| Belize:
With Peter Hughes Diving
By Don Mackay
 My
long time diving buddy and I are addicted
to Cozumel. No other way to put it. The
diving is simply superb and the town of
San Miguel, despite the increasing presence
of cruise ships, remains an interesting
place to walk around in the evenings. Normally,
our respective spouses allow us a week off
in the spring and another week in the fall.
Despite the great diving, we were starting
to get a little jaded however and both of
us felt the need for something different
- just for a change.
So this spring - if you can call February
in Ottawa and Pittsburgh, our respective
locations - we decided to try diving in
Belize. After some research we settled on
Peter Hughes' operation and booked ourselves
on the Wave Dancer. The costs seemed reasonable,
about US$ 1,600 each - not including airfare.
Wave Dancer is a well outfitted live aboard
with plenty of space for storing gear and
for suiting up when it came time to dive.
It's 125 feet of length allows for privacy
while retaining the family feel that quickly
develops on a live-aboard.
In Belize the distances are not long and
moving from one dive site to another is
quickly accomplished. One disappointing
element was that we seemed to be shadowed
all week by the Aggressor and Nekton boats.
Our Captain tried to explain that each boat
was "reading" the seas so as to
maximize the diving experience, but I suspect
that that the true explanation is that the
operators fall into a well established pattern
from which they are not willing to bend.
 The
attraction of Belize is found in the wonderful
wall dives that predominate the reef. We
found most of the time that the reef and
walls start out at around 25 feet and often
plunge down 3,000 feet or more. We quickly
adjusted from our Cozumel experiences where
the reefs and walls often don't start until
90 feet or more and enjoyed especially the
quite visible range of colours. At all the
sites, we found the reef to be in excellent
shape and the diversity of tropical fish
to be plentiful.
We were disappointed in the virtual absence
of larger life, especially the pelagics
and turtles. In a week of diving (usually
4 dives a day - including a night dive)
we only came across one very small nurse
shark, two spotted eagle rays and a couple
of turtles. Diving in Cozumel perhaps spoils
one in this regard.
In the shallows, the reef has formed countless
cutouts or channels that offered lots of
interesting sights, particularly towards
the end of a dive as we were off-gassing.
Almost all of the channels have a clear
overhead making them interesting for those
divers who aren't fully comfortable in an
overhead environment.
No trip to Belize is complete with experiencing
the famous Blue Hole, essentially a column
smashed into the surrounding environment
by a meteor that struck the earth many millions
of years ago. About a thousand feet across,
the Blue Hole descends to some 425 feet
in depth. At 130 feet, huge stalactites
are found which were formed millions of
years ago before the sea levels rose to
engulf them in water. The Blue Hole was
the only "supervised" dive on
the whole trip and the rules were that all
14 divers plus the 3 dive masters would
do the dive as a group. While understanding
the operators concerns - especially about
some of the divers who had not previously
done "deep diving" - the experience
was just a little too crowded to make it
fully enjoyable. A number of us had concluded
that a better approach would have been to
break the group up into smaller groups -
according to experience and skill levels
- and this would have enhanced the experience
tremendously. Once in the Blue Hole there
isn't an awful lot to really see. The sides
are rock rather than coral and the vertical
visibility when we did the dive, wasn't
all that great. Nevertheless, it is one
of those dives that one feels good about
when saying: "I've done that dive".
Overall, a week in Belize on Wave Dancer
sure beats the heck out of a week in Ottawa
shoveling snow. On the other hand, I think
that next time, I'm headed back to Cozumel.
|
