Day Six--Fishing and Snorkeling

What a wonderful day! We met Cory of Freedom Tours--the guy that we met the day before near the house--at the dock around 7:45 am. morning. He had his nephew Conrad with him and all of the tackle and gear for us to go reef fishing. We went to our first stop and Cory and Conrad got our fishing rods ready. For bait we used the sardines that we had seen Cory catching the day before. We cast out from the boat and within minutes I caught a fish! I was a beautiful red snapper. The fish were really biting. By the end of fishing I caught only one more fish, a grunt. Skylar caught two barracudas, a snapper, and a couple of grunts. Clane probably got the most bites of us all, but he lost a lot of bait. He kept asking Conrad for "uno mas" piece of bait--he kept Conrad on his toes all day! He caught a black snapper, a yellow tail snapper, and a bunch of grunts. Gess had a rough start--not getting anything for the first couple of hours. Eventually he caught two barracudas and a black snapper though.





After the fishing we went to find lobsters under some "traps" that the fisherman put out. They are not really traps, but are metal plates that lobsters hide under to escape the sun. Unfortunately we didn't find any lobsters! Well, Gessner found one, but he wasn't able to spear it.

We went to a a small cleaning shack owned by a commercial fisherman in the middle of the ocean. Cory is friends with the owner and he lets Cory bring his tours there to cook lunch. Cory and Conrad cleaned all of the fish and then cooked them, while we tried to catch more fish and snorkeled. Gess did some spear fishing while Cory cooked and caught some crazy looking things--including a frog fish. He tried to scary Sky with it and the fish ended up cutting her leg!





Two sons of the shack owner were playing in the water and I went out to play with them. They were so cute! They were only 2 and 4, but they were great swimmers and were having so much fun in the water. The younger one, Alan, kept coming up and grabbing onto my legs and laughing.



Once the food was ready we got back in the boat and headed out to the reef. We ate the food--it was amazing--on the way. Cory also brought some lobster, so we had some even though we were unsuccessful in catching any.

Our next stop was Hol Chan Marine Reserve--meaning little channel. This is located in a break in the coral reef. Belize has the longest barrier reef in the western hemisphere--and the second longest in the world, truly an amazing place to visit.

When we arrived at the channel Cory anchored the boat to a buoy. Conrad stayed with the boat as we went out snorkeling. It was amazing snorkeling. Even just the coral was beautiful, not to mention all of the fish that we saw. When we first got out of the boat we saw a huge nurse shark--it freaked me out, but I went ahead and went out. We saw so many fish--schools and schools of them. We saw parrot fish, a sea turtle, jacks, a moray eel, angel fish, hawk fish, snappers, a giant blow fish, mackerel, grouper, probably a bunch of others.

After Hol Chan we went over to Shark-Ray Alley, which is also part of the reserve. There were a ton of big nurse sharks and huge sting rays! It was a bit unnerving to be around these creatures, especially because some of the tour operators were throwing fish into the water to attract them and also because some of the other snorkelers were grabbing and touching the sharks and rays. Sky and I just kept a distance and watched. The animals really are beautiful. Some tour guide caught a nurse shark and gave it to Clane to hold. There is a picture of it on Clane's blog: http://clanegesselphotography.blogspot.com/2008/07/belize-preview.html

It was a wonderful day--thanks Cory!!

When we got home we changed and hopped on our bikes and headed into town for dinner. We wanted around for awhile and ended up at a place called Carambas. The food was okay, but pretty Americanized--as was the crowd and music.



We still had a good time and after dinner went over to the frozen custard joint for another hit--that place is SO good! As we started to leave to head back to the house, the chain on Clane's bike broke! For some reason--maybe it was the rum at dinner--Sky and I started laughing and couldn't stop for awhile. It was late, but when we rented the bikes it looked like the guy lived at the shop, so we went over to see if he could fix the bike. We kept getting lost, but eventually made it there and Clane was able to get another bike.

Gess left me to lock up our bikes when we got home and I got attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes...you would think that I was covered in sugar water rather than 100% DEET spray! The bites turned into welts and I was pretty miserable. Despite these crazy bugs, we had a wonderful day!