When people talk about traveling to Belize, it's usually for the diving, said to be some of the best in the world. Out to sea from the mainland and the cayes, Belize has the world’s second longest barrier reef after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, extending the length of the country and northward into Mexico. The entire reef is protected and constitutes a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While that makes for great diving, the beach life isn’t as good as elsewhere since the reefs block the waves necessary for fun at the beach. No surfing here!

We had three nights on Caye Caulker as part of my tour with Intrepid . The caye is quite small with not much more than 1,000 permanent residents concentrated on its southern side. The caye was actually cut in half by Hurricane Hattie in 1960 and that part north of the cut remains a mostly pristine mangrove estuary. Ambergris Caye to the north is much longer and larger, but Caulker is a quiet beach and diving water sports destination. The ride to Caye Caulker from Belize City took only about 45 minutes on a fast water taxi.

Although I once got certification for diving many years ago, I haven’t kept up with it and don’t have much desire to dive again. I was quite weirded out by being under water. I am open to snorkeling, though, and joined a full day snorkeling trip one day from Caye Caulker. I suppose because I don’t dive, it didn’t occur to me to get a waterproof camera for underwater photography. It’s also been the case that many of the places I’ve gone on snorkeling trips, what there was to see underwater wasn’t all that impressive, including a short trip I took only last month in Jamaica .

The reefs off Belize couldn’t be more different, though. Wow! I’m used to seeing lots of pretty coral and some colorful fish when I’ve snorkeled in places like the Maldives and the Red Sea in Egypt but not much in the way of charismatic marine fauna. I think I saw more in one day on the reef off Belize than I’ve seen anywhere else in my life – huge sting rays, nurse sharks (not dangerous), loggerhead sea turtles, barracudas, tarpon, jacks, and a green moray eel. And these weren’t at a distance either. In some cases I was swimming along directly above the subjects. On other snorkeling trips I’ve done, they take you to good spots in the boat and point you in the direction of where to snorkel, but on this trip the guides got in the water and guided the group around pointing out the best things to see, many of which I might not have spotted if on my own. Altogether it was a great trip to five different locations around the reef north of Caye Caulker including the Holchan Marine Reserve.

If you don’t dive there’s not much else to do around sleepy Caye Caulker and quickly found myself feeling kind of bored. I’m much more into beaches where there’s good surf for frolicking about in the sea than in still water. I said goodbye to the other people on my tour the last night of the trip and in the late afternoon of my third day took the last water taxi of the day back to Belize City in time to catch an overnight bus to Cancun, Mexico.