Hi Andrew,
.... the Cayman Dive Lodge did you now? Most excellent.
A word of advice about Soulshine--ixnay. Facilites are poor, location/amenities not as advertised & other problems.
You can read my piece on Placencia in "Undercurrent"
http://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/ar...ze200006.shtml for the short version on the venue, or my much longer version below:
"Location: Situated in Belize, a country about 2/3rds of the way into Central America and bordering Mexico to the north and Guatemala to the west and south, Placencia (
www.belize.com/belmap.html) is a small resort city off the southeast coast and not frequented by many US divers. This is at least in part is because on balance the diving off Ambergris Cay & the outer atolls is considerably better. It is, however, a very popular resort area with tourists from Central American & European. Located at the end of the 16 mile sandy Placencia Peninsula, it has a variety of accommodations (including some very inexpensive ones), dive ops & diversions of a naturalist & archeological orientation.
Getting There: You can fly from many major airports in the US to Belize City on Continental (800-525-0280), American (800-433-7300) or TACA (800-535-8780). From Belize City, it’s a rough 2 ½ hour drive taking the Coastal Road to the Hummingbird Highway, and then the largely unpaved Southern Highway (scheduled paving has just gotten underway), or a 20 minute flight on Tropic Air (
http://www.tropicair.com; 800-422-3435) or Mayan-Island Air (800-248-7779; (501) 02-31348).
Weather: The climate is subtropical, with sometimes brisk north-easterly trade winds from the sea. Temperatures range from 60° F (16° C) night time lows in winter to 95° F (32° C) day time highs in summer. The wet season is from June to November, and dry season from December to May. Southern Belize can receive over 180 inches of rainfall annually. For the current weather, a 5 day forecast & satellite images, see
http://www.belizenet.com/weatherix.shtml.
Language: English is the official language, although Spanish is also widely spoken. Expect to hear the natives in a Creole-like tongue of which you'll understand little.
Money: The Belize Dollar (BZ$) has a fixed rate of exchange of BZ$2=US$1. Most hotels, resorts, restaurants, etc., will accept U.S. currency, traveler’s checks, or credit cards, although many establishments, in clear violation of major card card company policy, will add a 3 ½ - 5% service charge for credit card transactions.
Electricity: Your battery chargers & hair dryers should work in Belize as most of the electricity is provided by diesel generators of 110 volts AC (same voltage as in the US).
Time: Same as US Central Standard Time; no observation of Daylight Savings Time.
Entry: A valid passport is required of US, Canadian & European visitors, who are permitted to stay for a period not to exceed thirty (30) days. Extensions are routinely granted. Travelers must be able to show they have sufficient funds (US$50.00 per person per day) & a return ticket, but proof of these is requested only on very rare occasion. They ask this sort of thing from persons like Juan Loco.
Nearest Recompression Chamber: Ambergris Cay.
Health Precautions: See the conservative CDC guidelines (
http://www.cdc.gov/travel)
The Dive Op: The op for whale sharks in this area is Seahorse Dive Shop (
http://www.belizescuba.com) owned & operated by Brian Young, a man with long experience in these waters, first as a fisherman & then as a diver. They record sightings of these creatures, including by GPS, and make a regular science of locating them. They have 3 boats: a 33’ holding 14 divers, a 25’ holding 4-6 & a 19’ taking just 2-4. All are crowded when full, and only the big boat carries O2 & a first aid kit. Communication is by cell phone. Rental gear looked good. No photo support--bring everything you may need. AL80s were filled to around 2,800PSI. Be aware that there are a limited number of compressors in the area, and an even a smaller number of fully functioning ones. Sea Horse's machine was limping along & was still looked to as a source for several neighboring dive ops. Inquire as to how things are running when you check into reservations. There is no Nitrox in the area yet, although it is reportedly being investigated.
The Resort: Tradewinds Hotel (501-6-23201/trdewndpla@btl.net) sits on a serene & wonderfully tropical bay with a sadly untidy beach. My cottage was airy and equipped with refrigerator, independent hot water heater, coffee maker & rotating floor fan, but no A/C. The spacious porch had a hammock. Daily maid service. No bar or restaurant, but plenty of spots within a short walk. A breeze blew much of the time & it was blissfully quiet. And, guess what? No roosters.
The Quarry: The fascinating whale shark (Rincodon typus), largest of fish that has ever lived. Adults reach up to 60 feet and weigh as much as 10 tons; some have measured 75 feet long when caught. Females are larger than males, which grow to about two-thirds the length of the females, not unusual in the shark family. Despite their size, whale sharks are one of the most docile creatures imaginable. Like the Basking Shark and Megamouth, it is a filter feeder. It has no teeth, instead filtering plankton out of the water as it passes through a fine mesh of gill rakers, much like the baleen seen in actual whales, at the back of the mouth. Not surprisingly, they are most abundant in the waters of the tropics and subtropics where there is a rich abundance of both zooplankton & phytoplankton. They are typically solitary beasts, and often found swimming slowly at or near the surface. Due to their size, they have few predators. Fortunately, their meat is described as tough and not good eating or it probably would be turning up in soups.
Like many species of sharks which feed near the surface, whale sharks are counter-shaded, having white bellies (which makes them hard to see from underneath) and dark backs (which makes them difficult to see from above). It has been suggested that the pale spots and lines on their backs are camouflage; to some, the pattern resembles a school of fish, to others it suggests reflections of sunlight on a shallow reef.
The hopper flight from Belize City provides a scenic panorama of the thin peninsula, including such features as the citrus groves in Dangriga to the north. At the little Tropic Air shack on the rough airstrip, which bakes in the brutal sun, you’ll claim your baggage off the ground & catch a taxi to a town center reminiscent of places like old Grand Turk--relaxed, laid back, courteous & slightly ramshackle. As there is no bona fide auto mechanic in Placencia, amongst many other professionals also absent, the A/C in taxis often works feebly, if at all. Given the unpaved red dirt roads, prepare to be gritty after travel. Placencia has nice mix of ages, sexes & skin tones, and there are some expats, foreign conservationists & Peace Corps types about. I could be happy here, at least for a while--maybe longer.
The town contains a number of reasonably priced accommodations, such as Sonny’s, Kitty's & Village Inn (
http://www.placencia.com/service.html). Prices run from $35 to $80 a night depending on type of accommodations & season. A/C is not big in Placencia, so look for accommodations where breezes blow most of the time. There are some fancier places with pools, A/C & restaurants, such as the Rum Point Inn & Robert’s Grove, but don’t expect anything like the Hilton Jalousie Bay on St. Lucia or the Westin Casuarina on Grand Cayman.
For food, lunch is on the boat, and was consistently baked grouper, salad, rice or beans, water & thin fruit juice. Have breakfast at friendly Omar’s--they do it all (also, he loves to fish, so watch for evening specials, too). For dinner, The Pickled Parrot serves pizza (including vegetarian) & a range of other dishes, while The Galley has good meat (both the steak & pork were unexpectedly high quality for a location such as Placencia) & seafood dishes. It also seems to serve later than many other places. There is a decent Chinese place as well. If you’re a fresh shrimp & lobster lover, don’t go Feb-June when there is a harvesting ban.
As regards diving, to the best of my knowledge Seahorse Dive Shop is the only op in the Americas, and one of the few in the world, to offer scheduled whale shark dives. There are 3 migrations, fall, winter & spring. The whale sharks are following spawning tuna on the first 2 of these, so it’s snorkeling. The May/April migration is for the spawn of the deep dwelling (>100') Cubera Snapper, making scuba the order of the day.
The basics of the whale shark program are: (1) A cost of $US100 per 2 tank dive vs the regular price of $US65 (be aware that a 12% government tax is added to dive services); (2) A boat ride of an hour & occasionally a bit more, with surface interval & lunch on the water; (3) Often 40” of vigorous finning through featureless open water in modest viz; (4) An average of only 8-10 days per month with sightings; and, (5) Wall & reef action ranging from fair to the deadest site you’ve ever dove. While the thrill of having one these leviathans pass close to you should not be underestimated, on the days you are skunked, the diving can be quite tiring and boring.
The Seahorse Dive Shop owned & operated by Brian Young, a native of Placencia, with the help of various family members & a supporting cast of pleasant if laconic crew. After fishing & diving the area for many years, about 5 years ago Brian opened the shop. He has been instrumental in promoting diving & conservation, and is currently active in efforts to make the Elbow & Silk Cayes, prime whale shark ground, a marine reserve. This is scheduled to happen very soon, and may already be in place. If so, expect a park fee & perhaps other related expenses. Anyway, this is an incredibly relaxed op which keeps a leisurely & flexible schedule, with boats not leaving until after 9:00.
The diving for whale sharks typically involves a late morning & mid-afternoon dive. The DM will snorkel, sometimes for an extended period, attempting to locate the snapper. Find them or not, you eventually dive. Hopefully, they will have been located as no spawn fish pretty much=no whale sharks. If snapper are found, the divers cluster above in the hope their combined bubbles will draw the inquisitive colossus--and in fact they often do if it's the proper time of day. In my admittedly limited experience, the AM dive often does not produce as spawning typically occurs much later. The snapper search for the PM dive starts around mid-afternoon, and it seemed the later the better. On the one dive which went off late afternoon/early evening, we saw 4 different whale sharks in the 25'-40' range, plus a pod of frisky Bottlenose Dolphin. An additional benefit is that after the spawn hits full tilt sharks, often Bulls, come in to check out the action. As this can get a bit frenetic, you need to stay alert & leave the water when the close passes start.
To the disadvantage of the diver, who is paying a hefty surcharge to seek out whale sharks, Sea Horse, as with many dive ops, wants to get back to shore before sunset/in time for dinner & is very reluctant to hang until peak spawning time.
The dive group du jour votes on what type of dives will be done each day, and in my experience the routine wall & reef dives were most unrewarding. There is paucity of life & color. Shark Hole, at a $35/day surcharge, is slightly unusual. It does have sharks, mostly Nurses, but when you arrive you'll either see them exiting or going into the cavern. An opening in an old limestone cave with a deep sand bottom appears at around 40', and you drop through and can explore back into the darkness. However, there is little to see, and it certainly is nothing like the cenotes of the Yucatan. On Second Cut, a section of a 3 part wall which runs quite deep, only the Eagles Rays, which are common to this region, made it worth the effort. One of the regular afternoon dives was downright ghastly. A reef called MoHo, clearly once a healthy reef of multiple varieties of hard corals, was now entirely skeletal & disintegrating. The only thing of beauty was the plethora of tunicates, which thrive on deadness. I never did get a satisfactory answer as to what may have caused this. The dive op tried to blame it on shrimp fishing nets, but obviously it was far more than this.
Sea Horse’s estimation of 8-10 days of sightings per month during the spring migration seems more than legitimate--in 5 days of diving, 3 for whale sharks, we had two days of sightings. A group which went about a month later saw 22 in a week (
http://www.scubadiving.com/talk/read...0&thread=66780). If you go for a week at prime time, your chances of seeing a whale shark appear excellent, and this is money well spent. As for the rest of the diving, I don’t think it’s worth it. If you want reef with healthy and colorful corals & sponges, and abundant fish life, go elsewhere, like the atolls to the north or Roatan to the south.
In closing, for me the experience of diving with whale sharks is ultimately personal & ineffable. These creatures, which commonly are 35'-40' long and weigh many tons, can pass within arm's reach so silently & effortlessly that you would not be aware of it if your back was turned. Their combination of outrageous mass & serenity, as they pacifically observe you through their impossibly tiny eyes, makes me want to draw a breath & laugh through the second stage at the same--they make me think of a locomotive in a tutu. "
Of course that area was hit hard by the hurricane that tragically sunk the Wave Dancer last October, but is now largely rebuilt.
Best regards.
DocVikingo
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