sdwho
Contributor
A somewhat delayed report from our trip to Turneffe Island Lodge May 27-June 3.
Travel/Accomodations: Flew US Air from DC to Belize with a plane change in Charlotte NC. No delays, no difficulties. Even had a less than full plane (meaning middle seat free) for the Charlotte-Belize leg. Was met promptly at the airport by the TIL staff and transported by bus to the dock. There is a hotel/bar/casino adjacent to the dock and we had some lunch and our first (of many) Belikin beers. Unfortunately, the layover at the dock was a couple of hours longer than planned (and it was already planned to be pretty long), so it got old after a while. But it gave us a chance to meet some of our fellow TIL'ers. Interestingly, our first impression was that most people we were meeting were going to TIL for the fishing, not diving. But in truth there was a pretty even mix. The boat trip from Belize to TIL takes 1 1/2 hours and because of windy, choppy conditions, it was pretty bouncy. But once we arrived, we were greeted by the terrific staff...Rona and Asaph, Johnny and Rikka, Sherman the bartender. Very efficient operation..from the time we got off the plane TIL dealt with our luggage, getting it on the bus, on the boat and to our rooms. That first evening we took care of all the c-card etc paperwork, got a briefing, had drinks and dinner. It was completely painless.
We had one of the cabanas and it was amazing...just beautiful. The whole place is unlike anywhere I've been. Imagine Little Cayman Beach Resort if it was the only thing on Little Cayman. No cars, no phone, no tv, no anything. Looked like the Corona ads with just a couple of chairs looking at the sea. Amazing. The food was great. Everythiing was great. And while it was a bit breezy most of the time, that was actually a good thing, as it turns out that the one day the breeze died, the mosquitos showed up in force and they were fierce -- even wetsuits didn't slow them down.
The Diving: We generally did three dives a day: two in the am an one pm. The sites are all within 10 minutes of the Lodge, so you'd do a one tank dive, come back, have a surface interval back at the Lodge and then go out again. We only had to set up our gear the first day. After that, everything was done for us. There were two boats, each with around 8 divers (it varied, as sometimes someone would sit out a dive). There was a nite dive scheduled but both boats voted to scrap it and do another afternoon dive instead. The reports were that the night dive wasn't that interesting and that the worms might be out. Both groups of divers, plus a number of the fishing folk went to the Blue Hole one day, with snorkel trips for the non-divers.
Blue Hole: was a lot more interesting than I expected. Its a 130 foot, no nitrox dive. It gets pretty chilly part way down, but you stop noticing immediately. The stalactites were cool, the groupers were cool and the dozen sharks that visited us as we ascended were very cool. Hittng the temp change on the way up was like diving into a hot tub! We spent our surface interval on Half Moon Caye and did a couple of dives around there. And we had a pretty decent sized pod of dolphins join us for the boat ride back to TIL (which is over an hour away).
Our other dives around Turneffe were "drift dives" for the most part. I put "drift" in quotes because there was basically no current. What made them drift dives was the lack of a mooring ball. But you could go anywhere and not have any real current to go against. Our dive master and captain (Brad and Marcel) were great. Brad was constantly finding cool fish and critters and pointing them out to us, like a harlequin pipefish
A list of some of the fish/critters we saw: lots of indigo hamlets, lots of queen angels (shy, however) and grey angels (not so shy), more spotted drum than I'd ever seen in one place, whitespotted toadfish (very very cool), eels (green, spotted, golden), turtles (loggerhead and hawksbill), all the usual grunts, snappers, parrots, damsels, jawfish, etc., trunkfish, scrawled filefish, whitespooted filefish. One of the neat things was finding cool juveniles, including juvie angels, drums, and damsels. Crab, lobster, shrimp, grouper (tiger and nassau). An occasional nurse shark.
Our biggest disappointment: only had a couple of spotted eagle ray encounters (the other boat, however, saw them on almost every dive). On the other hand the highlights were numerous: turtles (including a couple of enormous loggerheads) on every dive. Some very cool behavioral stuff, including spawning parrot fish and a great turtle v. damsel fish encounter (that the damsel won, of course). Also some nice encounters with feeding turtles, typically accompanied by an angel. Even ran into a couple of stray remora that tried to attach themselves to one of the divers.
The other highlight was simply the incredible condition of the reef and the enormous variety of coral and sponges. Most caribbean sites that we dive (T&C, GC, LC, Coz) get so much more "traffic" and have so much more development (well, maybe not LC), that you don't realize how much "damage" has been done, at least not until you dive somewhere that gets very little activity (we never saw another boat other than at the Blue Hole--I think the aggressor and peter hughes boats may spend a day at Turneffe, but that's about it).
All in all, it was a fabulous trip and I'd highly recommend it....
sdwho
Travel/Accomodations: Flew US Air from DC to Belize with a plane change in Charlotte NC. No delays, no difficulties. Even had a less than full plane (meaning middle seat free) for the Charlotte-Belize leg. Was met promptly at the airport by the TIL staff and transported by bus to the dock. There is a hotel/bar/casino adjacent to the dock and we had some lunch and our first (of many) Belikin beers. Unfortunately, the layover at the dock was a couple of hours longer than planned (and it was already planned to be pretty long), so it got old after a while. But it gave us a chance to meet some of our fellow TIL'ers. Interestingly, our first impression was that most people we were meeting were going to TIL for the fishing, not diving. But in truth there was a pretty even mix. The boat trip from Belize to TIL takes 1 1/2 hours and because of windy, choppy conditions, it was pretty bouncy. But once we arrived, we were greeted by the terrific staff...Rona and Asaph, Johnny and Rikka, Sherman the bartender. Very efficient operation..from the time we got off the plane TIL dealt with our luggage, getting it on the bus, on the boat and to our rooms. That first evening we took care of all the c-card etc paperwork, got a briefing, had drinks and dinner. It was completely painless.
We had one of the cabanas and it was amazing...just beautiful. The whole place is unlike anywhere I've been. Imagine Little Cayman Beach Resort if it was the only thing on Little Cayman. No cars, no phone, no tv, no anything. Looked like the Corona ads with just a couple of chairs looking at the sea. Amazing. The food was great. Everythiing was great. And while it was a bit breezy most of the time, that was actually a good thing, as it turns out that the one day the breeze died, the mosquitos showed up in force and they were fierce -- even wetsuits didn't slow them down.
The Diving: We generally did three dives a day: two in the am an one pm. The sites are all within 10 minutes of the Lodge, so you'd do a one tank dive, come back, have a surface interval back at the Lodge and then go out again. We only had to set up our gear the first day. After that, everything was done for us. There were two boats, each with around 8 divers (it varied, as sometimes someone would sit out a dive). There was a nite dive scheduled but both boats voted to scrap it and do another afternoon dive instead. The reports were that the night dive wasn't that interesting and that the worms might be out. Both groups of divers, plus a number of the fishing folk went to the Blue Hole one day, with snorkel trips for the non-divers.
Blue Hole: was a lot more interesting than I expected. Its a 130 foot, no nitrox dive. It gets pretty chilly part way down, but you stop noticing immediately. The stalactites were cool, the groupers were cool and the dozen sharks that visited us as we ascended were very cool. Hittng the temp change on the way up was like diving into a hot tub! We spent our surface interval on Half Moon Caye and did a couple of dives around there. And we had a pretty decent sized pod of dolphins join us for the boat ride back to TIL (which is over an hour away).
Our other dives around Turneffe were "drift dives" for the most part. I put "drift" in quotes because there was basically no current. What made them drift dives was the lack of a mooring ball. But you could go anywhere and not have any real current to go against. Our dive master and captain (Brad and Marcel) were great. Brad was constantly finding cool fish and critters and pointing them out to us, like a harlequin pipefish
A list of some of the fish/critters we saw: lots of indigo hamlets, lots of queen angels (shy, however) and grey angels (not so shy), more spotted drum than I'd ever seen in one place, whitespotted toadfish (very very cool), eels (green, spotted, golden), turtles (loggerhead and hawksbill), all the usual grunts, snappers, parrots, damsels, jawfish, etc., trunkfish, scrawled filefish, whitespooted filefish. One of the neat things was finding cool juveniles, including juvie angels, drums, and damsels. Crab, lobster, shrimp, grouper (tiger and nassau). An occasional nurse shark.
Our biggest disappointment: only had a couple of spotted eagle ray encounters (the other boat, however, saw them on almost every dive). On the other hand the highlights were numerous: turtles (including a couple of enormous loggerheads) on every dive. Some very cool behavioral stuff, including spawning parrot fish and a great turtle v. damsel fish encounter (that the damsel won, of course). Also some nice encounters with feeding turtles, typically accompanied by an angel. Even ran into a couple of stray remora that tried to attach themselves to one of the divers.
The other highlight was simply the incredible condition of the reef and the enormous variety of coral and sponges. Most caribbean sites that we dive (T&C, GC, LC, Coz) get so much more "traffic" and have so much more development (well, maybe not LC), that you don't realize how much "damage" has been done, at least not until you dive somewhere that gets very little activity (we never saw another boat other than at the Blue Hole--I think the aggressor and peter hughes boats may spend a day at Turneffe, but that's about it).
All in all, it was a fabulous trip and I'd highly recommend it....
sdwho
