Blue Hole

Wednesday 8/1/07

So turns out 5:00am is really early when you are on vacation…even if you are off to do fun things…ouch. Anyway, our guides picked us up and took us to meet up with the other divers…12 in total at the dock. We had been diving with a company called Ecological Divers…they are awesome, Steve and Marcos were excellent dive masters, and laid out some great dive profiles to get us the most out of our dives. But this dive, since it is about 2 ½ hours away by boat was thru Amigos Del Mar (Eco set it up for us). We boarded the 48’ dive boat and set out on our tour…not 3 hours, more like 12…it is going to be a long day. After the previous day’s dives outside the reef in some pretty crazy seas (10’ or so in a small little boat…yea Dave got sick…ha, ha!) the ride out to the Blue hole was quite nice…bumpy, but nice. Just to brief you, the blue hole is a formation in one of the outer reefs that is kind of like a diving mecca (See pic in Jori's first post...way cool)…well sort of. It is what was left when several millions of years ago the ceiling of an underwater cave collapsed, exposing a 1000’ across “hole” in the middle of the atoll. The “hole” is about 450’ deep, but about 100’ down, the hole opens up to reveal huge stalagmites and stalactites which are left-overs from a previous time. While not much different marine life to be seen, the blue hole pulls divers to ~130’ to see the formations in warm clear water…Anyway, how about I describe our experience rather than discussing what everyone else says about it…one word, incredible. I must first say that after riding in the boat for 2 ½ hours, I was really happy to be at our location, mind you the ride out was beautiful, as we transversed thru Turneff Atoll and saw only what could be described as “Desolate” island paradises…They were strait out of pirates of the Caribbean…Crazy beautiful, but not close to anything.

Once at the blue hole our guides became very serious…we were in fact going down 130’…yea that is pretty far, and your body does not respond very well to being that deep for too long…So, since they were in charge, it was all business (one example was the fact that each dive master took an extra tank as well as dropped about 5 extra tanks under the boat…just in case…a good thing in my book. We started out moving down the side of the wall, circling as we descended…before we knew it we had hit about 100’…then the water went from about 85 degrees to 80…crazy I know…soooo cold! Just kidding, I thought it was funny though…everyone except us had wet suits on…bathwater I say, bathwater! But back to the story, as the cave opened up there were huge formations…20’ tall or long depending…we swam in and around for about 8 min…our total time available at that depth…but then our dive master pointed up. I cannot really describe the feeling…not scared, not worried, more inquisitive…there were about 8 sharks circling above us…all you could see was their eerie outlines…a couple at least 10’ long. It was very surreal…just these silent shapes circling 50’ above us…slowly. As we started to ascent, we again followed the wall, keeping a keen eye on our guests…or more precisely, they were keeping an eye on their guests…As we broke thru the 80’ mark, they became much clearer and real…as we continued to rise, they kept their distance, while maintaining site of us…very weird, but at no point were we ever scared…I cannot describe it…we just knew they were just there to check us out. So after we got out of the water, dried off a little and had some refreshments, we got to feed them…now that was fun…I have some video that I will share later…pretty damn cool.

From the Blue hole, we went south to a small Caye called Half moon…a natural preserve for Red footed boobie birds…I just like saying that…I really didn’t like the birds that much. The second dive was a wall dive, meaning the reef looked like a wall, and we swam along, not being able to see the bottom, but getting a great view of the reef and all of the incredible things to see. I think this was my favorite dive, base on the amount of things to see…just awesome. After our second dive our guides laid out a spread of lunch on Half moon Caye and let us rest a little (See Pic for our lunch location...not too bad)…oh and we went to see Red footed Boobie birds…I love Boobies...so much fun!
After our stint at Half moon Caye, we went to our third and last dive site called the aquarium…and that is exactly what it was. Not very deep, but full of many different kinds of coral and fans, as well as more fish than we saw anywhere…but the real star of this dive was the Manta ray…She circled us twice and then did a little loop de’loop right in front of Jori…she was beautiful…probably 8’ across…so gracefully she glided in, then she just disappeared into the blue…very good dive. It may seem that I kind of skim over some of the fish and other things we saw, but only due to the fact that I don’t want to bore you all…we have pictures to share later…

From there it was home…though we could have kept going…it was awesome. Once we got home, Dave and I figured out that after a day of diving it only takes like two beers to be a little crazy…well maybe a lot crazy…let’s just say last night was very early…More later…Cheers! RB