Hi all, I'm the original poster back again. I'm cutting and pasting a reply I made in another forum, to a lot of comments, including one from the owner of Calypso herself, though I won't re-post her comments here. If anyone wants to see the other discussion of this, go to the Belize Forums.

To specifically address the comments from THIS forum: if Amigos Del Mar has a good reputation in San Pedro, then the other dive shops scare me. I guess I wouldn't have been so unhappy with them if I'd just done the normal daytrip blue hole dive, but the fact that they dropped us off on a remote island with tanks that had never been inspected or serviced, which had corroded O-rings, and one of which was leaking even with the valve fully closed, was extremely wrong. They knew they could get away with it, and were playing a game with us. Even just the daytrip part wasn't very good: they rushed us through the dives, and the food was TERRIBLE!!! And served on the rocking boat, precooked and cold, instead of the promised "island cookout." And you know, we weren't going to say this, but we HEARD from the locals that they smoke pot up on the boat while the divers are down. Not sure if that's true, but that's what the locals were saying, and IF true, is unforgivable. So agree or not, that's our experience.

Now to address the posts from Cheryl, the owner of Calypso: First and foremost, she LIED when she wrote "We did not charge the guests for these tanks as I knew they had problems with the tanks." As I said in my first post, I didn't even see until I went to pay my credit card bill that she had charged us ANOTHER $665 two weeks after we left her facility, but when we demanded a reason, she sent us a list which included not only those tanks, but the other gear rented for that first day from Amigos Del Mar (though she'd told us that the first day's diving was already paid).

First of all, isn’t it good business practice, if not a requirement of Visa merchant services, to send us an e-mail or invoice TELLING us she was charging us more, even though we had authorized the original charge?? She was trying to slip it by, of course, hoping we wouldn’t notice or object. Before we left, we thought we had prepaid for everything except those six air tanks, (which she and Amigos del mar REFUSED to negotiate a price for until we were standing on the dock). Honestly after all the trouble we had with her and the tanks, we were expecting not to be charged for them, and for Cheryl to APOLOGIZE to us for the problems, and to be refunded part of our prepaid trip!

Her reasoning for most of the $665 unauthorized after-the-fact charge was the "guide services" we used while on the island, which she defends by saying "the prices are on my website." Well, here’s how it was: the day after we got to the island, when the staff actually showed up, there was Jennifer, the cook/maid, and Reeves, the local fisherman's son/boat driver. They both stayed in a room at Calypso, they both ate every meal with us, their primary purpose was to keep us happy - we thought they were included in the package. We were never told otherwise, so that’s a reasonable assumption, right? When we asked Reeves if we were paying for his gas and boat, he said “Cheryl’s paying for it. Don’t worry about it, this little motor hardly uses any gas.” We tipped him well, because he was the one responsible for really making our trip, helping us to appreciate the island in spite of all our problems with the facility and equipment. So while it is true, like she says, that she posts prices under “build your own package” for “half and full-day fishing trips” and “snorkeling tours” at the bottom of one page on her website, we sure as heck never saw them, NEVER were informed of them, and NEVER agreed to them. Before we left home, we had no intention of needing any “extra services” and we thought we’d be kayaking out to snorkeling and diving sites right off the island- which we would have done if we knew we’d be charged for the use of the 30-year-old skiff and Reeves’ driving services. Once we were on the island we didn’t get on the internet and go to her website to see if we would be charged for the friendly companionship of the local who was always there with us, the same way as the cook/maid. As a further irony, the fishing trip she mentioned in her e-mail as part of the extra charge was a couple hours one afternoon when we tagged along when Reeves was going fishing anyway, just a few hundred yards off thee front dock. We caught the five fish that were prepared for all four of us over the next three dinners, though we were still charged $50 a day for food on those days. We only ate a small portion of what we caught ourselves, and the rest disappeared; was it saved for other guests, sold, who knows?

Cheryl posted "most guests love the accommodations, the authentic Belizean dishes, the friendly staff, the remote beautiful location and the incredible snorkeling, diving and fishing." The island itself was GREAT. Her accommodations, equipment, and especially service were the problems. I AGREE that the diving is world class- so when her scuba equipment and the tanks she arranged for us failed, and we were 35 miles off shore, we were that much MORE frustrated!! We never said the food wasn’t tasty, just that we would have liked even ONE MEAL other than chicken or fish. And with all the fresh fruit and vegetables available in Belize, vegetables with even some of our dinners, and more than two lunch-sides worth of fruit would have been nice! (On a side note regarding food, I forgot in my first post to mention the refrigerator: dear gods of microscopic bugglies, it was awful! The freezer was solid black/brown on the bottom surface, with scary colors all up the sides; and the refrigerator couldn’t have been cleaned since it was first brought to the island, lots of food spills overlapping and sticking to whatever you put into it. Scary!

I guess the bottom line is that I UNDERSTAND that remote living is tough, and things break down, and it’s harder to keep standards as high as they would be inland. But we were neither asking for nor expecting a full-service extra-frills resort in downtown Belize City! We spend about 50-60 days a year camping as far into the middle of nowhere as we can get in the pacific northwest, for FUN. We live 25 miles from civilization, on acreage at the edge of a national forest. We understand that it’s not easy, and we plan accordingly. But we spent a lot of money for a nice week-long stay in paradise. We weren’t expecting AC and jewelry shopping and gourmet food; we were expecting a functioning room-fan, shower and kitchen. We were expecting a reasonably-nice-smelling toilet and excellent bug netting. We were expecting, because we had been reassured repeatedly that we would have it, functional scuba gear; we could have rented our own before we left the mainland, but we relied on Cheryl’s word. Ron, who lives on the island and functioned as our unofficial dive master, said he’d told Cheryl and her family that she needed to maintain her gear better, and wash it after using it in salt water; sounds basic, doesn’t it? So no, we weren’t charged for using it, but we would happily have paid to rent gear that worked, if we’d known.

Funny how reasonable and nice Cheryl sounds in her posting, and on her website. Oddly, she didn’t sound that reasonable when she responded to two of our e-mails in the last couple of weeks, ignoring our complaints by simply saying that’s just what she charges and we should have known. Well, we want to make sure everyone else knows from now on. Maybe not everyone will agree with our position, but we want to make sure everyone knows it at least. And yes, we’re already in the process of disputing it with the credit card.

So, on to everyone else’s comments! I really appreciate the responses we’ve been getting, and everyone’s concern and desire to reassure me that not all of Belize is like that – believe me, I knew that before I left the country, and can’t wait to come back. I’ll just do it smarter this time. So here goes:

We did about two months of research before our vacation; we bought several books, borrowed others from the library, watched videos, bought maps, and surfed the internet like you wouldn’t believe. Before we even got on the plane, we already knew that if it was everything we thought it was going to be, we were going to move there someday. Now we’re convinced; our next investigative & business trip is tentatively scheduled for August. So it wasn’t lack of research that got us into trouble. We came across Calypso on several Caye-resort lists, all the ones you can register your business with for no cost, but were concerned when we couldn’t find any online reviews. There was actually one posting on the forums, not in this category though, which basically said “Hey, has anyone heard of this place?” And Katie Valk, a local tour planner who has also replied in this posting-thread, said “Careful, I’m not sure they are who they say they are,” which I believe was related to the overall Long Caye development scam. So we wrote to her, and also to Lan Sluder, author of several of our favorite guide books and the Belize First online magazine, who answers questions thoroughly and posts them on his website, no matter how repetitive or seemingly minor. Great guy, great website. He promptly replied that they were indeed an actual business, new but not just a credit-card processing scam. We also asked our inland tour operator, Belizean Sun, to check with the tourist board or whatever registry there is, I can’t remember the name anymore, and Calypso was indeed registered with them. So basically we just figured they were a new business, and we’d have to work twice as hard to make sure we organized everything we’d need. However, the island is where we wanted to be; our next best option was going to be Glovers “Resort” but there were so many posts about the misconduct of the owners, and we got such unprofessional responses to our attempts to contact Glovers, both by phone and e-mail, that we gave up on them; we couldn’t get a straight answer about the scuba diving, while at least Cheryl was giving us clear assurances. So yes, it’s partly our fault for not staying someplace with more of a reputation, but we were asking tough questions and getting solid promises, and Calypso was the only lodging on the whole atoll where we wanted to be.

Another point related to research was our expectations for bugs: Calypso’s website didn’t say a word about them, and other forums were hazy at best and didn’t sound TOO bad at worst; the weeks before we arrived had been particularly wet, so the bugs were worse than anything we’d been reasonably expecting; again, that wasn’t Calypso’s fault at all, except the lack of ANY warning about ANY kinds of bugs. HOWEVER, the crummy bug netting/screens was, in my opinion, inexcusable. With all the holes, it didn’t even deter mosquitoes, but it was never even intended to deter the no-see-ums; I looked like I had measles, with literally hundreds of bites; and we hardly went outside at all from an hour before sundown to several hours after sunrise, and always had bug spray on, even just for sitting around indoors after dinner. The mosquitoes were a joke, not even half as bad as at home on a good day.

As for trash, yes I understand that sea-trash is a fact of life on the islands; but Half-Moon Caye, all of Turneffe Atoll, Ambergris, Caulker, and several others which we passed, had nothing like that, even in the uninhabited areas. And after we complained about it, they did clean up at least the area right in front of Calypso, but not very thoroughly, and not the rest of even the most commonly-used areas of the island. And yes, I know they burned it afterwards; the smoke was blowing towards us. Our neighbors at home do that too, without even the excuse of having to haul it 35 miles on a boat. Not much of an eco-friendly practice, though, huh?

We didn’t try our cell phones there; probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, not being on the Belize monopoly phone company plan. Probably no cell range anyway, they had to use satellite internet access, and used a net-based telephone service, like vonage or whatever, although I thought that was illegal in Belize too. We didn’t use our own laptop there, either, just their computer hooked up to the internet, and that only twice; the cook/maid was kinda reluctant to get off it for even five minutes in the evenings so I could check my e-mail and make sure the house sitter was doing all right.

Regarding the island itself, and the big property scams or whatever is going on there, I’m not in a position to tell the whole story; I don’t know enough myself. I know a lot of properties have been sold and not built on, and a lot more are not selling as the seller would like. I know a lot of the properties are under sludgy mangrove swamp; Calypso itself is on stilts and is half-surrounded by smelly swamp. I know that there’s a resort/restaurant that is closed and empty, along with a medical center. They have a hyperbaric chamber, only the second or third in Belize I think, but it’s just sitting in the box, unused; same with a high-quality scuba tank filling system: just rotting in the sea air.

The couple who live on the island, Ron and Linda, were another of the really good parts. They were great company, and extremely helpful. Ron’s the “island manager,” paid part-time since the island’s not really going anywhere right now. No, their boat wasn’t running when we were there- they were fixing it, though. They went into town on the same boat we returned on, and they have a great relationship with the Audubon people on Half-Moon Caye, the next island over. So basically, the boat that gets to the island the most regularly is run by Richard, sorry don’t know more than just his name. He was Reeves’ dad, he does all the shuttling of the Audubon people, and we saw him twice for the week we were there: once mid-week, and when he picked us up and took us back to Belize City. There were also small fishing vessels there every day, as well as several sailboats and cruise ships anchored around the island.

Ron and Linda are actually putting the final touches on a guest house of their own; they showed it to us, and we’ll definitely be staying there when we go back to lighthouse reef. If anyone wants to go to this wonderful island, I recommend they stay with Ron & Linda instead; we’d be happy to give you their e-mail address, and I’m sure they’ll have a website ready to go soon. The building quality was much higher than at Calypso, the bed we saw was actually comfortable, and if you were the only person/group there, you’d have privacy because you’d be alone in the guesthouse, instead of feeling like your room and bathroom were wide open to the kitchen and living room (sound-wise, at least).

So I think that answers everybody’s questions and comments, if I missed anything let me know. Sorry it’s so long, I just had a lot to say. Thanks again for listening and being so concerned for us, everybody! We really do know it’s not all of Belize itself, and don’t hold it against them.

(Oh yeah, and my screen name, WeGotBelized - I know Cheryl’s not Belizean, but Belize offered the setting and opportunity for our rip-off: so yes, in spite of our best efforts, we did go to Belize and get taken.)