Thursday, July 6, 2017

Belize Trip - Exploring the Blue Range

There is plenty of access to some fantastic snorkeling from Billy Hawk Caye. That place seemed to have it all. I keep thinking about bringing my family back there sometime.


Just to the northwest of BHC you will see a couple of white buoys. There is some great snorkeling right there, and you can tie off your kayaks to the buoys, which is much faster than swimming from the beach of BHC.


Anchorage for kayaks




Giant brain coral
We would go back to that area several times during our stay at BHC, as its so close by.


We also took a day to explore the islands and mangroves of the Blue Range Group. There looked to be some good snorkeling just off Hangman's Caye, so we wanted to check that out too.


Lots of islands to explore. Good snorkeling reef circled in blue
The leeside of the islands are always flat calm with good visibility. we drifted around looking for barracuda, bonefish, etc..


Lots of places among the mangroves to explore. There were a lot of young barracudas in this particular area

The islands all had a mixture of smaller resorts, private cottages and fishing shacks. Quite a contrast at times




We found a small beach to land our kayaks, and we swam out to where the reef was. Didn't see anything spectacular at the time, however, I did get assaulted by a remora. It kept trying to go up my shorts and attach to my inner thigh. No matter what I did, it wouldn't go away. I kept trying to kick it, grab it, etc.. and it would not go away, it was relentless! Its very funny now, but at the time I had no idea what happens when a remora attaches itself to you, or how hard it would be to get off. In the end, I had to book it for shore, while the guys kept it occupied. It followed them all the way back to the beach. Crazy!