Fish and more fish!

Being Montanans, Nick and I were excited to try our hand at fishing in Belize. We packed up our lunch and made our way down to the beach to meet our guide for a full day of fishing. We got into a pretty small boat and cruised out to the salt flats in search of bone fish. Since there wasn’t much room on the boat, we had to take turns. Nick started out casting for a while as the guide inched us closer to schools of fish. After quite some time, Nick hooked his first fish! When it was my turn I was able to catch one as well. We had a great day of fishing, but at the end of the day we discovered that we did not apply enough sun screen and ended up with some funny tan lines on our necks, hands and feet.

With our very red skin still rather painful we got up the next day ready to spend more time with the fish. But this time instead of catching them we were going to snorkel alongside them. Again we went down to the beach, got into a boat with about eight people and two guides and went out to the Hol Chan Reserve.

After a quick safety lesson we hopped into the water and started our swim around the reserve. There were tons of different kinds of fish, sting rays and we even saw an eel! Every once and a while our guide would gesture for us to go to the surface so he could explain what we were seeing. After we made our way around the reserve we climbed back into the boat and sped over to Shark Ray Alley. This properly named area was swimming with nurse sharks and sting rays that gather near to the boats when they hear the motor coming. The guide fed the sharks and rays as the rest of us got in the water to get up close to them. It was terrifying and exciting being next to these massive five to six feet long sharks. As soon as the food was gone the sharks and rays were too so we got back into the boat and went back to Ramon’s to enjoy our last night in Belize.