Show me the whalesharks: the colourful Caribbean and diving the deep blue in Belize

We'd splashed out on one more flight to avoid the long trip to Belize of multiple buses and ferries through Guatemala, although the morning needn't have been quite so early because when we arrived at the airport at 5am, two hours before the flight, we found it was empty and had to turn the lights on and wait an hour for staff to arrive.

Once we were on our way on Tropic Air's tiny single propeller Cesna plane we had a great view over the Mesoamerican barrier reef and soon arrived at Caye Caulker, a tiny island off Belize City with only three sandy streets and no cars. Golf buggies are the only means of powered transport allowed here, a nice change from noise (and the vehicle which doesn't see to work well for the youths that are trying to act all gangster). We stayed in a very nice brand new guesthouse recommended by girl we met in Honduras who had lived here for six months and seemed to know everyone. Most of the people on the island seem to be tourists but in this small community, virtually all locals seem to know each other by first name. It seemed a relaxed and friendly island in a country far more Caribbean than its neighbouring latin american countries, similar to Roatán. Belize is a former British colony and English remains the official language although most locals speak Creole or Garifuna primarily as well as Spanish and English.

We spent a day on a dive trip to and around the 'Great Blue Hole', a collapsed sinkhole that used to be above water, and now flooded still contains caves with stalagtites. The site was made famous by Jacques Cousteau who declared it the greatest dive in the world. Our journey there was long and rough, however, and after trying several worn or leaky regulators Ali was annoyed by how unprofessional the unfriendly divemasters were. But in the end, the dive was certainly pretty cool - we descended rapidly to 40m where it is dark and errie and pass around the stalagtites whilst some large reef sharks pass by. That said you can only spend 8 minutes at depth on air so its only a short dive and you don't see much else. However we had two other dives on the same trip and saw some incredible coral life in fantastic condition and visibility, and also saw the rare red footed boobies (only elsewhere seen in the Galapagos) during our lunchstop at Half Moon Caye.

A snorkelling trip the next day to Hol Chan marine reserve promised large numbers of sharks and sting rays but presented a dilemma because it became apparent that most of the very many boat trips on offer feed the sharks. We eventually decided to go with the lone crazy guy who promotes his trip as not feeding or harassing the animals. We'd rather have an experience that doesn't meddle with the ecosystem even if you don't see as much. As it turned out he was not around, so these principles had to be put aside and we went with Carlos, but challenged him on the feeding. Apparently they have been traditionally attracted by fishermen washing their catch and the noble snorkel boats keep this tradition up to prevent the sharks dispersing and being caught in fishermen's nets. Not so sure about that, but we did see a lot of nurse sharks grappling for food, as well as many large stingrays and some very large and beautiful hawksbill turtles. As for holding the sharks, turning them over and tickling their tummy - that seemed a bit too much.

Hundreds of years of Mayan civilisation seemed to provide a worthwhile diversion before the next dive trip and we we took a trip inland down a long winding river deep into the jungle to Lamanai, one of the largest sites of Mayan ruins in Belize where we climbed a tall pyramid temple for a great view and learned how the civilisation was only eventually overcome by famine. We were joined by some cruise ship passengers who were seeing the region on a whole different budget, and got quite worried when the guide told them he'd seen a most deadly snake on the path a few days ago.

One night in Belize city proved more than enough as it felt rather a lot less safe than elsewhere in the country, especially getting back to the hotel just after dark and we decided to stay in and make our own rather sad cold tinned vegetable burritos in our room for dinner rather than go back out. Although we didn't have any trouble, we were starting to hear lots of people who had been robbed at some point. 

Our long bus journey down south to Placencia by slow local stopping bus wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as we'd been led to believe and turned out to be something of a party bus as loud reggae music blared and smiling people chatted in their language that sounded so almost recognisable. At Lydia's Guesthouse we found a small but nice, clean and cheap room near the beach.

Everywhere we have dived on our travels to date we seemed to have brushed so close with many places with great possibilities for seeing whale sharks, but always missed out due to timing, not quite being in the right place, or just being unlucky. This most magnificent creature - the largest fish in the sea - was top of our list to see and now we seemed to have hit on our best and last chance yet. A few days after the full moon in just a few months of the year, black snapper fish spawn eggs in huge numbers around Gladdens Split, around twenty miles off the coast of Placencia and this attracts feeding whale sharks. We'd timed our diversion down here spot on and set off for two dives full of anticipation with the sole objective of spotting them. The boats look for large shoals of snappers and the divers all drop in. Within ten minutes, we saw the distinctive spotted pattern and enormous size of a whale shark swoop past beneath us and it was worth it. We managed to track it for a minute or so before it moved away and we continued looking for others. The guide claimed he'd seen two others but they were must have been just beyond our sight and the second dive was just a whole lot of blue water but we still count it as a pretty special day. Now we want to see more!

On our final day in Belize, we killed some time in the rather nice Belize Zoo, where rescued animals and birds are looked after pretty well in nice enclosures actually part of the forest and we finally got a close up view of the keel-billed toucan. From there we took the overnight bus into Mexico.