Belize Aggressor III Trip Report – April 21-28
After many trips to Cozumel, Bonaire and Grand Cayman, I had been thinking for some time about a new Caribbean dive destination. I have read lots of trip reports on SB and reader reports on Undercurrent about land based and live aboard based Belize trips over the last few years and I concluded that for my specific needs and desires, a live aboard would be my preferred choice. Back in October and early November 2017, I began researching dive vacation options for April 2018. I came across a 34% off special being offered by Diviac (now PADI Travel) on the Belize Aggressor boats. There were only a few spots left on the BA III for the dates that worked best for me, so I jumped on it. Due to the big discount, I decided to upgrade to the only master stateroom on the boat. Total cost per person for the week came out to $2,100.
Our trip began with an early Friday morning flight out of Los Angeles on Southwest Airlines. We didn’t board the boat until Saturday afternoon, but wanted to get in a day early in the event of any luggage snafus. We had a 2.5-hour layover at the Houston Hobby airport before changing planes for our flight to Belize, which landed at 3:25pm. Belize City is 1 hour ahead of West Coast time. Flight cost was $496 round trip. I have a companion pass with Southwest, so my wife flew for free.
We met another Aggressor couple in baggage claim and went in together for a taxi, as we were both staying at the Radisson Fort George hotel, which is adjacent to the pier where both Aggressor boats are docked. They charged us $10 per person for the taxi, which was a large passenger van and then proceeded to pile 5 other people and their luggage in with us. All good and the taxi time was roughly 40 minutes after dropping 3 young girls off first at a Water Taxi stand. Not too much to say about the Radisson. It is a hotel and by the looks of it, one of the nicer places to stay in Belize City. All the staff were extremely helpful and happy and enjoyable to be around. We were afforded a late checkout of 2pm, which was nice since we couldn’t board the boat until 3pm. They even wheeled all our luggage over to the boat. Room was clean, shower was hot and with good pressure and the AC, TV and WIFI worked well, albeit the AC was a tad loud. We were placed in an adjacent building called the garden villas, I think. It was perfect. We were next to the annex pool which was super refreshing. There are two onsite bars and restaurants. One indoor and one outdoor and also bakery/café. We did a ½ day tour of the Altun Ha ruins on Saturday morning since we had most of the day to kill and couldn’t board the boat until 3pm. It was a 4-hour excursion in total. Cost was $74 per person. A little steep, but we enjoyed it and our guide/driver was outstanding.
WATER and SURFACE TEMP: Water temps were a consistent 80-81 and no current at all below the surface, but a pretty healthy surface current due to moderate winds the first couple days, but settled down the rest of the week. Mostly sunny skies and gorgeous conditions all week.
BOAT STUFF: I absolutely love the ladder for getting back into the boat. It is wide, it is sturdy and it is long and sits perfectly deep into the water for standing right on it and walking up. They do have two 100cf steel cylinders that can be reserved ahead of time. I reserved one and was super happy with it all week. Combined with my rig and exposure protection, I required zero lbs. of additional lead. There are 8 bunk rooms on the lower deck. All with bunk beds and one master stateroom on the top deck adjacent to the captain’s quarters and the wheelhouse. It has an oversized full size bed (between a queen and full). This is where my wife and I stayed and we loved it. The dive deck is spacious and on the aft and has two very nice warm outdoor showers. There is 1 bathroom on the dive deck. We really could have used 1 more. The salon and dining area is ample for the number of guests and well air conditioned. Food was good, if not a tad salty at times and plentiful. They are good about accommodating food allergies or preferences. The upper deck is a sun deck with lounge chairs, a Jacuzzi that can seat 3-4, the master stateroom and wheelhouse. The dive gear up area is very roomy. About 4-5 easy stairs brings you to the aft where you giant stride into the water. There are also 2 hot shower heads down there.
Day 1
We boarded the boat at 3pm on Saturday. First order of business was to find a dive station and unpack our dive gear and set it up. Each dive station has a dedicated bin for mask and any other miscellaneous gear not attached to the BCD. After gear set up, we were escorted to our room and given a nice orientation to the room and where everything was. After that, it was a bit of milling around, walking the boat to get familiarized and chit chatting with other guests until about 6pm when we had a group/boat orientation and formal introductions to staff and other guests. Dinner was served shortly thereafter around 7pm. We had a pretty eclectic group. 2 Italians, 1 Brazilian, 2 French and 12 North Americans from Florida, Washington, California, Illinois and Nevada.
Day 2
The boat left the dock at 5am and we powered to Turneffe Reef. Continental breakfast gets going around 5:30am and the full hot breakfast at 7am. The dive briefing began at 8am with a detailed briefing of the dive site. Dive site for the morning dives was SANDY SLOPE. It was basically as it sounds. A Sandy Slope from the mooring pin at 30 feet to about 105 feet. This was an unimpressive dive site. Some random coral heads, lots of sand, not much sea life. Made for an easy enough check out dive to begin the trip, but otherwise, I was ready to move off this site as soon as possible; but the SOP is 2 dives per dive site in the morning and 2 afternoon dives + the night dive at a different site.
Dives 3, 4 and the night dive #5 of the day had us move a mile south to a site called ZIPLINE. Not sure why it was called that. It was pretty similar to Sandy Slope. Coral heads and sand in between. Despite the less than spectacular aesthetics of the dive site, we had some nice encounters here and particularly on the night dive. We had an incredible 10- minute Octopus encounter; pair of spotted morays out hunting, a slipper lobster a huge southern ray, big scorpion fish, free swimming green moray, a cute as could be balloon fish and the coolest thing I have ever seen, but no idea what it is, so we called it the “KILTED ANEMONE CRAB” it was a crab inside a plaid colored shell with 3 tube anemones attached to its shell.
The night dive concluded with the staff providing hot chocolate w/ or w/o some creamy rum.
After many trips to Cozumel, Bonaire and Grand Cayman, I had been thinking for some time about a new Caribbean dive destination. I have read lots of trip reports on SB and reader reports on Undercurrent about land based and live aboard based Belize trips over the last few years and I concluded that for my specific needs and desires, a live aboard would be my preferred choice. Back in October and early November 2017, I began researching dive vacation options for April 2018. I came across a 34% off special being offered by Diviac (now PADI Travel) on the Belize Aggressor boats. There were only a few spots left on the BA III for the dates that worked best for me, so I jumped on it. Due to the big discount, I decided to upgrade to the only master stateroom on the boat. Total cost per person for the week came out to $2,100.
Our trip began with an early Friday morning flight out of Los Angeles on Southwest Airlines. We didn’t board the boat until Saturday afternoon, but wanted to get in a day early in the event of any luggage snafus. We had a 2.5-hour layover at the Houston Hobby airport before changing planes for our flight to Belize, which landed at 3:25pm. Belize City is 1 hour ahead of West Coast time. Flight cost was $496 round trip. I have a companion pass with Southwest, so my wife flew for free.
We met another Aggressor couple in baggage claim and went in together for a taxi, as we were both staying at the Radisson Fort George hotel, which is adjacent to the pier where both Aggressor boats are docked. They charged us $10 per person for the taxi, which was a large passenger van and then proceeded to pile 5 other people and their luggage in with us. All good and the taxi time was roughly 40 minutes after dropping 3 young girls off first at a Water Taxi stand. Not too much to say about the Radisson. It is a hotel and by the looks of it, one of the nicer places to stay in Belize City. All the staff were extremely helpful and happy and enjoyable to be around. We were afforded a late checkout of 2pm, which was nice since we couldn’t board the boat until 3pm. They even wheeled all our luggage over to the boat. Room was clean, shower was hot and with good pressure and the AC, TV and WIFI worked well, albeit the AC was a tad loud. We were placed in an adjacent building called the garden villas, I think. It was perfect. We were next to the annex pool which was super refreshing. There are two onsite bars and restaurants. One indoor and one outdoor and also bakery/café. We did a ½ day tour of the Altun Ha ruins on Saturday morning since we had most of the day to kill and couldn’t board the boat until 3pm. It was a 4-hour excursion in total. Cost was $74 per person. A little steep, but we enjoyed it and our guide/driver was outstanding.
WATER and SURFACE TEMP: Water temps were a consistent 80-81 and no current at all below the surface, but a pretty healthy surface current due to moderate winds the first couple days, but settled down the rest of the week. Mostly sunny skies and gorgeous conditions all week.
BOAT STUFF: I absolutely love the ladder for getting back into the boat. It is wide, it is sturdy and it is long and sits perfectly deep into the water for standing right on it and walking up. They do have two 100cf steel cylinders that can be reserved ahead of time. I reserved one and was super happy with it all week. Combined with my rig and exposure protection, I required zero lbs. of additional lead. There are 8 bunk rooms on the lower deck. All with bunk beds and one master stateroom on the top deck adjacent to the captain’s quarters and the wheelhouse. It has an oversized full size bed (between a queen and full). This is where my wife and I stayed and we loved it. The dive deck is spacious and on the aft and has two very nice warm outdoor showers. There is 1 bathroom on the dive deck. We really could have used 1 more. The salon and dining area is ample for the number of guests and well air conditioned. Food was good, if not a tad salty at times and plentiful. They are good about accommodating food allergies or preferences. The upper deck is a sun deck with lounge chairs, a Jacuzzi that can seat 3-4, the master stateroom and wheelhouse. The dive gear up area is very roomy. About 4-5 easy stairs brings you to the aft where you giant stride into the water. There are also 2 hot shower heads down there.
Day 1
We boarded the boat at 3pm on Saturday. First order of business was to find a dive station and unpack our dive gear and set it up. Each dive station has a dedicated bin for mask and any other miscellaneous gear not attached to the BCD. After gear set up, we were escorted to our room and given a nice orientation to the room and where everything was. After that, it was a bit of milling around, walking the boat to get familiarized and chit chatting with other guests until about 6pm when we had a group/boat orientation and formal introductions to staff and other guests. Dinner was served shortly thereafter around 7pm. We had a pretty eclectic group. 2 Italians, 1 Brazilian, 2 French and 12 North Americans from Florida, Washington, California, Illinois and Nevada.
Day 2
The boat left the dock at 5am and we powered to Turneffe Reef. Continental breakfast gets going around 5:30am and the full hot breakfast at 7am. The dive briefing began at 8am with a detailed briefing of the dive site. Dive site for the morning dives was SANDY SLOPE. It was basically as it sounds. A Sandy Slope from the mooring pin at 30 feet to about 105 feet. This was an unimpressive dive site. Some random coral heads, lots of sand, not much sea life. Made for an easy enough check out dive to begin the trip, but otherwise, I was ready to move off this site as soon as possible; but the SOP is 2 dives per dive site in the morning and 2 afternoon dives + the night dive at a different site.
Dives 3, 4 and the night dive #5 of the day had us move a mile south to a site called ZIPLINE. Not sure why it was called that. It was pretty similar to Sandy Slope. Coral heads and sand in between. Despite the less than spectacular aesthetics of the dive site, we had some nice encounters here and particularly on the night dive. We had an incredible 10- minute Octopus encounter; pair of spotted morays out hunting, a slipper lobster a huge southern ray, big scorpion fish, free swimming green moray, a cute as could be balloon fish and the coolest thing I have ever seen, but no idea what it is, so we called it the “KILTED ANEMONE CRAB” it was a crab inside a plaid colored shell with 3 tube anemones attached to its shell.
The night dive concluded with the staff providing hot chocolate w/ or w/o some creamy rum.