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What an amazing day to finish the season on......swimming with a whale shark and snorkelling with a reef shark!  We couldn’t believe it – just as we were motoring out the reef from Hunting Cay in Belize we noticed a huge dark shape in the water and sure enough....it was a whale shark.  David immediately put on his snorkel and leapt into the water....just as the gigantic thing nosed right up to him.  “Sure hope it’s a whale shark,” he yelled to me.  We got some fantastic video footage before it swam away.

 

Earlier we’d taken the tender to snorkel on the reef.  The water clarity was astonishing and there were some wonderful fish including the biggest moray eel we’ve ever seen.  Just as we were heading back to the tender I had a look under a huge coral bombie and immediately wished I hadn’t – there was a reef shark just lurking in the shadows.  Instinct told me to flee but I knew David would never believe me so I swam after him and made him come back and look......it didn’t seem too interested in us.  All in all a fantastic note to end the season on and we are now enthusiastic about getting back out here in November.

 

Yesterday’s thunderstorm passed through and the skies returned to the beautiful blue that seems normal in this part of the world.  This made it easy for us to pick out way through the coral reefs into the anchorage at Nicolas Cay.  Our original anchorage was Hunting Cay but it got a bit shallow.......crunch time......so we reversed our and went into a deeper anchorage off the next island.  These islands/cays are all tiny and surrounded by stunning white sandy beaches. 

 

We headed off snorkelling and spotted an old chap raking the beach so stopped for a chat.  Belize is English speaking but he hadn’t heard that and prattled away in Spanish.  We picked up a bit of it – but his lack of teeth didn’t help!  He told us where to go snorkelling and then asked for cigarettes.  We’ve been asked for cigarettes a lot and have often thought about buying them but when it boils down to it it really goes against the grain.  We will bring him some in November.

 

Now heading for the mouth of the Rio Dulce with no wind – our first diesel day of the season.  Not bad considering we’ve had winds mostly blowing more than 25knots since leaving Gibraltar.