Downing
Contributor
I spent two weeks in Placencia in June diving with Splash Dive Center. It was a great trip.
As most of you know, June kicks off the rainy season in Belize. Right on cue, it started raining about the time I arrived and rained off and on pretty much the entire trip. That's the bad news. The good news is that it almost never rained during the day and never interfered with diving. Instead I was treated to a few fantastic thunderstorms and even a few monsoons at night. But no matter how hard it rained, the sun came out each day no later than 9 o'clock and the rest of the day was beautiful.
I got in around 30 dives. Some were just for fun, others were instructional. I took the Rescue course from Sean, a Splash instructor appropriately nicknamed "Military School," Fish ID and Naturalist from Splash co-owner Ralph, and Deep and Whale Shark from Patty, Splash's other co-owner, operator and probably the best diver I've ever met.
The quality of instruction was excellent. I had already completed the course materials before I arrived, so we went straight into the Knowledge Reviews and then on to the diving. Mr. "Military School" ran me through three straight days of drills with no apparent end in sight before suddenly announcing, "Ok, we're done. You passed." Ralph loves to teach Fish ID/Naturalist and it shows. Patty has more knowledge about diving in her little finger than I'll ever know. The deep dives were remarkable in that visibility was about three feet. Seriously, three feet. I've been deep plenty of times before, but it's been a long time since I've been in viz that bad. In Oregon, even on a bad day you can usually see five or six feet. This was like being in a white-out blizzard and made the compass drills all the more challenging. There was another student with us, and we had to stay within an arm's length of each other to avoid losing contact and having to call the dive.
Splash has three boats and is working on getting a fourth for overnight trips. Each boat can comfortably hold around 20 divers, but we usually had no more than 12 on a boat and half of those would be snorkelers so the dive groups were always quite small. The daily routine went something like this: At 8:30 am I would be picked up at the original Splash shop on the village beach and taken to the new shop just north of the village and south of the airstrip. Mornings there are like organized chaos. Divers are arriving who never called ahead. Divers aren't arriving who did call ahead. Some divers are changing their minds and deciding to stay; other divers are changing their minds and deciding to go. Argh! After two weeks of watching this play out daily I gained a real appreciation for what it takes to successfully manage a dive operation. I think I would eventually go crazy, but somehow Patty manages to handle it all with aplomb. Once it's finally sorted out who's doing what, where, when, why and how, the staff would load the boats and off we'd go around 9:15 or 9:30.
Typical ride time out to the reef was about an hour. We'd usually stop at a deserted caye, unload the snorkelers and lunch, then go dive somewhere in the area. After the dive, we'd return to the caye for lunch and an SI. Lunch was almost always freshly grilled BBQ chicken, cole slaw, potatoes, watermelon and juice--really good stuff--followed by wandering around on the caye, dreaming of winning the lottery back home. Just about the time I'd start getting sleepy, the crew would announce it was time so we'd hop on the boat and go do tank number 2. Afterwards, we'd swing back by the caye, pick up the snorkelers and head home, arriving around 3:00. Since I was doing multiple days with them, Splash let me stash my gear there rather than schlep it back and forth to the cabana. A couple of days we did three tanks, and I worked a night dive in there somewhere during the second week.
I saw all the usual suspects: reef and bull sharks, turtles, dolphins (one swam by about four feet from me once, which was a thrill), rays, snapper, grouper, etc and, unfortunately, lion fish. We tried for Whale Sharks on two different days but no luck, although I was sure we were going to see them on the fourth dive since all the signs were there that they were in the area. The reef was in fine shape, and viz was usually pretty good to great. Water temperature was consistently in the mid-80s.
Splash is well staffed and well organized. Just about everyone there is cross-trained so my boat captain one day could be my dive master the next. They're a great bunch of guys. Top concern was safety, of course, and they took pains to make sure everyone was ok all the time. But they were also about having fun and making sure everyone else was, too. I very much enjoyed hanging out with them on the cayes. The boats were in excellent condition. I took my own gear, but from what I saw of the rental gear it also looked to be in excellent condition. The new dive shop is very nice, with sofas and chairs for comfortable seating and lots of open space to accommodate all the comings and goings. In short, they have their act together.
I stayed at Dianni's Guest House in a small cabana in the village at the reduced rate of $50 a night since it was the off-season. My cabana was behind a small hotel that has cabanas with an ocean view for $10 more a night, but my cabana was nicer on the inside and had a much nicer front porch. Besides, I was spending my days looking in the ocean so I didn't really feel the need to spend my nights looking at it.
Placencia Village isn't the most picturesque of places but it has its fair share of junk/gift shops, restaurants, bars and probably the best gelato shop in Central America. More importantly to me, there's a high quality coffee shop, run by a Scotsman by way of Canada and the Bahamas. There are "For Sale" signs everywhere, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The village struck me as sort of a poor man's San Pedro--not that I've been to San Pedro, mind you. Not quite a complete tourist town but not your typical Belizean village either.
I took two separate days off from diving to explore the countryside. About halfway through my vacation, I went to the Xunantunich Mayan ruins up in the Cayo District. This tour was arranged for me by Patty. My guide and I drove up the peninsula, past the new "international airport" construction site, and took the Southern Highway to Dangriga. After checking out Dangriga, we then drove up the very scenic Hummingbird Highway to Belmopan. We swung by the new American Embassy so I could take a picture but unfortunately photos aren't allowed in this post-911 world. So we hung a left on the Western Highway and continued on our way, passing through San Ignacio before arriving at the ferry, which you have to take across the Mopan River to get to Xunantunich. As ruins go, Xunantunich isn't really all that impressive but you can see Guatemala from the top--unless it starts to rain which it did about a minute after we reached the summit. We then continued on to the border, just so I could see it, then turned around and spent a little time in San Ignacio tracking down a CD before returning home the way we came. Great trip.
The second day off from diving, which was the day before I was flying out, I decided to strike out on my own to see Punta Gorda. I caught the Hokey Pokey water taxi to Independence, then hopped the bus from there to PG, about two hours away going south on the Southern Highway. I spent the day wandering around PG and at one point took a taxi to go visit a beautiful Catholic church about four miles back down the Southern Highway. I had read about it in my tour guide. My cab driver happened to be a member of the church, so he introduced me to one of the Nuns and she graciously gave me a tour of the church and the grounds. Afterwards, I returned to PG, wandered around some more and then caught the bus back to Independence. PG doesn't get many tourists--I saw four young backpacker types and that was it for the entire day--so you get more of a "real Belize" feeling there.
This was my third visit to Belize in four years and by far the most time I've spent on the mainland. Once again, I had a great time and can't wait to return. Having seen most of the country at this point, I'd love to buy some jungle land down a dirt road a few miles out of Punta Gorda or maybe San Ignacio. I'd have the Mennonites build a Belizean style house on stilts, get a couple of German Shepards and an old pickup truck. Now if only I can talk my wife into it...
I'll post some photos later. Time for dinner.
Oops. Forgot to mention that while I was there I got a tatoo. My wife was less than thrilled, ahem, but from now on everywhere I go the Belizean National Bird will go with me, riding on my left shoulder.
As most of you know, June kicks off the rainy season in Belize. Right on cue, it started raining about the time I arrived and rained off and on pretty much the entire trip. That's the bad news. The good news is that it almost never rained during the day and never interfered with diving. Instead I was treated to a few fantastic thunderstorms and even a few monsoons at night. But no matter how hard it rained, the sun came out each day no later than 9 o'clock and the rest of the day was beautiful.
I got in around 30 dives. Some were just for fun, others were instructional. I took the Rescue course from Sean, a Splash instructor appropriately nicknamed "Military School," Fish ID and Naturalist from Splash co-owner Ralph, and Deep and Whale Shark from Patty, Splash's other co-owner, operator and probably the best diver I've ever met.
The quality of instruction was excellent. I had already completed the course materials before I arrived, so we went straight into the Knowledge Reviews and then on to the diving. Mr. "Military School" ran me through three straight days of drills with no apparent end in sight before suddenly announcing, "Ok, we're done. You passed." Ralph loves to teach Fish ID/Naturalist and it shows. Patty has more knowledge about diving in her little finger than I'll ever know. The deep dives were remarkable in that visibility was about three feet. Seriously, three feet. I've been deep plenty of times before, but it's been a long time since I've been in viz that bad. In Oregon, even on a bad day you can usually see five or six feet. This was like being in a white-out blizzard and made the compass drills all the more challenging. There was another student with us, and we had to stay within an arm's length of each other to avoid losing contact and having to call the dive.
Splash has three boats and is working on getting a fourth for overnight trips. Each boat can comfortably hold around 20 divers, but we usually had no more than 12 on a boat and half of those would be snorkelers so the dive groups were always quite small. The daily routine went something like this: At 8:30 am I would be picked up at the original Splash shop on the village beach and taken to the new shop just north of the village and south of the airstrip. Mornings there are like organized chaos. Divers are arriving who never called ahead. Divers aren't arriving who did call ahead. Some divers are changing their minds and deciding to stay; other divers are changing their minds and deciding to go. Argh! After two weeks of watching this play out daily I gained a real appreciation for what it takes to successfully manage a dive operation. I think I would eventually go crazy, but somehow Patty manages to handle it all with aplomb. Once it's finally sorted out who's doing what, where, when, why and how, the staff would load the boats and off we'd go around 9:15 or 9:30.
Typical ride time out to the reef was about an hour. We'd usually stop at a deserted caye, unload the snorkelers and lunch, then go dive somewhere in the area. After the dive, we'd return to the caye for lunch and an SI. Lunch was almost always freshly grilled BBQ chicken, cole slaw, potatoes, watermelon and juice--really good stuff--followed by wandering around on the caye, dreaming of winning the lottery back home. Just about the time I'd start getting sleepy, the crew would announce it was time so we'd hop on the boat and go do tank number 2. Afterwards, we'd swing back by the caye, pick up the snorkelers and head home, arriving around 3:00. Since I was doing multiple days with them, Splash let me stash my gear there rather than schlep it back and forth to the cabana. A couple of days we did three tanks, and I worked a night dive in there somewhere during the second week.
I saw all the usual suspects: reef and bull sharks, turtles, dolphins (one swam by about four feet from me once, which was a thrill), rays, snapper, grouper, etc and, unfortunately, lion fish. We tried for Whale Sharks on two different days but no luck, although I was sure we were going to see them on the fourth dive since all the signs were there that they were in the area. The reef was in fine shape, and viz was usually pretty good to great. Water temperature was consistently in the mid-80s.
Splash is well staffed and well organized. Just about everyone there is cross-trained so my boat captain one day could be my dive master the next. They're a great bunch of guys. Top concern was safety, of course, and they took pains to make sure everyone was ok all the time. But they were also about having fun and making sure everyone else was, too. I very much enjoyed hanging out with them on the cayes. The boats were in excellent condition. I took my own gear, but from what I saw of the rental gear it also looked to be in excellent condition. The new dive shop is very nice, with sofas and chairs for comfortable seating and lots of open space to accommodate all the comings and goings. In short, they have their act together.
I stayed at Dianni's Guest House in a small cabana in the village at the reduced rate of $50 a night since it was the off-season. My cabana was behind a small hotel that has cabanas with an ocean view for $10 more a night, but my cabana was nicer on the inside and had a much nicer front porch. Besides, I was spending my days looking in the ocean so I didn't really feel the need to spend my nights looking at it.
Placencia Village isn't the most picturesque of places but it has its fair share of junk/gift shops, restaurants, bars and probably the best gelato shop in Central America. More importantly to me, there's a high quality coffee shop, run by a Scotsman by way of Canada and the Bahamas. There are "For Sale" signs everywhere, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The village struck me as sort of a poor man's San Pedro--not that I've been to San Pedro, mind you. Not quite a complete tourist town but not your typical Belizean village either.
I took two separate days off from diving to explore the countryside. About halfway through my vacation, I went to the Xunantunich Mayan ruins up in the Cayo District. This tour was arranged for me by Patty. My guide and I drove up the peninsula, past the new "international airport" construction site, and took the Southern Highway to Dangriga. After checking out Dangriga, we then drove up the very scenic Hummingbird Highway to Belmopan. We swung by the new American Embassy so I could take a picture but unfortunately photos aren't allowed in this post-911 world. So we hung a left on the Western Highway and continued on our way, passing through San Ignacio before arriving at the ferry, which you have to take across the Mopan River to get to Xunantunich. As ruins go, Xunantunich isn't really all that impressive but you can see Guatemala from the top--unless it starts to rain which it did about a minute after we reached the summit. We then continued on to the border, just so I could see it, then turned around and spent a little time in San Ignacio tracking down a CD before returning home the way we came. Great trip.
The second day off from diving, which was the day before I was flying out, I decided to strike out on my own to see Punta Gorda. I caught the Hokey Pokey water taxi to Independence, then hopped the bus from there to PG, about two hours away going south on the Southern Highway. I spent the day wandering around PG and at one point took a taxi to go visit a beautiful Catholic church about four miles back down the Southern Highway. I had read about it in my tour guide. My cab driver happened to be a member of the church, so he introduced me to one of the Nuns and she graciously gave me a tour of the church and the grounds. Afterwards, I returned to PG, wandered around some more and then caught the bus back to Independence. PG doesn't get many tourists--I saw four young backpacker types and that was it for the entire day--so you get more of a "real Belize" feeling there.
This was my third visit to Belize in four years and by far the most time I've spent on the mainland. Once again, I had a great time and can't wait to return. Having seen most of the country at this point, I'd love to buy some jungle land down a dirt road a few miles out of Punta Gorda or maybe San Ignacio. I'd have the Mennonites build a Belizean style house on stilts, get a couple of German Shepards and an old pickup truck. Now if only I can talk my wife into it...
I'll post some photos later. Time for dinner.
Oops. Forgot to mention that while I was there I got a tatoo. My wife was less than thrilled, ahem, but from now on everywhere I go the Belizean National Bird will go with me, riding on my left shoulder.
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