Belize Day 4

This was it - the Big Day - we were going to dive the Blue Hole in Belize. Because deep dives are the first dives for any given day, that was our first stop. First, we had to get out there.

It was about a three hour boat ride. After the choppy weather on the first day, none of us were looking forward to three hours in a boat in open seas. We were fortunate however, in that the water was calm, and while it was a long ride, it was mostly uneventful.

I say mostly because we did see dolphins playing in the water, though they scattered when we circled to observe them. We saw some flying fish, and far in the distance, a water spout. Out at sea, we could stare for miles and miles without seeing anything, until a new island or would appear.

Most of the ride though, we caught up on sleep, listened to iPods, chatted with each other, or checked out gear.

FInally, we arrived. The only sign was that the boat slowed as the captain threaded his way through the opening of the reef around the hole itself. I tried to make out the hole, but didn't quite have the elevation. Photos I took look just like ocean - flat and endless, except for a boat of snorkelers across the way.

We went over the dive plan and our groups, then geared up and splashed in. I checked the computer - it was on air and working fine. 

We descended to about thirty feet, cruising along a relatively shallow edge until we came to the drop. The Blue Hole drops into the ocean and gets wider the deeper you go. Looking out, we truly were staring into the abyss. It bottoms out at over four hundred feet, deeper than any of us could safely go. We swam forward gradually, descending as we went, into the darkness.

As discussed, around ninety feet of depth, we began to inflate our buoyancy compensators to slow our descent. I leveled out, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Before me was a large hole in the wall, with columns in front of it, like a naturally carved temple. Other divers swam around. I turned to find my dive buddy - there he was, above me. In the distance, a pack of reef sharks swam by.

I swam closer to the columns, and watched my depth. About a hundred and thirty-five feet, nearly twice any depth I been to prior to the previous day's test dive. I only had a few minutes before I had to ascend. I slowed down in order to better appreciate the world around me. 

Mostly, that was, "holy cow I'm nearly a hundred and forty feet below the surface of the ocean". There were some fish, but not many. I marveled at the geology we were swimming in - formed thousands of years ago, before the ocean levels rose, this was a dry cave that collapsed. Well before we were recognizably human, centuries before humans had anything approaching a civilization, these caves had already gone through enormous shifts in geology.

There was a beeping sound. I looked at my computer. I only have five minutes left at this depth. I began my ascent. Simply moving up ten feet gave me three more minutes. I found my dive buddy, and we stayed together, gradually ascending, working our way back to the shelf.

On the surface, when I reviewed my log in the compute,r my max depth was a hundred and forty-two feet. I doubt I'll be doing that again any time soon.

After such a dive, and a long ride out, we needed a lengthy surface interval, so we made for an island to have lunch at. It was a nature preserve, home to several species of migratory bird, as well as lizards and hermit crabs. 

After lunch, we walked along a path, seeing iguanas, hermit crabs, and in the sky, heron and egrets (or, one or the other,memory fails). We were on an enlarged sandy bank pretending to be an island, the accumulation of coral, ground into sand, surrounded by ocean.

We went out for two more dives, which were arguably the best dives of the trip. They were shallow, and we saw a wide variety of creatures, flora and fauna. Barracuda, sharks, rays, fish, tons of fish; coral of all kinds, and sea snakes receding into the sand like retracting grass.

When we got back, the long ride seemed negligible. We cleaned up and went out for drinks and dinner. For some of us, it was the last day of diving. We had another day in paradise, sans diving, before returning to our regular lives. Pina Colada, Mojitos, plain cerveza, and plenty of food, and we crashed out, dreaming of fish.