Aqui estoy mis amigos. Here I am: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=02OMbJyQzLrxlajbnC79YlbiTI0uDqtG3

I am going out to the offshore reefs aboard Samphire so for the next two weeks any SPOT locations will be sent from that vessel not my own. Desesperado is stored on an islet near Cay Caulker where I think he is safe; I shall return here by water bus after being dropped off at Belize City.

If you took a big double handful of mixed beans and wet spaghetti and scattered them across a table so that not too much fell off you would have some idea of what Belizean waters look like on a chart – an incredible maze of cays and reefs. Most are on the landward side of a long barrier reef (second longest only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef) running north-south miles off the mainland. However outside of that reef lie three other groupings – The Turneffe Islands, an archipelago covering 200 square miles, Lighthouse Reef and Glovers Reef. The latter two areas have fewer cays but all three places are ringed by reputedly fabulous reefs and have great lagoons within containing manatees, dolphins and even 20-foot crocodiles not to mention thousands of fairy castles of coral with all their amazing lifeforms. We will be diving and exploring these as best we can given the weather which at present is blowing a gale as usual though only the trickiness of the reef pass here at Cay Caulker prevents us from departing to the open sea and making the crossing to Turneffe. As I write intrepid Paul and Twyla are off in the zodiac scouting this pass; if they think we can run it safely I will soon be heaving my guts up over the rail into a wild sea. Ah well, nothing comes for free.

Advertisement