It was an easy flight to Belize City with Beth, Bonnie, and Amy to join the Lady Go Diver group for a week on the Belize Aggressor. We boarded the boat at 3 pm, unpacked, and stored our dive gear away....then we had the Captain's welcome aboard party and dinner. We left the dock for an overnight ride out to the dive sites, about 40-50 miles........a very rough ride it was as the boat rocked and rolled.
Up at 6 am, breakfast a 7 am, and the first dive was at 8 am. Most dives lasted about an hour, then a surface interval of about an hour, before we did it all over again about 10 am. Yanis and Vanessa always had a delicious snack waiting for us between the dives. The second dive of the day was followed by a wonderful lunch and a little down time, before the afternoon dives began about 2 pm and 4 pm. Dinner was usually around 7 pm with a night dive option after that. So basically it was Eat, Sleep, and Dive....then do it all over again!
We had a group of 15 women in the Lady Go Divers, and two lucky couples on board. The highlight of the week was the Blue Hole dive...a dive to 130 ft. in a hole that was once a cave that collapsed. The total dive lasted 27 minutes...with about 8 minutes of bottom time. The remaining time was spent either going down or coming up with three safety stops. It was pretty amazing to see the giant stalactites hanging down.....also we saw a couple of sharks on that dive.
I managed to get in 20 dives during the week that included one night dive and the Blue Hole. I was kinda disappointed in the diving and felt it wasn't as good as some places that I have been....but the trip was a blast with all the gals. Lots of laughs and catching up! I experimented using White Balance to take photos instead of using my flash...not sure I liked it.
My roommate, Amy was lots of laughs and put up with me the whole week. She even still thought I was "Normal" after a week together. We turned the back dive deck into a spa deck and shaved our legs.....got lots of laughs...Captain said it was a first! Heck the cabin shower was to small to do the job! The boat had a hot tub up on top, one day we squeezed a bunch of us into it for a soak.
Several nights we stayed up late talking with Yanis and Vanessa, part of the crew.....some wild stories!
Friday morning we had only two dives before heading back to Belize City and packing. Six of us booked the cave tubing excursion...it was awesome! A rough ride for about an hour took us to the jungle where we grabbed tubes and hiked for about 45 minutes before reaching our starting point. Our guide, Junior was great and we gave him a hard time. The cave system was beautiful, looked like something out of a movie set. We got back to the boat just in time for the Captain's cocktail party and dinner at a local restaurant. 8 am the next morning we off the boat and headed over to the Radisson to wait for our shuttle to the airport. The flight home was easy and Dale picked me up at the airport.
