Underwater Underworld

Once again the birds were singing their magical songs as I woke up. We quickly got dressed and my mother and cousins went out on a morning bike ride through the town Ambergris Cay. I was very excited today because today was the day we were going snorkeling! We were going to go to Hol Chan.

We spent the rest of the morning lying around in the hammock enjoying the morning breeze. Then around 11:10 we left for a restaurant called called Lone Star and ordered chicken curry and sandwiches. After eating and paying the bill we start back to the hotel and take the dock to a speed boat our tour guide explained that we would be seeing nurse sharks today. Nurse Sharks don't have teeth and just suck their prey, which is dead fish. Us and another family got in a speed boat we were going to go to another dock pick up another family then headed out. Belize's coral reef is the second largest in the world. The first is Australia's.

After 5 minutes on the speedboat we stopped at an area that was shallow and surrounded by boats. Everyone slowly put their masks and flippers we would need in the water and life vest which was optional. We stayed in the shallow area for about 15 minutes getting used to our water and observing a school of bass that was under the boat. I also saw the enormous waves rushing toward the reef but stopped right before reaching the coral reef because the water was shallow where we were. When I first stuck head into the I screamed at the sight of seagrass thinking I was stepping on fish, but I carefully noticed small fish were in the seagrass. Our toward guide motioned us forward and we started our journey into the deep.

The water was getting deeper, but I began to see more fish a french barracuda to my left. We entered a steep hill going down now coral was everywhere shaped like tubes some looked brains others looked like large pine cones but were lime green. We saw green seagrass and colorful striped fish that were swarms black and white, clown fish, surgeonfish, yellow fish and colorful fish with different patterns. There was a hole in the middle of the reef where scuba divers were scuba diving. We swam past large fish cod, more bass and other fish colorful fish that was in other colors of yellow, blue, light blue white and black that were in huge swarms.

When we got back on the boat we settled with fanta,other soft drinks and water. after two minutes we arrived at a place a with little deeper water this was Shark and Ray alley. These sharks don't have teeth these sharks only eat dead fish. Our guide dumped chum which is dead fish. We swam around the sharks follow the sea turtles and manta rays careful not to touch them. One encouter with the sharks was while I was climbing up the ladder the shark had come so close to me almost touching me. Even if these sharks on only suck at you, you still want to be at least 10 ft away from them.