March 19…. Shark!!

We went ashore today via tender, something I’ve never done before. The port of Belize City in… you guessed it, Belize, does not have facilities for cruise ships to dock, so they just anchor up a few miles from shore, and then a fleet of “small” boats come and take people to and from shore. These little boats probably held a couple hundred passengers each, but in a ship of over 3500… it takes some time to transfer everyone that wants to go. And to top it off, it’s about a 30 minute trip.

Anyway, we were on the 4th tender, so plenty of time to make it to our excursion for the day.

Today, we’re snorkeling on the world’s second largest barrier reef system. The reef offshore of Belize stretches for MILES, and most of it is protected habitat, so it’s beautiful and packed with life.

We snorkeled the reef for a bit, then moved to a new location to meet the stingrays and SHARKS!

In about 4 feet of water, we bailed out of the boat into a gaggle, a school, a BUNCH of stingrays swimming every which way around us. The flappy things were all over the place and would just run you over if you held still. All I could think was “is this what happened to Steve Irwin?” Constantly dodging them, I moved to the other side of our boat and straight into a school of sharks!

The guides had spread sardines around and dozens of nurse sharks crowded in, twisting and turning and bumping us all. The guides are all about “they’re just nurse sharks, no biggie”. I’ve always heard that nurse sharks account for more shark attacks than any other species in the ocean, because people disregard them because they are “just” nurse sharks. 😳😳😳

After shark time, we went ashore to Caye Caulker for lunch. Caye Caulker is one of 1200 islands off the coast of Belize, almost 400 of which are inhabited. Many of them are just mangrove hammocks, so calling them “islands” might be a stretch, but our guide says there’s dry land inside most of them even if only a few square feet. 🤪

After lunch, it was back to the water to Tarpon Cove, basically a juvenile tarpon nursery. The fish congregate here till they’re big enough to move out to the open ocean. Fun fact, tarpon are completely protected here. Catch and release only. Belize makes so much money from sport fisherman coming here for tarpon, that they make a point to fully protect the species.

The guides passed out sardines and let everyone have a shot at hand feeding the big fish. Just hold a sardine off the boat and a couple feet out of the water and the tarpon did the rest.

Finishing our tour, back to shore, we did a bit of shopping and got my obligatory tshirt, then a tender ride back to the ship. Great weather and another fantastic day in paradise.