Saturday 8/11
Currently on a bus slowly travelling north out of Belize City through some road-works. Belize had lots of rain and flooding about 3 weeks ago so I think they are replacing some drains under the road. Lots of water lying about and flooded areas.

The past week we have been staying on Caye Caulker which is an island, 45 minutes boat trip from Belize City.

Last Monday morning we again had a very early rise and took the 5.30am bus from Flores all the way through to Belize City. It was an uneventful 5 hour trip broken only by the border control which was just a matter of getting off the bus, showing our passport to the Guatemala desk and paying an exit tax. (They deliberately charged us twice the amount it was supposed to be) and then walking to the Belize desk and showing our passport again. Then it was back to the bus. We waited a little while for some passengers who were from a country that required visas and hadn’t got them before the bus driver said “let’s go, they can get the next bus” and we were off again.

Arriving in Belize City we alighted outside the boat terminal and got tickets out to the island. There are a couple of islands with towns and accommodation. Ambergris Caye has the town of San Pedro which sounded quite large and commercial, the smaller Caye Caulker sounded nicer so we took the boat there. Waiting for the bus back in Flores we had met Ryan and Kate, also from Australia and arriving at Caye Caulker we took a shared room in Tina’s Hostel which was right on the beach close to the Jetty.


Sarah and I went for a walk and made enquiries at a couple of dive shops and I booked in to do the Open Water dive course with “Frenchie’s Diving” which was 10 minutes walk up the beach.


Caye Caulker is just gorgeous. It is everything you imagine a Caribbean island paradise to be. Warm but not too hot. The streets are sand and the vehicles people drive around in are electric Golf Buggies with sand tyres. From Tina’s Hostel it was a 3 metre walk across the sand to the warm water of the Caribbean sea and they had a wooden deck just off the beach with a few hammocks. I didn’t make use of the deck as our room was on the second floor with hammocks outside. The water was very calm as well due to the coral reef a short way offshore. You could just see the waves breaking over it on the horizon.



Belize is very different to Guatemala. It’s known as the most expensive country in Central America but the trade off is it’s a lot cleaner, less crime and they have better maintained roads! Official language is English but Spanish and Creole is commonly spoken too. Thanks to being a Commonwealth nation, Queen Elizabeth II is on all the currency and she is head of state with the country being a Constitutional Monarchy, same as Australia.


We all went out for dinner and Ryan and Kate were very keen to get Lobster which wasn’t a problem as every single restaurant and even the street stalls were offering it. We decided to try a street stall called “Jolly Rodger’s” which had two barbequed Lobster tails with Garlic Butter and mash, 3 rum drinks and “free” dessert for $20bz (10USD). Sounded like a good deal but Kate and Ryan’s Lobster Tails were a bit tough and our chicken was char-grilled to a crisp. Jolly Roger wasn’t very jolly either.

Next morning (Tuesday) I rocked up at Frenchie’s Diving to start my PADI diving course. Day one is be bored out of your mind watching a 5 hour DVD. I had been given the large manual to study the afternoon before and told to read the first three chapters but hadn’t quite got all my reading done. (Too much drinking rum in hammocks to be done!) After watching section 1, another girl (Lori from Canada) who was going to be doing the course arrive so I took a break while she watched section 1 and then we watched the remainder for the rest of the day. Lot of information to take in but very excited to do the diving. Can’t wait for tomorrow.

Day two of the course we learned how to put together the scuba equipment, attach the regulator to the air tank and check it was working, then we went out on a boat to just inside the reef to do our “enclosed” dives. These would typically be in a swimming pool so it was much better to do them out in the ocean. We did some exercises in shallow water to make sure we could remove and replace the breathing hose underwater and switch to our buddy’s spare hose if we ran out of air. Removing our facemask and replacing it and clearing the water. All fairly easy to do. After almost an hour underwater we took a “surface interval” lunch break and then went on a shallow dive along some coral for another 40 minutes. Highlight was seeing a large pair of Eagle Rays being followed by a school of fish.

Day three we went on another two dives and practiced our techniques again before doing the “exam”. There were 50 multiple choice questions. I got one wrong. I don’t think it’s possible to fail the theory part of the PADI course because anything you do get wrong you just sign that you have discussed the questions you got wrong with your trainer. “Put Another Dollar In” is what the PADI acronym stands for according to our dive instructor Hillary.
Have completed that, I am now PADI certified which means I can go scuba diving elsewhere on our journey. Galapagos Islands next perhaps!

Next day we had another two dives and now that we were qualified our trainer ditched us and we were with a group of 4 other qualified divers. We went out in the boat for about an hour south of Caye Caulker and dove in much deeper water. Went down to about 25 metres and saw heaps of fish. Lots of coral and plants and at one stage we had three dolphins come and investigate us!


After two nights at Tina’s hostel we had moved accommodation to a hotel further up the beach near Frenchie’s. We were sharing a room with two double beds with Ryan and Kate but now had a private bathroom for the same price we were paying at Tina’s. Also no BED-BUGS! None of us got bitten but Kate had found a couple in the room the morning we left.

The last evening on Caye Caulker we watched the sunset from “the split” which is the northern end of the island. So called because that’s where Hurrican Harriet split the island in two in 1961. What is now “North Island” has a lot less inhabitants than the south.

Sarah: So what did I do while Damo was learning how to dive you are asking yourself? Well not much. After the let down of Monterrico, Caye Caulker was just what I needed, it was paradise. The fabulous thing that we worked out is, it’s so much nicer to cook and you save heaps of money if a kitchen is provided.
Belize is much more expensive than Guatemala, but we stayed under budget as I was cooking all the time. We made breakfast, lunch and dinner and only ate out twice in the week. So I guess I spent a proportion of my day walking around buying food to cook for my hungry scuba diving man. I spent the rest of the time reading. I read two books and got started on the third.
One thing I did find annoying about the island was some on the locals would call out comments from their stalls and since I was mostly walking around by myself, I was a target and I did look like a bit of a dag in my large black and white hibiscus hat (it was the best one I could find since I lost the orange hat Beau gave me (who was given it by his pilgrim priest) and long sleave green shirt (avoiding the sun). Most of the other tourists were walking around in bikinis and sarongs. I got comments like “you want some company” and “I got a special place in my heart for you”.