diving in Belize in July/August

[haha49]

I was in belize 4 days ago it was very nice.. sunny rained a little and went away tight away i would go to one of the islands though the main land isnt a nice place to be..

 

[mulhalmoni]

why didnt you like the mainland? Not nice? dangerous? 3rd world-y?
I was planning to dive on ambergris but do some travelling around the country a bit - check out some eco stuff and some mayan ruins.

 

[kf6alc]

I went to AC about 5 years ago, and am going back at the end of February and can't wait! my GF and I stayed at the Sunbreeze, and are staying there again, we liked the place alot. I had only been certified the week before, and I dove the Blue Hole for my 7th dive ever and had no problems at all. This time, we are going to dive for a few days on AC, where some friends will meet us, then we will do 3 days at Andersons Cave's Branch Jungle Lodge, doing some ruins and cave trips... should be awesome!

Last time we dove with Aqua Dives, and thought they were fine, but after research here on the board, they don't rate well, so we may try another Dive Op., but it was VERY convenient to have the dive shop RIGHT in front of the Hotel. Not really sure what to do there, who to choose for our dives... Anyone have any input there?

I will post some info after we get back in March.

 

[mulhalmoni]

wow - thats deep huh? I feel fairly comfortable with bouyancy control - why would that be an issue Headers? because of the stalactites? - but 120 feet (about 30 something metres right?) is about as far as I go anyways - I am not an advanced diver
but thanks for the information - I would at least at take the boat trip out to see it .. can you snorkel over the hole?
I know it sounds as if I am obsessed haha... but I am just intruiged as to why I should not dive it!
cheers for the answers!

 

[Headers]

wow - thats deep huh? I feel fairly comfortable with bouyancy control - why would that be an issue Headers? because of the stalactites? - but 120 feet (about 30 something metres right?) is about as far as I go anyways - I am not an advanced diver
but thanks for the information - I would at least at take the boat trip out to see it .. can you snorkel over the hole?
I know it sounds as if I am obsessed haha... but I am just intruiged as to why I should not dive it!
cheers for the answers!

I'm not saying you shouldn't, I have no way to gauge anything about your comfort or skill. It just has the possiblity to be very deep very fast, and you are something like 60 miles (nearly 100 km) to the nearest medical help. Generally it is advised to be a more advanced dive to hopefully prevent accidentally getting deeper than you intend or the rocket ride to the surface. No different than many other deep dives I suppose. I believe that you can snorkel in the area while divers are down, no idea about over the hole proper. It was a fun dive and rather awesome (in the non-valley girl sense of the word).

 

[llenrocs]

I took my non-diving wife to Belize last summer. As a non-diver, I think my wife would rank Belize rather poorly:shakehead. The country is rather 3rd-worldish and poor (garbage piles here & there, shanty towns, etc.) It will be very hot and humid while you are there, with an occasional downpour, although they tend to be pretty short lived. You will have to put up with lots of nasty bugs (mosquitos & sand fleas.) We had to endure a few power and water outages that lasted for the better part of a day. We stayed at a resort in southern Belize near the town of Hopkins.

Belize seems to play up to the adventure/eco-tourist quite a bit: jungle tours, river kayaking, caving, Mayan ruins, etc. This is great if your family doesn't mind roughing it alittle on vacation. The guides are generally very friendly & knowlegible about the subjects. The beaches aren't that great... not the sugar white sands of Florida.... the water near the shore can be pretty dirty and there is lots of sea grass.

Now about the diving:

I dove Turneffe Atoll & Glovers Atoll along with several of the southern barrier reefs. Vis was usually between 50' and 75', never had a really clear day. If you are staying on the mainland, expect long boat rides (45 min+) out to the reefs. The dive masters aren't the best that I have encountered.... I believe the country has laws stating that DM's have to be natural born Belizeans or something. They don't give you a lot of information about what you should expect to encounter in the pre-dive briefing and when they do, they are often way off the mark. The reefs themselves were rather nice & healthy. We generally had a few newer divers with us, so many times they kept us off the walls.

The local beer - Belikin - is pretty good though. I would equate the Belikin Premium to Dos Equis Dark. And the One Barrel rum is a must have.

Watch carefully what you eat and drink. We went with a group of 11 from our LDS. Only 2 of us did not get sick after our trip to the Mayan ruins - I was one of the lucky ones:14:. I think we determined it was the Tuna Salad sandwiches that they fed us for lunch (kept in a cooler without ice). One guy was ill for several weeks after we got back.

Hope this helps with your trip planning. Would I go again? Probably not... there are too many other places that I want to dive. Am I glad I went... sure, but I didn't get sick either.

Sean

 

[Hank49]

I took my non-diving wife to Belize last summer. As a non-diver, I think my wife would rank Belize rather poorly:shakehead. The country is rather 3rd-worldish and poor (garbage piles here & there, shanty towns, etc.) It will be very hot and humid while you are there, with an occasional downpour, although they tend to be pretty short lived. You will have to put up with lots of nasty bugs (mosquitos & sand fleas.) We had to endure a few power and water outages that lasted for the better part of a day. We stayed at a resort in southern Belize near the town of Hopkins.

The mainland is very different from Ambergris or Caulker. There are rivers (the Sitee, one of the larger ones in the country is near Hopkins) lacing the coastline and the water is more silty until you get a couple miles offshore. And the beaches not so white, as you mentioned.
San Pedro is more like you see in the travel brochures of a "tropical paradise", with crystal blue water and white sand beaches. Caulker is also. The barrier reef is only 1/4 mile off shore from there vs 10-20 miles from the mainland in most places.
As to "3rd worldish", well, almost all tropical countries around the world are, compared to the US....except for maybe Singapore. But that's half the fun.

 

[Ecologic Divers]

as per your original question about weather june and early july of last year was dry. As for the blue hole only do it if you feel confortable going that deep. the dive masters will look after you, if you want to snorkel the BH then dive the next two, that ok with most dive operators. As for Aqua Dives they lost there big boat to the reef a few months back so i would consider using Amogos Del Mar. For a "3rd world country" it's a great place.
have fun dive safe

 

[Phenol]

Another vote for Amigos del Mar. My wife and I have gone with them four times now, for courses and regular trips.

The few times we went in mid-summer we got a good rain shower or two and some chop on the way out to sites, but otherwise the sun is never far away.

As for the Blue Hole, don't worry too much about it: the boats usually go to other sites along the walls of Halfmoon Caye, and they're well worth the trip in and of themselves. The deal at the Blue Hole is you stay with the group or you stay up. If the dive shop is conscientious, they will do a check-out deep dive the day before, and that's the time you can see if can handle a quick, controlled descent. At the time we went, I didn't feel I could, so I snorkled with part of the group around the edge (my wife went down and thought it was pretty spectacular). I plan to do it next time we go.

 

[hopefulist]

I did my Open Water Certification in 2003 on Glover's Atoll after spending nearly 3 weeks with my family exploring a few areas of the mainland - fabulous! We had a BLAST and loved every place we stayed and everything we did, including a side-trip into Guatemala to visit Tikal, highly recommended. Here's a link to our travelogue if you're interested, maybe something there that will appeal to you, mulhalmoni. It will also hook you up with the Belize Forum:

http://www.belizeforum.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000362

We were there in July and August - rained almost exclusively at night. We had only 1 full day of rain (which we enjoyed thoroughly). Happy trails!