyssa.  However after several minutes they emerged from the distant water, and we continued our dive.  We had one other diver that had joined us, and she was pared up with her own master diver.  The  first dive was to Pedro's Canyon.  The same dive we did yesterday, though I will say, we must have been in a different part of it, as it looked much different.  We also must have gotten further out, as I went to 60 feet deep at the deepest point, deeper than my dive yesterday.

The Ziemanns, Jovan, and a Shark

Allie and Kalyssa

After a half hour, we returned to the surface, and headed back to the dock for our surface interval before diving again.  (In order to prevent injury from decompression sickness, times of dives must be limited based on their depth, and consecutive dives require a "break" in between to ensure the Nitrogen in your blood reabsorbs.) Fortunately this time, I was able to do so easily and keep my breakfast down.

Sea Turtle (obstructed, but in center of picture)

Allie, while having enjoyed the dives much more than she though she would, asked if she could skip the last dive, as she was dived out.  I encouraged her to push through since this was the last one of the trip.  She ultimately did, and I think was glad she did.  The second dive of the day was a "drift dive", where we continually drift in one direction and the boat has to come find us afterwards, as opposed to the first 3 dives where we stayed in one area and came back to where the boat let us down.  This dive was in an area they call "The Mermaid's Lair".  The rock canyons in this area were magnificent 15-20 foot high cliffs of coral that dropped off to a white sand beach canyons between them.  I got to a max depth of 65 feet, and as we kept going the coral dropped off below me to what looked like another 25-30 feet below me.  On this dive we saw a couple sea turtles and a moray eel, as well as several nurse sharks. 

 

 

After this dive we resurfaced to choppy oceans and began climbing into the boat. Right as we started, the other Dive Master suddenly exclaimed with great excitement:  dolphin! dolpin!  We all stuck our faces back in the water to see, but only Kalyssa was able to get a good view of it. Allie saw its shadow disappearing, and I saw nothing.  Once again I was easily able to get back in the boat without getting sick!

After the dives, we headed back to the SCUBA School office, where they had a shower we could use and towels.  We logged everything in our dive books, and they called us a cab to take us back to our hotel.  I had hoped we could take an earlier boat back to the mainland, as there was a long drive ahead of us once we got to Belize City.  However, the water taxi that we used had only 2 options, 1:00 or 4:00.  It was 1:00 when we left the SCUBA office, so we couldn't make that one.  The downside was that the 4:00 water taxi would get us to Belize City at 5:30.  It was then a 2 hour drive to San Ignacio (near the border with Guatemala), where we were staying tonight, and it gets dark about 6:30/7:00 here currently.  This meant driving in the dark which is ill-advised due to lack of streetlights, poorly maintained and lighted vehicles on the road, poor road conditions, and of course the multiple surprise speed bumps all throughout the country on the main highways.  Looked like this was our only option. 

We made the best of the extra time in San Pedro however, and grabbed a quick lunch and then we all took a nap on the beach under some palm trees in front of the Inn that we had stayed in the prior night.

Nap Time

Eventually it came time to board the boat and say goodbye to the Island that Madonna made famous in her song La Isla Bonita. Once we made it to Belize City, we still had to get in a cab to take us the one mile to our car.  As has been common place, the cab already had a bunch of people in it.  A guy holding a carton of about 3 dozen brown eggs in one hand, and a Belikin in his other (riding in the middle of the front seat) and a woman next to him, which may or may not have been his wife.  We had good conversation though for the 5 minute drive.

We then jumped in our car, and headed towards San Ignacio.  It was definitely dark, and there were a few speed bumps that snuck up on me that I was only able to drop my speed to about 25-30 mph after seeing them at the last second, but otherwise the drive was uneventful.  When we finally got to the address 2 hours later, we saw a sign for our lodge, Casa del Caballo Blanco, but couldn't find the entrance.  We ended up going down a very long bumpy dirt path, before we decided that was not it.  We went around to the other side of the property, and ended up on a gravel road that still didn't look right either, so I called the manager.  He directed me inside, and we were finally home for the evening.  This guest house, from what we could tell in the dark was absolutely beautiful.  It was on many acres of land that are landscaped very nicely, and our room is the largest we've had since we've been here. The roof was a thatched ceiling that had a peak that rose about 25 feet above our room.  Everything was spotless clean and very new looking.  I think we'll enjoy our next several days here.