Caye Caulker ( or Cayo Corker, depending on how authentic you'd like to be) is in a weird place on planet earth. It's Belize, closest to Belizean mainland, considered part of the country of Belize. And yet, its island roots seem to be planted just as firmly in Cuban and Jamaican culture. Cuban coffee and food can be found every few feet, and Rastafarian colors dominate much of the street merchandise being sold to tourists. It's only about 5 miles long and a 1 1/2 miles at its widest.
When Coston and I stepped off the boat two nights ago, we hauled all our stuff down a well-lit pier and onto a series of white sand streets. "We have to find the Starbucks." He told me. Incredulous, I followed him to a little shack with a thatched roof and the Starbucks symbol in the front window. He asked for someone by name and the lovely woman behind the counter said, "I'll text him, have a seat." While we waited, we made small talk with her. Her family comes from a long tradition of Mayan farmers based in southern Belize. "But I have two kids," she said, "and for when they get sick, or...?" She shrugged. Her husband drives a "cab" in Caye Caulker and she works at the coffee shop. She told us it's too expensive here, and they save money by cooking meals at home and budgeting as best they can. By cab, I mean a golf cart. There are only two trucks on the island, and everyone gets around by walking, biking, or golf cart. We were picked up and dropped off at a lovely little hotel room with air conditioning and some other stuff that isn't as important as air conditioning.
That night at dinner, Coston invited a woman traveling alone to come sit with us. Anna is 37, from Brazil and works for the UN. She is also a big diver, like Coston, and was going to dive the Blue Hole the next day. The Blue Hole is like diving mecca in the whole of the world. It's an underwater sinkhole about three hours out by boat, and anyone into diving would kill to do it. She told Coston which company she was going with. They were closed by that time of night, but she advised him to meet them on the pier at 4:30 the next morning with all his certifications, and maybe if they had room, they'd let him tag along.
When his alarm went off at 4:00 the next morning, we agreed to meet back at the guest house at 4:00 pm if he made it onto the tour. I rolled around, trying to get back to sleep, but by 6:00 I assumed he'd made it and the tropical birds started making screaming children noises, so I gave up trying to sleep. I wandered down to the beach and snapped some photos, mostly just waiting for the coffee shop to open at 7.
But I turned a side street, and there was Coston looking longingly through the window of another closed dive shop. They had not had room and he'd assumed I'd still be sound asleep.
Eventually I found coffee and he found a dive place going out the next day, so all's well that ends well. He asked if I wanted to try scuba diving, and how could I say no? We found two guys to take us out to the reef that surrounds the island, along with an older woman from New York who was both annoying and scared of everything, but super chatty. The worst combo.
As we pulled up to the spot with other boats and beginners, I noticed something crest slightly out of the water. As we got closer, I dawned on me that it was a shark. One of many light brown sharks tooling around, mingling with giant sting rays. They were chumming the water to attract them. Not with meat, but with conch shells stuffed with watermelon and oranges. Coston snorkeled around with his underwater camera while Bert, the guide, gave us a brief tutorial on how the equipment worked. And then it was into the water.
The sharks were 4-5 ft long and not afraid of us at all. In fact, they didn't even seem to notice as they swam in and out of the other 20 or so people in the water, gawky and uncoordinated limbs everywhere looking to me like prime shark bait. We were miles from shore, but the water was still shallow enough to stand up if you wanted to. I familiarized myself with equipment and dove shallow in and out of the coral wildlife. Every time a stingray glided underneath my prone body floating face-down on the surface, I thought of Steve Irwin. But the rays, while intimidating, kept slow and steady, interested only in food.
We packed it back onto the boat and drove to a deeper part of the reef, about 40 ft down. Bert stayed with the woman from New York while Coston and the other guide took me down to the bottom. Every few feet I had to hold my nose through the mask and equalize my ears like you would on a plane. On the bottom, the current was still rough. It rocked us back and forth through anemones, seagrass and coral. At one point, I looked to my left and found that a 3 foot barracuda had taken an interest in me. He kept just out of arms reach, but stayed by my side as I swam along for quite a while, flashing his jagged teeth at me in what seemed like an awkward show of support.
There were a few times when the world started to spin around me and I could feel my stomach protesting. Being thrown around on the bottom of the ocean feels a little like how I would imagine spinning through space might feel. After a while, you completely loose your bearings about what is moving and what isn't. I did my best to orient myself with the stationary coral and keep the panic at bay.
Alas, my buoyancy was all over the place and after about 40 minutes, my left ear refused to equalize all together. I motioned for us to surface and the boat picked us up. I told Bert on the way back that I was surprised at how bodily exhausted I was. He said that it was a rough day and part of it was fighting to current, but that part of it was the nitrogen build up in my blood stream. "If your body isn't used to it," he told me, "it'll wipe you out."
We went back and I napped for a bit, but the day was pretty much done for me. After dinner, I just collapsed back into bed.
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