Fishing and snorkeling the Cayes
Trip Start
Dec 12, 2006
1
42
55
Trip End
Mar 09, 2007
San Pedro,
Belize
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Fishing didn't go quite as planned. We rented a fishing rod and I bought some fishing line and hooks. Everyone here uses sardines as bait, so we bought a bag of that. Turns out we would have been better off just eating the nasty sardines because we ended up giving the ocean more than it gave us. I was so excited all day to catch some fish since we had seen so many off of the docks. I set up my little spool of fishing line while J and J used the rod. I let out a ton of line and then was about to swing in my hook and bait when I thought about putting the end reel in my pocket so that it didn't fly into the water. Well I figured I had let out enough line and it wouldn't be a problem, so I swung in my bait and hook. I was pretty pissed when I saw my reel of fishing line fly off into the water along with my hook and bait. So our fishing experience did not start off to a good start. Our pride wasn't totally hurt after I caught a fish using the fishing rod. The sad part is I had caught it in the eye somehow, it might have just been an innocent bystander to the one nibbling at my sardine. So we went to sleep with a bit of pride left, but not much.
Today we went snorkeling and scuba diving. I'm poor so I just signed up for the snorkeling, but Jeremy and Jason went scuba diving (oho, look who has the jobs, damn high rollers). We were all on the same boat and went to the same spots. All the scuba and snorkeling spots are just short boat rides away to the huge reef that lies just off the cays. We first went to Shark and Ray Alley Reef. Here they chum so that the rays and sharks come up and eat. We are jumped in with our snorkel gear and explored. Tons of little fish and corral, and lots of rays. We only saw one shark, it was a nurse shark and it probably wasn't longer than 4ft, pretty small and harmless. We didn't stay there too long since there wasn't much activity and the other sight has much more wild life.
We then headed over to Hol Chan Reef. Hol Chan is a beautiful reef that has a cut in it that lots of wildlife comes to. The cut is about 28ft deep and 78ft wide and fairly long (maybe half of a football field). Here we hopped out and all snorkeled for a while. We saw some huge Eagle Rays, they were so damn big and so cool looking. We also saw a humongous turtle (I forgot what it was called), its head was almost as big as one of ours. The turtle was probably the coolest thing we saw.
There was this dope corral tunnel that you could swim through, it was about 15-20ft down and maybe 8 feet long. Jason and I sacked up and went for the swim through. Kind of scary the first time, but once you know that you can do it, its pretty fun. Jeremy and Jason did some some scuba diving at Hol Chan. Jason's gear was kind of malfunctioning, so he was having trouble getting down (he ended up having to hold extra weights in his hands). I swam above them and it looked like they were having a pretty good time.
Snorkeling and scuba pretty much wiped us out, so we spent the rest of the day chilling in the hammock, eating and talking. At night we went out for a couple of rounds and ran into the people that were on our scuba boat, they were out drinking with our crazy scuba guide, Ranger. Pretty weird dude.
In other news, Jason did his job in the fight against cancer. None of use wanted to do it, but the spinning of the bottle landed on him (his damn idea) and he sacked up and went to work. Nothing went down except a kiss, but I have never seen a happier girl in my life. It brought a tear to all of our eyes (you had to be there, lots of discussion ensued).
