First Dive in Belize

One of the reasons Rob and I chose to pick up our lives and move to Belize is because of the tremendous scuba diving. We are both divers, Rob being more experienced than me. But we both love the water and enjoy seeing the marine life that is not able to be experienced snorkeling.

Being that we have been so busy with The Snack Shack, we had yet to have the chance to dive.....until last week! We went out with Ambergris Divers.

Check this guy out.....

That's us...waiting to get on the dive boat.

Meet our new friend, Erin. She is from Boston and we met her a few months ago when she visited with her family. She came back to visit new friends this past week and we had a chance to dive with her on our day off.

We began our first dive at a site known as Mayan Princess.  If you are not familiar with diving, you normally do a two tank dive. The total "travel" time for the dives can range from 3-6 hours, depending how far you go from the dock. Luckily in San Pedro, there are many, many dive sites within a few minutes of the island.  This bode well for us! It only took us 5 minutes to get to the dive site from the dock.

That is our dive captain spearing a Lion Fish...the only
fish you can spear while having a scuba tank. They are
becoming a major problem in the waters and some will
pay money for each one that you kill.

Dive master and Erin

Rob....being Rob

Rob and myself....everything was okay!

Mayan Princess was a great spot. We hit 80 feet and then worked our way back up to the surface. One of the best things of the first dive was the nurse shark coming up and eating the lion fish right off the spear. May as well not waste anything, right! Rob was not quick enough with the camera to catch this shot. Boooo

After we finished our safety stop and got situated on the boat, we headed back to the dock for our surface interval. This is one of the nice things about being so close to shore....you can do your surface interval on land! 20-30 minutes on solid ground rather than sitting in a rocking boat, I am all up for that! We were served some delicious oranges and pineapple.....and then headed back out for our second dive of the morning.

We were told we were headed to Esmeralda. This made me smile, as I have heard so many good things about this dive site. It happened to be about 4 minutes away, so we were there in a flash.

We jumped in the water....headed down.....and the first thing I saw was our dive master with a chumstick, better known to him as a "chumsicle". It is a plastic hollow stick filled with fish....used to feed the bigger fish (aka SHARKS). Because the chumsicle was with us the entire dive, the marine life followed us. There were plenty of sharks, grouper, and eels to go around.

It was AMAZING!  Check out these pictures....

Gorgeous Grouper

Awesome picture of a moray eel

Shows how big the eels were....but this picture is funny
due to Erin's (right) reaction....this is after the eel
almost ate her finger

Not sure what Rob is doing

Love this picture of Erin and the grouper

Dive master, chumsicle, and plenty of sharks

It was an amazing day with awesome people. I know this has put an itch in both off us to get out and dive more often. I mean, we do live next to the second largest barrier reef in the world!  You have to get out and explore it...the snorkeling is one of a kind here, but the diving......is once in a lifetime.

Cannot wait to add to my dive log in the future here in San Pedro....next up.....maybe a night dive? I hear it is unimaginable.