aerial view of the reef
The barrier reef off of Ambergris Caye is the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere and second largest reef in the world. The reef of course, is full of marine life and spectacular formations making it one of the best dive spots. However the reef also serves the purpose of keeping the Island from eroding away! From the air the reef can be observed by noticing a thin white line (the surf) dividing the two distinct colors of the water. Inside the reef (meaning between the Island and the reef) the water is shallow getting to approx 10ft. only, insanely clear, turquoise blue, and it's perfect for swimming, snorkeling, and kayaking. Outside the reef the water becomes deep and a darker royal blue color perfect for diving.
our dive guide Tony on the right!
and some fishy's butt on the left!
To access the outside of the reef the boats go thru small channels called “quebradas” which literally means breaks in the reef.
On this day we did two dives, our dive guide was Tony and he was very good at pointing out things in the water! He took us to cypress gardens, where we swam thru a tunnel and the coolest thing we saw there was of course the sea turtle! The dive was about 60ft average for 40 minutes with a max depth of 76ft when going thru the tunnel. Our next dive spot was called sandy point canyon, at this place we went thru a chimney like structure getting to a max depth of 87ft the average was 50ft and stayed down for 42 minutes.
Ok so for this trip we bought a new underwater camera (no more disposables YAY!) Our camera is able to take pictures and video, but you can't switch from one to the other underwater.
going thru the tunnel at cypress gardens
We set the first dive for pictures and the second dive to video. Now we are total amateurs at this and you will be able to tell! However as the days progress and we became more familiar with our cameras features our pics and videos got better (promise!)
We got done diving at 1pm and at 2pm we were picked up by one of captain morgan’s resort boats to go over there and get a free lunch! Yes, you are reading correctly, lol! Ok remember I said, I would tell you the story of how we got the lamanai tour cheaper in town? Well, here it goes; Captain Morgans is a brand new resort, they are actually still building on it at this point.
turtle
They are a resort you can book a stay there just like any other place, but they are also trying to sell time shares there. So they try to get people to go there and take the tour and sit thru a presentation which is 90 minutes and they offer a free lunch in return. At least most people on the island they have recruited to talk to you about it only offer you a free lunch. As a matter a fact, the bar where we got our beer on the first day the bartender was trying to sell us on this tour. We just said no, thanks! However on our first evening walking around the town we were called out by this guy standing at a kiosk he was selling tours, as well as this presentation! So, to make along story short we saved $30 bucks by booking our lamanai tour thru him as well as getting the free lunch! Our resort booked the tour for $150 per person and he gave it to us for $135 per person.
So, we get to Captain Morgans knowing we are giving up 90 minutes of our vacation for a free lunch and a cheaper rate on a tour.
However once we got there the first thing that happens is a representative comes and sits with you for about 5 minutes and asks you questions about vacation preferences, income (of course), and age. Well, this place has minimum age requirement for the presentation of 35, and I am just shy of 35 and Jarod is even shyer! So, we were told we did not qualify! We still got the tour of the unit 30 minutes of that (which was very nice BTW!) We got our free lunch and the reduced rate for the tour, but we did not have to sit thru the 1hour presentation, YES! I love it we beat the system! Once done they gave us a ride back to our resort complimentary of course!
For the rest of this day we hung out at the pool a little, we cooked a spaghetti dinner this night in our room. Then went back to the pool and swam and hung out in the hot tub (the pool is open all night BTW!)
a dive shop you can trust!
Before going to Belize we did extensive research on dive shops. Since this was our first time going we wanted to see who the more reputable guys were. After all, you don't want to be left out at sea or something like that. We consistently found amigos del mar to have good reviews. Even people who used other places for regular diving would say that for the blue hole they would only use amigos. Upon arrival to our resort we found out that our resort used amigos as their dive guides, so we didn't even have to catch a ride into town to meet up with them we just had to walk up to our pier, talk about convenient!
One thing that you will find out about Belize is that businesses don't really compete against each other. Most dive shops charged the same price for dives so when I say the price is average, I mean that from a Belize stand point. We only found one dive shop that charged less and we heard that their boats had a tendency to break down alot!
Anyways, so we have a reputable name that provides service to our particular resort what more could you ask for? We used them for all our dives and here are just a few tidbits about them;
No cattle boats, we found that we usually were the same five people that dove daily. However on the day that more people came along they added an extra guide to the dive.
This company made it an effort to keep you with the same guide each time. We had the same guide 3 out of the four days, but even on the day that we had adifferent guide our original guide was our boat captain. So, we never got stuck seeing the same places twice.
On our first day diving they made us set up our own gear to make sure we knew what we were doing, but on all the following days they kept our gear for us and had it ready to go by the time we arrived. They never once handed me the wrong gear.
I found that despite the fact that we had the same guide most of the time they never slacked on the quality of the pre-dive briefing. Our guides were very thorough each time.
All in all we felt extremely comfortable with this company and would recommend them. We will definetely use them again.
