In my passion project of writing up adventurous activities from my past, the time that I spent in Belize has the fewest records and dimmest memories. I have ten photos, the logs of 27 dives between 3rd and 26th April, and a faded scar on my forearm (it wasn’t a shark!). It was still a memorable adventure that deserves recording.
I had two months of vacation to use between the end of my work assignment in Aberdeen, Scotland, and starting a new assignment in Lafayette, Louisiana. After organizing expeditions in university, including a diving project in Egypt, I wanted to join another project. My research took me to Coral Cay Conservation, an organization that used volunteer divers to help with their research by performing fish surveys, similar to what I had done and enjoyed in Egypt. Coral Cay started in Belize in 1986 and have since run projects worldwide. The work I participated in contributed to the work studying Turneffe Atoll and published in 2000.
I travelled to Belize in between other short adventures to Bermuda and Ecuador. Coral Cay Conservation’s operations base was at Calabash Caye Field Station. At the time, it was a small wooden building and I slept in a tent that I had brought. We took rotations in cooking meals, and of course, I remember my two mistakes. First, I remember the tea that I made having forgotten to empty the vinegar out of the kettle that was descaling it. Second, I remember a tray of very hot garlic bread landing on my forearm, and my need to run into the ocean to cool it off, though the scar remains. Even though it appears idyllic, we struggled with biting insects and a skin condition that we labelled “Belize disease.”
For the first few days, I dived off Calabash Caye as part of my fish identification qualification, along with some fun dives and night dives, going down to 30 metres (100 ft). I performed survey dives off Cay Bokel and Blackbird Cay, which were deserted in 1995 and now have five star resorts. The dive logs tell two stories. The first is of amazing dives with fish, corals, sharks, rays, barracuda, drop offs, and much more. The second is of problems with equipment, though nothing serious. I have no photos of the diving.
I took a few photos with a disposable waterproof film camera. One shows someone cutting coconuts at camp, and the others show a group of four of us going on a caving trip.
My dive log book indicates I dived with Thomas Hunt, Ian, Tim Adams, Paula Davies, Tracey, Paul Scott, Steve, Rachel K., Bert, Michael, Matt, Helen, and Mike. All I can remember of them is that Paula, who I think is in the pictures above, planned to move to Tanzania to open a restaurant. I wonder if anyone else who dived in Belize with Coral Cay Conservation will ever read this! While I cannot remember much about this trip, it makes me thankful for the records that I have of so many other adventures.
The Adventures of the Cajunlimeys 