Hello, well it’s been a while. Where did I leave off, oh yea, we were in Placencia provisioning for our trip out to the northern Cayes.

Our first stop was at South water Caye. I know I have already written about this beautiful spot, but it’s well worth a second visit.

Next stop for us was Caye Caulker.

We visited Caye Caulker 20 years ago on our honeymoon. Things have changed over the 20 years, No…not Cathie or I, but Caye Caulker.

There’s more restaurants, bars, pedal bikes and golf carts. Businesses in general have increased, grocery stores, a good hardware store, and my favorite, the bakery. People are very friendly, and it didn’t take long to find our favourite vegetable stand, bakery and beach for Sequoia.

One day while at the beach Sequoia got us chatting with a couple Dads, that were there with their young daughters. The daughters were just learning to swim. When one of the daughters gave Cathie a huge hug it was real sweet. Melted my ❤️. One of the Dads grew up on Freetown road, in Belize city, right in Cathie’s old neighborhood. It was nice to hear Cathie share some memories with him.

After Caye Caulker, we headed out to Lighthouse reef. Lighthouse reef is an atoll about 22 miles long and 5 miles wide. This is where the world famous Blue hole is, as well there’s a few Cayes on this atoll. We visited long Caye and Halfmoon Caye.

The Blue Hole is 400’ deep and 1000’ wide. To get there from Halfmoon Caye, Catnip crawled (swam) along in water that averaged 10’ deep, avoiding multiple reefs that come to within inches of the surface.

The snorkeling was great, and we weren’t too disappointed that we didn’t see any of the hammerheads that live in the Blue hole. We did see and swim with these however.

Halfmoon Caye, now this place checked all the boxes.

Super snorkeling, beautiful beaches, Red Footed Booby Birds, Turtle nesting beach, hermit and blue crabs, and great people.

Shortly after setting our anchor we went to shore to exercise Sequoia. Then we went to see the Booby birds. There’s a platform built above the tree tops, so you get a great view of the colony. There are 2000 nesting Boobies in this colony. They nest with the Frigates and seem to get along well for the most part. The Frigates never pass up a chance to steal a meal. They are great flyers and masters at thermaling which I always enjoy observing, but they can be bullies when another bird has some food.

Mordy, the ranger, said a giant loggerhead sea turtle came in to lay her eggs in the sand while we were there. They come to the beach in the evening to lay their eggs. They lay 100-120 eggs about the size of a golf ball. She does this 3-5 times a season, coming to shore every 2-3 weeks. We missed this event but Mordy said it was fascinating to witness. She took a couple hours to climb up the beach, dig a suitable hole, lay her eggs, cover them, pack the sand and return to the ocean. The kids are on their own from here on.

Another interesting animal we saw at Halfmoon Caye was the Hermit crab.

There were lots of these crabs, some as small as a pee, and others as large as a baseball. They live 30-40 years, and will change shells as they grow. We would see a dozen crabs at a time on the trails.

This is a blue crab, and they live underground in tunnels that they have dug. Pretty shy.

After a week at Lighthouse atoll visiting Halfmoon Caye and the Blue hole it was time to go check out Tobacco Caye.

First we had to motor the 5 miles west to exit the atoll. This was a lot easier then coming in, as we could just follow the track we made on the way in.

Once out in the deep water we hoisted the main sail and unfurled the foresail, trimmed the sails, tidied up the lines, had our second cups of coffee, and then this happened.

Over 20 Dolphins joined us. They were doing speed runs, synchronized swimming, and some high jumping. Quite a good show that lasted over 40 minutes. We gave them a warm round of applause.

This also happened.

Tobacco Caye was very nice, but unfortunately had too many dogs for Sequoia’s liking. We stayed a night and did some snorkelling. In the morning the winds were very light, so I went up the mast to lube the anemometer, commonly called the wind speed sensor.

The next stop on the Catnip Crew Cruise was Glover Reef. This is another gem, especially the southwest Caye.

While chillin on the deck, Cathie was chatting with Joelene, a lady about our age, (young) and she casually mentioned she went for a discovery dive with Eddy the other day. After checking out what a discovery dive was (you go diving with the supvision of a dive master) we were excited to give it a go. It didn’t take long to track down Eddy, and we were set to go diving the next day.

Now, you have to learn some basics before going 40’ under water for the first time. Eddy taught us how to clear are ears from the pressure, empty our mask if/when water gets inside, how the regulators worked, how to control our buoyancy and some hand signals. We practiced all this for 45 -60 minutes in shallow water, 6-8’ deep, before heading out to the big blue.

We arrived at the dive sight, and I had a similar feeling to the first time on top of a mountain I was about to fly from with my hang glider. You know you’ve done the training, you’re in good hands, but you are still about to do something that doesn’t feel 100% safe.

After climbing into our BCDs, (Buoyancy Compensate Devices), strapping on our heavy tanks plus 6-8 pounds of weights, flippers and mask, you had to waddle backwards in the rolling boat, so you could backflip into the sea.

Just like that you went from clumsy to floating effortlessly.

We have our buoyancy bags partially inflated so we don’t sink after doing our back flops. A check with everyone, all good, and it’s time to go down.

We empty our buoyancy bags, and start down. We stop every 5-8 feet to clear our ears, then sink a little deeper. We went down to 40 feet.

It was beautiful, magical, wonderful, and amazing. We had sunshine above and very clear water so visibility was about 100 feet.

An interesting point is the way you control your dept. A rough adjustment is with the buoyancy bags inflation, but the fine tuning is done with the amount of air in your lungs. Like everything you get better at it with practice.

We saw eagle rays, a couple turtles, a couple reef sharks, every color of fish and lots of huge beautiful coral.

Our time in Belize is sadly coming to an end, and we will be off to Guatemala soon, and hunker down for the hurricane season in Rio Dulce. I’m sure we will have many more fun adventures there.