Belize Spring 2005

Belize has a wonderful barrier reef to explore via scuba diving. Depending on the time of year you can see various sharks (including whale sharks) and rays. The variety of invertebretes and fish was very good. The majority of the sites we dove had very healthy coral.

The Belize Zoo is well worth a visit.

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Our flight arrived late in the afternoon in Belize City. We were met at the airport and taken via a wonderfully air-conditioned van to the dock in Belize City, where we took a small boat to St George's Caye.

The Lodge has smaller rooms in the main building and larger, over-water cabins on the west side of the Caye. The website does have a lot of information and pictures as well.

We stayed in one of the over-water cabins. It was comfortable and roomy, with more than enough room for our clothes and luggage. Our diving gear was kept elsewhere by the Lodge (rinsed nightly by the staff for us).

The cabin was a little buggy (I’m mosquito bait no matter where I go), but they supplied mosquito coils which worked fairly well. (I never saw bugs other than the mosquitoes.)

The toilet smelled a little of sulfur (due to the local plumbing/composting toilet?). The shower was fine for getting clean (but not enough room for two) and did have hot water.

All the over-water cabins had porches with a table and chairs.

Our cabin had decent air-conditioning and fans. A small refrigerator was stocked with some candy bars, other snacks, and some drinks.

Two Jacuzzis are present on the grounds – great for after-dive soaking. Multiple hammocks are pitched between palm trees. The beach has a fair amount of sea grass and we were in the water enough diving we weren't tempted to go swimming.

The manager, Kim, is a wonderful, helpful, sweet woman; the rest of the staff was awesome as well.

Meals at the Lodge were included in our trip.

Meals are served family-style in the main lodge building. The food was very good and plentiful, although not particularly fancy. Some sort of fresh-baked bread was included with each meal. Soup (different each time) was served with lunch and dinner. Main dishes included vegetables, fish, or other meats and rice or potatoes. Desserts were served after lunch and dinner as well. Fresh juice and coffee was brought to our cabin each morning before breakfast.

Hors d’ouvres were served before dinner nightly. The best were the conch fritters–-I’d never had conch before, and these were incredible–-the meat literally melted in my mouth. Someone told me good conch tastes a little like a cross between shrimp and abalone–-I could’ve eaten these the entire time. Fresh coffee and hot water for tea was available throughout the day in the bar area.

The ladies at the bar made incredible (albeit not cheap) pina coladas--alcohol was not included, and drinks were around $8 each. A full bar was available.

The Caye is very small; I think there might be one restaurant at the far end.

I usually research my dive trips through Undercurrent.org, a site/newsletter exclusively for divers, and we chose to Fred Good’s St George’s Lodge, in large part because of reviews by other divers regarding Fred.

Note that the Lodge was sold prior to our trip, and we weren’t notified, but Fred was still there as divemaster for the first part of our trip.

I told Fred I wanted to improve my diving, and I did with his advice.

Dave (husband) and I got Nitrox-certified while at the Lodge. Fred is a big believer in the added safety of Nitrox/ Enriched Air for diving and has been diving himself exclusively with Nitrox for years. We did all our dives on Nitrox and enjoyed increased bottom times (often up to an hour) and increased depth (I dove my deepest dive yet visiting an octopus Fred knew about) AND significantly less fatigue. Most days, we only dove twice a day, but with the increased bottom time, it was like diving 3 dives/day at other resorts/locations.

Jose, the other divemaster, was great as well. As knowledgeable as Fred on the dive sites in the area, he was very good at finding all the small critters as well as the larger animals. Jose tended to be a little more conservative as a diver than Fred.

The Lodge had only a few other guests while we were there, so we usually had the dive boat to ourselves (no being missed, a la that Open Water movie!). Dave and I usually buddied one each with Jose and Fred, since I can descend like a rock and Dave, who has ear issues, needs to descend more slowly. Fred had to leave midway through the week, so Kim’s brother, Chris, came with us on some of the later dives. The water visibility was generally good but not gin-clear–-more in the 50- to 60-foot range. The variety of fish, sponges, and other invertebrates was quite good. The sites we visited were in very good condition–-healthy coral and sponges. The most damaged site was one by Turneffe Cay–-makes sense, since that’s a more popular dive area.

One memorable day we saw a spotted eagle ray, multiple nurse sharks, an open water swimming moray (as opposed to tucked in his crevice), a turtle, and too many to name other creatures. The highlight had to be our barracuda encounter-–a large (4- to 5-foot, even with the water magnification) barracuda cruised between Chris and Dave, then circled to come head-on to me. I wouldn’t have had to reach to touch it by the time it stopped right in front of my face. At that point, I was wondering, as I ‘stood’ in the water column, as it approached closer and closer, do I RUN AWAY? I stayed in one place, it turned sideways and opened and closed its jaws, then cruised away. Wow. Talk about a rush.

The Belize Zoo is a small, well-kept and run zoo that features the indigenous wildlife, all individuals of which have been rescued.

Hand-lettered signs give background information on the species, as well as the particular animal.

The enclosures are not huge but appear to be roomy enough for the animals and have a lot of vegetation. We're not talking old-style concrete cages and bars, but rather more naturalistic enclosures that still allow the visitor good views of the animals.

The cats, of course, drew a lot of attention. I have to admit to a soft spot for tapirs, since I was lucky enough to be able to work with them in the wild while in vet school.