AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye More Cheeseburgers...make that Canucks in Paradise

Hola One and All!!

I've been lurking a few days now and just checking out some of the threads trying to glean some information from them. I figured I should probably register and introduce myself.

Being the family travel planner, and in an ever ongoing quest to find the perfect vacation paradise that hasn't been killed by over-tourism, I settled on AC.

My family and I will be arriving on AC at the end of March 2008. This will be our first time to "La Isla Bonita" and look forward to the day we get on the plane heading south.

"My Family" would be defined as my wife, son, our newborn (due date is Feb 9th!!!! I'm so EXCITED!!!), brother-in-law, father-in-law, and mother-in-law. There's a possibilty one of my dive buddies and his girlfriend might join us as well.

As you can probably tell by my screen name, I'm a diver and have been "going down" for about 3-4 years now. My entire family will also be divers by the end of summer.

Any tips, suggestions, cautions, and recommendations are welcome.

We have already booked our airline tickets and reserved our accommodations.

I look forward to possibly meeting some of you as well for a "decompression beer", although I'm a bit of a pirate and prefer my rum!

Cheers!!

Jeff Barrett

"My entire family will also be divers by the end of summer."
C'mon...give the baby a break! It needs a little time to be a kid before taking a dive course!

Oops. My bad. Let me rephrase that....

"My entire family", minus my wife, my son, and our newborn will be certified by the end of the summer. My wife will have her classroom and pool sessions completed, and will do her certs on AC.

However, the running joke around the dive shop is that our little bun in the oven will only have to do his/her certification dives when they are old enough.

Can anyone here make any recommendations on "must do" dive sites, other than the Blue Hole?

Maybe it's just me, but I would suggest Hol Chan. Yeah, it's only a thirty foot dive, but the place is beautiful with a lot of critters. Probably a good first warm water experience for new divers. I was always told that on your first bunch of dives, you spend a lot of time surviving and don't enjoy the full impact of the surroundings. A shallower dive would probably put them at ease faster. The really good stuff is out on the atolls, a longer boat ride away, but the dive sites closer in just outside the reef are very nice. Turneffe and Lighthouse are fantastic, but again, a longer boat ride.

The sites right outside the Hol Chan Channel are really nice as well. Pillar Corals and Eagle Ray alley, I think their called. They used to be my favorite. Also, If you have enough experience and you can find a dive shop to take you, the tunnels on the north side of the island (M&M and Love tunnels?) are really cool. Its been awhile since I've been 'down', so I may not be remembering the names correctly.

Thanks! I'll definitely keep both your suggestions in mind. The caves sound like a bit of fun. I've got lots of experience, especially in cold, dark, extremely poor viz water that require dry suits to dive in.

Any good wall dives?

The two wall dives you do after the Blue Hole dive are awesome.

Awesome. What kind of depths do the top of the walls start at?

The walls on Lighthouse Atoll (that JZB is talking about) and on Turneffe Atoll both start at around 40'- 50' and go on down to the abyss. If the sea is clear (it hasn't been lately) these can be spectacular. I think the Lighthouse walls are superior to those on Turneffe, but that's a very personal opinion. From what I hear (I haven't been there) the walls on Glover's Atoll are less impressive, though the shallower diving there is superb.

There are several other sites off AC that have tunnels/canyons/swim throughs etc. Tackle Box for example has some superb ones. My favourite dives here are the ones outside Hol Chan that JZB referred to, but not especially for the terrain (though that is very good) - especially if you dive here in late afternoon when it's getting quite gloomy (the reef creates its own shadow) you stand a good chance of seeing large sharks. On a single dive there I've seen a couple of hammerheads, a tiger and a mako.

People often say there's no wall at AC. That isn't strictly true - there is one, but it doesn't start much above 200'. Then it goes down in a series of shelves to the abyss. There is very deep water there and you can sometimes see creatures associated with extreme depths, unlike some other areas further north (Playa del Carmen for example) where those depths aren't attainable.

In my view the diving on the barrier reef at AC is excellent and much underrated. The spur and groove coral formations are really quite unusual - I've certainly not seen them anywhere else in the world.

Pedro, thanks for the extremely informative information.

I'm leaving you a PM shortly.