Belize Barrier Reef
May 2001
Our honeymoon. The choice? Diamond engagement ring or sailing/diving trip in Belize? Both cost about the same amount of money, but who really wants an ancient compressed swamp plant, mined by a slave to fund a genocidal war in Africa, on their finger, anyway?
So, we went down to Belize for three weeks, and found a Mayan lobster fishing boat during the off season, owned by a medicine man called The Snake Man, and sailed by Rosa, a Mayan fisherman. The crew was Nuncio, a young Garifuna guy. It seems that he had gotten Rosa’s daughter pregnant, and was an aspiring (read: unpaid) soccer player, so was working on the boat to support his new family. He couldn’t swim, which you might think would be a good skill to have if you are working on a boat. The boat was fairly small and we slept in the lobster hold on pieces of foam. The bathroom was a 5 gallon bucket. And the first night, we anchored close to shore because of storms, and were eaten alive by mosquitoes, but once out on the reef and the islands, there were no bugs.
We sailed and snorkeled along the barrier reef, visiting Ambergris Caye, Caye Caulker, the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, and some of the other smaller cayes. We ate fresh seafood from the ocean and fresh fruit from the islands. Sometimes Rosa would put us ashore on a small island to spend the night.
Eventually they dropped us off in the coastal town of Placencia, where we stayed on our own private island with a bungalow for a week. At the end of the trip, we then went SCUBA diving off the Silk Cayes, Laughing Bird Caye, Pompion Canyons, and the Pompion Wall. We also spent a little time along the coast, at Monkey River Town, and on the Monkey River.
