Mixed Results for Night Snorkeling

I got to go night snorkeling last night and it was one of the best snorkel trips I’ve done! We saw so many animals. There were 2 octopuses – one was bright blue and turned a molted shade of bluish-brown while we were watching. The other was just a baby and it only had it’s head poked out of the coral so it was hard to tell what color it was. I saw two baby puffer fish. I caught one in my hand and it puffed up. There were huge lobsters and crabs, eels of various sorts, a little squid, starfish, rays, and other things that I’m probably forgetting. Our guide also let us turn off our lights so we could see the bioluminescent creatures. That was awesome! If you wave your hand through the water, it sparkles. The bioluminescent plankton light up when you hit them. The coral also sparkles with little bio-lumens. It’s really amazing.

I don’t have any pictures of this trip because my new ProShot case for my iPhone was missing a piece, it flooded as soon as I jumped in the water and my phone is now fried. I used it in Costa Rica in December and it worked great, but at some point, a critical piece fell off and now neither the case nor my phone work. The ProShot case has a year warranty, they say they will replace your phone if there is a structural problem with the case, so I’m planning to file a complaint with them as soon as I get home. I tried blow drying the phone and I let it sit in a bag of rice to try to pull out the moisture, but it’s dead. Fortunately, I’ve had it for a few years and they don’t last that long so at least I didn’t ruin a new one. If anyone was thinking about texting me, don’t bother because I can’t currently get texts on my iPad either. Email still works.

Bill and I got up at 4:45am this morning to go on an all day snorkel trip to the blue hole. Off the coast of Belize, there is a huge crater surrounded by a coral reef shelf. The water in the hole is deep blue so it’s popular with divers. It took a 2 hour boat ride on a boat that was just a step up from a small fishing boat. It rained and was pretty cold for part of the way and the water was choppy. One poor guy was hung over from last night, got sea sick, passed out, and turned as white as I’ve ever seen anyone. We gave him some Dramamine.

I was really concerned that it was going to rain the whole time. I was wet and chilled by the time we got to our first location, but the rain stopped for most to the day and it was just cloudy. Overall, it was a pretty good snorkel day. We saw several turtles, a few sharks, some rays, a bunch of colorful fish and colorful coral. I’m glad we went, especially since we got to see some turtles up close, but it was a long day and I’m exhausted. It rained on the boat trip back too, but we were at least under the covered part of the boat. Weirdly, I still feel like I’m rocking in a boat.

We stopped on the way back to our apartment to get a pizza since we were too tired for anything else. I stayed and waited on our pizza while Bill took our stuff back to the apartment. Apparently, it rained all day here on Caye Caulker too because the roads were muddy mess with huge potholes full of mud. I had to balance a big pizza box on my bike basket while I rode through muddy, pothole filled streets to get to the apartment. My bike is coated in mud and I was too, but the pizza survived unscathed.

Tomorrow, we have to get things ready to come home. We have to get Covid tested and we are hoping to get laundry done. It’s Sunday so I don’t know how that will go. We also have to make sure we can get a spot on the water taxi back to Belize City. Hopefully, that all goes smoothly.

Bill should have some pictures eventually of our snorkel trip today. We might do another night snorkel tomorrow night. After all day on the water today, we are happy to be clean and dry right now.