Purplelake: Day 7 - Dec 12, 2018 Caye Caulker, Belize

We finally had a warm Belize day today! The cold front had passed and temperature climbed back to 28C and sunny. We had our breakfast on the hotel terrace overlooking the Split (the artificial beach) before joining our full day snorkeling and spear fishing tour.

View from our breakfast terrace

Idyllic Belize

On Caye Caulker, beer and flip-flops rule. The official motto here: "Go Slow"

We have 7 people in our group and the captain is Breeze who is a really nice fellow. He has families still in US and mainland Belize. He loves fishing and it shows. He took us to three spots to snorkel and spear fish at the same time. It's quite exciting since we never spear fish before. Loading the gun is quite an effort. Also the fish are all very smart and hide inside the caves and crevices so you don't have a clear shot. There is also the problem of finding the right fish to spear. All parrot fish and angle fish are protected. So it is tricky to find the right fish that is close enough to shoot. I managed to shoot one flounder but Yiling missed several big targets. I was surprised at how aggressive my wife was. I probably shot two times in total but she shot over 20 times! One couple shot a crab and the three Danes shot the wrong type of fish. At the end, I gave up on shooting and just admire the aquarium like setting with all the colorful tropical reef fish on display. Schools of "dory" fish (blue tangs) kept swimming around us and we saw several nurse sharks and rays (without using food to attract them to come). I even saw several small cuttle fish! All in all, a very satisfying but tiring day!

Captain Breeze in his shop

Safety first - instructions on how to use a spear gun

Ready to shoot!

The water is amazingly clear and colorful fish are everywhere

Because Captain Breeze promised us dinner even if we didn't catch any, he was also busy catching fish while we were snorkeling. Thankfully, he had much better success than all of us so our dinner was secure. My flounder was surprising bony, unlike our pacific sole. After our fish dinner, we went back to Willy to have a lobster dinner also because he is famous for lobster. We were surprised to find Willy completely full but we were lucky to get a seat next to two brothers from Washington State. One brother now worked in Alaska processing fish. The other brother worked in La Conner doing commercial construction. We made a mental note to visit the one in Alaska next time we are in Sitka as his Community Based Fishing Co-operative sounds interesting.

After our second dinner, we walked to the convenience store to buy two more beers and started chatting with the Chinese owner. We found out there were 13 convenience stores on this caye and all are run by Chinese from Toi-Shan. It's not a life for everybody as this family works from 7a to 11p everyday! Fortunately, the business seemed to be doing well.