Scuba Diving with Dolphins in Caye Caulker

Caye Caulker – 

We get going at 08:30 after packing our stuff and have – like yesterday – breakfast at the café “Brisas del Mar” (some awesome  fried jacks). Our next stop: The divebase “French Angel Expedition”. We are 6 people in total. Marph, our captain, Dan, the instructor, Pete from Aspin (who is about to do one training unit for his AOWD-license), Caroline from Washington DC. , Verena and me.

At the divesite “Tres Cocos” we are on the lookout for some dolphins and… are in luck. We soon notice a group of them swimming quite close to us, so we ready our gear and get in the water. Diving with dolphins – Very cool . After doing some circles around us for quite some time, they eventually lose interest. As slowly we dive along the canyons of the reef, we get accompanied by some nurse sharks along the reef. That sure is some quite chill dive.

After we end our dive and get on the boat, we change our location to an area with a bit more shallow water for some relaxing snorkeling at the reef. We notice some canoes nearby with some folks snorkeling next to them, carrying harpoons – I wonder if this is Kate’s and Ben’s group.

The second divesite is named “Esmeralda”: At first Dan and Pete get to a sandy area to do some buoyancy training – we form our own group and check the nearby reef for marine life: We are lucky and soon notice see two not-so-shy moray eels. I got myself a camera stick, so I can get really close up to fish with my GoPro without scaring them away, but these moray eels are rather curious. We also get to see a few schools of moon fish, parrot fishs, some angelfishs and even a lobster. Somehow I’m getting hungry.

A few moments later Hector arrives, a rather strange old fellow and joins us – our chat starts to get funny-strange as he asks us some bizarre riddles. He mixes a bottle of “heaven juice” (rainwater) with half a bottle of rum and takes some serious glups: “This lasts half a day”. At some point I have to go to the loo and get inside the bar. On the way back I meet Pete:  “Man, freakin Hector is sure a number“. Well, he sure is strange. “Crazy old man” or something like that. Being back at the table, everyone seems to be ready to pay and leave, as Dan is probably already waiting for us. Hector seems to have talked about his ex-wife and started to cry as soon as Pete and I were gone. It’s not always just roses in the Caribbean .We take a break at San Pedro for a quick snack. The prices are rather spicy here though. We find us a sports bar at the pier which seems to be alright though. From here, we can watch two fishermen standing in the water, gutting some fish they caught. The seagulls above fly in to get some scraps and from below two stingrays are swimming in between the fishermens legs to get also their share. In the meantime we get to know each other a bit better – Smalltalk.

On our way back to Caye Caulker we keep an eye out for manatees to have a brief stop to snorkel with them. No luck though. Along the way we see Carlos boat, with a group of snorklers also looking for manatees. “Found anything?” – “I found rum!” grins Carlos and raises a full bottle of Kuknat Rum :) . They hadn’t had any luck either. But the Kuknat Rum we drank yesterday when we were also snorkeling with Carlos was delicious… Maybe I will take a bottle with me.

Back in Caye Caulker, we drop off our clothes at the laundry service and put our names up for a dive at the Blue Hole on the 25th. We have dinner at Brisas del Mar directly at the beach unter some palm trees – romanic . Lobster, a few drinks and some nachos as an appetizer. Yummy! On our way back to the bungalow we have just one more drink at the bar “Calle del Sol”. Wow- now I feel really exhausted. Tomorrow we want to just have a slow, relaxed day…