Travel to Belize Islands

Travel to Belize Cayos Cays Keys Islands

BELIZE CAYOS, Belize — On my third incident of travel through the tapering isthmus of Central America, I have finally set foot on Belizean soil. I helped lead a tour out from the Finca Tatin in Guatemala to the southern cayos of Belize. A two hour speed boat ride out to sea, and I was disembarking onto a pure white sandy island. After handing some paperwork over to an immigration official, I was floating around in the waters of Belize, snorkeling.

Technically, I was working. In reality, I was a tourist.

After dispersing some flippers and snorkeling masks to a group of French tourists who funding the trip, I was free to dive at will.

What I saw beneath the shallow waters of the reefs would best be told with photographs. It is with due misfortune that I must report that my “underwater camera” was no longer equipped to go under water any more. After one attempt at snapping a photo of a blue/ green parrot fish the camera fried.

A long letter to the Olympus electronics company is in due order. Their Stylus cameras say that they can go underwater, and they can — until the day that they leak and fry. I submerged the camera beneath the sea, focused in on a reef, and the LCD screen flashed black. The shutter refused to close. The camera leaked full of water. My “underwater” camera, apparently, no longer wanted to function under water. It fried.

I lost the opportunity to record some of the most beautiful scenes of nature that I have yet seen in 11 years of travel, I lost an SD card of documentation.

Onward.

The snorkeling off these virtually abandon keys in the south of Belize was as good as I could imagine it to be. Fish, coral, sharks, ocean things colorful, interesting, frightening abounded. I bobbed around clearing my snorkel at various intervals. The tourists bobbed around too, all with their faces down and butts up, looking at the fishes, plants, urchins, and the indescribable below.

A beautiful, other world exists below the sea.

I made the tourists ham sandwiches for lunch on a virtually abandoned cayo.

Two old hermits and a few crabs were the only inhabitants.

With my own boat I could access islands like these on my own whenever I choose for ever on after. With my own boat I could access parts of the world that are only accessible to me on those rare occurrences when a group of French tourists pay my way to help lead a tour to the Belize cayos.

Belize Travel Guide