The end
Even though it’s barely beyond the half way point of my sabbatical, Belize feels like the end of…something. After Belize come two and half months in the US and a month in Europe, so it kind of feels like the end of “adventure”, but I’ll have adventures in both places, so that’s not really it. Maybe it’s more the end of discovery, as apart from Australia and New Zealand, the ten other countries I hit in the last five and a half months were all new and all spoke languages I was at best only moderately proficient in. Whatever it is that is ending, I feel a certain wistfulness for it, in addition to but not in place of the usual undercurrent of excitement I have for all that’s yet to come. It’s weird and it’s abrupt; I’ve leant in to the headwinds of foreign languages and cultures for so long, the sudden lack of headwind will require me to adjust my posture, will remove some spice from the soup.
Belize
Enough of my mental state. Belize was about one thing: diving. My buddy Dylan and I had been talking about a dive trip to Belize for almost a decade, and we finally made it happen. Or rather, Dyl’s wife Kelcie made it happen, and Dylan (and I) profited from her efforts. Thanks Kelcie!
We dove in San Pedro in Ambergris Caye and then again in Caye Caulker. Dylan spent his first few days getting certified, and I went on a few dives at the same time to keep entertained. Just swimming in the harbor I had seen a stingray and two eagle rays, so I was pretty optimistic about seeing more mega fauna in the reefs. They never disappointed. Nurse sharks, reef sharks, turtles, rays, grouper, barracuda, crabs, lobster, the weirdest fish with a flat head that had a zig zag pattern on it, etc. Even without the mega fauna, it was still full of beautiful, healthy coral formations, themselves a joy to inspect and admire. Just because you don’t see a bear in the forest doesn’t mean the forest isn’t beautiful, right?
Still, the sharks, particularly the reef sharks, were the highlight. Nurse sharks are affectionately nicknamed the puppies of the sea, and I get it. One followed us an entire dive hoping we’d catch lionfish that it could eat off the spear. It swam between us, amongst us, and much like a puppy, physically crashed into us, all in its exploration for food (most divemasters will take spears along to kill any lionfish we find, as they are invasive, eat everything, and have no natural predators). We named it Kevin. Kevin “sniffed” my knee, which a week ago would have been terrifying, but after a single dive with them was more funny than scary. As adorably friendly and ungainly as the nurse sharks are, the reef sharks are still my favorite. Much more quintessentially sharks, built for speed and violence (but generally harmless to humans), they always got my heart rate going, especially when they got closer. Kevin inspired images of a lick-attack by a puppy; the reef sharks inspired images of Jaws.
Dyl had to work one day, which was poorly timed, because it was the only day we’d have the chance to go to the Blue Hole, a bucket-list dive which Jacques Cousteau described as one of the greatest dive sites in the world. I went without him, came back and did my best not to amplify the FOMO he already had. Kidding. I pulled a Toby and rubbed it in his face as best I could! Floating in an abyss is a cool, slightly unnerving feeling. Like experiencing the shock waves from the volcano in Guatemala, this was another beautiful experience of feeling tiny.
I’ve condensed all our diving into a seven-ish minute video. Sorry not sorry that it’s long. And yes, as my dad has already pointed out, starting with this kind of diving has probably set unrealistic expectations for future diving, but so it goes.
Because Dyl missed the Blue Hole dive day, he suggested we take a little Cessna flight to see it from above, something we could just barely squeeze in to our itinerary, but something very much worth it to see the spectacular reefs from above. Dope.
Our last stop in Belize left the most lasting impression on me, despite the superlative nature of the diving. We went caving in Maya country, scrambling along an underground stream through limestone caverns, some narrow enough you had to go sideways to pass, some big enough you could build a nice sized house in them. We went about 800m into the mountain; the further in we got, the more evidence of human sacrifice there was. There was a serious drought from 750-900AD, a time corresponding with the peak of Mayan civilization, a peak reached because the drought in part brought about its decline.
Anyway, the Mayans made offerings to the rain god in the form of sacrifices. First years of mild drought? Small sacrifices like pots and blood. Fifty years in? Maybe a human, but an older one, not that pure. 150 years in? Twin babies, the purest of the pure, and symbolic of their creation myth in which Hero Twins went to the underworld and defeated death. Up to this point, they’ve found about 20 sets of remains in that cave alone. The drought eventually ended, but so did Mayan civilization. Bummer. Cameras have fallen and cracked skulls, or tourists distracted by cameras have stepped on some of the artifacts, thus cameras are banned (fair enough) and I can only provide the image search link, but it was otherworldly, an experience I doubt I’ll ever have again.
With so many treasures below ground/water, I’m sure there’s a terrible “don’t just scratch the surface” pun to make about visiting Belize, but I’m tired and it’s not coming to me, so…the end.