Belize: Day 3 -- Wildlife All Over

This morning started out beautiful.  While we were eating breakfast the sun was shining on the sea and it a gorgeous.  By the time we met up for the first dive at 8:30, it was raining and the wind was blowing again.  In fact, it was bad enough they had us wait about 15 minutes until the seas calmed a bit.

Despite the weather, the first dive of the day was probably the best dive I've ever been on.  It was amazing.  Our first dive of the day was at Tackle Box Canyon.  It was the coolest thing because we were diving down and through these canyons that were only about 5-8 feet across.

We saw so many nurse sharks.  They're everywhere here.  But we went beyond nurse sharks this dive and saw 3 black tip reef sharks.  Their appearance was short, just a quick swim through, but we saw them.  When I got up I saw absolutely exhilarated.

We came back in to shore during our surface interval because the distance to the next dive site is so near and the waves not fun that it is just easier.

This picture just seems very Finding Nemo-ish to me.

Our second dive was at Esmeralda. I was so much wildlife on this dive.  Things I had never seen before.  The usual nurse sharks were all over, and there were a lot of the rainbow parrotfish, and snappers, and butterfly fish as we've been seeing on each dive.  But this dive was much more awesome than that because we had some black tip reef sharks that circled around, and then we had a bull shark swim around us.  We also saw a ray or two (not sure if it was the same one or not).  Then right at the very end a sea turtle!  I've been wanting to see one this I went diving for the first time, but until today they had always stayed out of sight.  While under the water it was bliss, the wave action up top was again, pretty horrible.

Our dive master trying to explain that the big, muscular shake you can see in the background near the center of the picture is a bull shark.  In diving you have to just try your best sometimes.

The last dive of the day was at Ten Commandments.  I guess somewhere along the way there is a tablet from the Catholic Church in San Pedro with the Ten Commandments on it.  The best part of the entire dive was when we got caught in the middle of a school of jacks.  Hundreds of them. They circled us back and around and all over.  It was amazing.  The whole time we were just waiting to see if there was a shark or something chasing them.  I never did see one though.  We did see a nurse shark that had a hook caught in its mouth.  Our dive master turned the shark over and tried to get it out, but couldn't get it before the shark had decided it had had enough and swam off.

After making our way back to shore and cleaning up I headed out to the shops in town with some of the others.  We stopped at a Belizean chocolate shop and I bought the most delicious hot chocolate ever.  It may have burned my tongue, but it was so good.  Most of the group had dinner together at a restaurant on a pier called Palapa's.