Shark and Ray Alley
Hol Chan Marine Reserve, Belize
Though we had lost half our number, Annette, Jenna, Katie, and myself made our way back to the SeaStar dock and boarded another boat to snorkel a new location. At the first stop we jumped in the water with sharks!! The sharks were nurse sharks and even though they can get up to 15 feet they are (thankfully) harmless. It was still slightly jarring to turn around in the water and see an eight foot shark swimming towards you. (Probably good that our unnamed screaming party member elected to pass on this snorkel day.) Crew members on the boat would throw chum into the water to attract the sharks and we got to watch from in the water. There were also sting rays in the area as well. Next stop was Hol Chan Marine Reserve which was another spot of huge coral and lots of fish. On one side of the reef the sea floor sloped down into the abyss.Jenna, Douglas, Katie, and myself decided to go big for dinner as it was New Years and as such I (unintentionally) reserved half the restaurant for the four of us (much to the confusion of both us and the hostess/wait staff). Once they sat us at one of our three tables and we began to peruse the menu, they informed us that the entire island of Belize was out of avocado. This may have been punishment for our reserving 24 seats in their restaurant on New Years Eve because we ate guacamole the next day. It was a sushi restaurant named Jyoto and everything was incredibly delicious (well almost everything, their gyoza were sad)!New Years Eve was kind of a bust. Katie and I are not party people, but we wanted to try so we went downtown to the square where a big gathering with live music and fireworks was scheduled to welcome in the new year. Something had gone awry though as the band never showed up. The DJ playing music also decided to wrap up at about 10 PM and after that there was just music coming from the bars in the area. Most people were just standing around waiting and it was kind of odd. At one point Katie and I were walking around killing time and I walked over and sat on some stairs under an awning. A few minutes later it started to rain and people packed into the area we were standing to get out of the rain. After quite a while standing in this packed stair well we decided to leave and watched the glow of the fireworks from our dock back at the beach house.
