There were 5 of us - me and my wife (the only divers), my wife's parents (who've traveled to 93 countries and even visited Antarctica a few years back), and my brother. We stayed at Casa Caracol - worked out perfect for our group. The wife & I took the back bedroom and hogged that adjoining bathroom. Her parents stayed in the middle bedroom with the king bed and my brother stayed in the front bedroom. Phil & Marie were great hosts, and really worked hard to keep all our activities organized. We did in this order - Lamanai Trip (everyone) on day 2, Shark/Ray Alley & Hol Chan snorkeling on Day 3 (everyone), Cave Tubing & Belize Zoo on Day 4 with Mark McField (everyone), then started splitting up on activities as the in-laws leave first and we wanted to do diving too. In-laws went to Butterfly Farm and thousand foot waterfall next day, we did 2 dives with Protech Belize as warm-up for next day's Blue Hole trip with Amigos Del Mar. Did these 2 dives on air with 60' or so max depth profiles - dive guide was on Nitrox and this was his fourth dive that day and he still had a night dive to do. Saw eagle ray on one dive and turtle on the next, at about 40' away - vis was about 60' max. Also arranged for and paid for our Nitrox tanks for blue hole trip at Protech Belize. Next day, in-laws depart, visiting Altun Ha before going to Belize International to return to Houston. Brother goes snorkeling at Mexico Rocks, has a great time. We go on Blue Hole trip - great trip! Did blue hole first on 28% O2 EAN at 137 feet - perfect mix, no narcosis symptoms, 1.45 ATA O2, sharks eveywhere. One 6-7 foot reef shark came straight towards us then suddenly turned head down & belly towards us at 10 feet away and disappears in the blue!!! Vis was 30'-40'. Watched shark feeding at boat during safety stop. We were the only ones diving Nitrox, and the hang tanks at safety stop were air also. Fortunately, we have dive computers capable of programming with 3 different O2/N2 mixes and switchable during the dive - we programmed 21% as alternate mix in case we have a situation occur where we would need to switch to air - something to consider if you do Nitrox on the Blue Hole trip. Watched shark feeding again from boat deck. On to second dive, Half Moon Caye, we use 32% O2 for this dive, everyone else on air. Nice wall dive, reasonable profile (60' range max). Next is lunch on the island, we reconfigure our gear for the third dive while others are going to the bird observation area. Last dive is drift combining Eagle Ray Canyon & The Aquarium (we did 32% O2 on this dive too)- no eagle rays, dive guides did fish feeding that had swarms of sargeant majors & black margates swimming aaaaround us. On the way back, a pod of 10-15 dolphins with a number of smaller (juvenile? adolescent?) dolphins in the pod start jumping / playing around the boat for about 20 minutes. Got home, brother had bought fresh fish fillets from fishermen cleaning fish on a dock, Belizean spice mix, and he barbecued fish & corn for dinner and we had rice & beans as a side dish - one of the best meals we had during the trip! next day, we do a 2 tank air dive in the AM with Protech Belize - Cypress Tunnels (neat swim-through here - only 4 of us diving including dive master) & Cypress Canyon. Return for night dive, seas are still very calm, so we get to do night dive outside the barrier reef at Tuffy. Four of us including dive master in the water. Descend just at twilight, great dive, saw the biggest scorpionfish we'd ever seen, lots of lobster (3 types), 3 basket stars unfurled (2 were 3' or more across, and I found one about the size of a Belizean dollar). Come up from the dive with the few clouds way far on the horizon and a sea of stars above - wonderful! Next morning, do a 2 tank AM air dive with Protech Belize - Cypress Tunnels again (but no swim-through - about a dozen in the group today) and find a few arrow crabs hididng in orange sea lilies (crinoids), and Tuffy again I think. Wife shot 6 rolls of underwater film, will send off for Kodak Sea Processing tomorrow. Lots of brown algae here, colors of sea fans, azure vase sponges, soft corals, etc. somewhat muted because of this - reminded us a lot of St. Croix Cane Bay area because of the brown algae except most diving was spur & groove areas instead of walls or patch reefs. Fly back to USA next day, and back to work today. If you'd like to give me your e-mail address, I'll keep it handy one the pictures come back if you're interested.
Robert