I can't believe no one called me out on the yacht photo. That boat was parked in the harbor at Placencia as we pulled in at the end of our sailing trip. From a distance, the writing on the side which said "Vango" looked a lot like Mingo. At first glance I though damn, so that is how Mingo rolls!

So when my wife finally got tired of following me up and down the beaches and staring at the water looking for tails, we did an all day snorkeling trip that included three stops, the Coral Gardens, Shark and Ray Alley, and the Hol Chan marine reserve. While in Belize, do this trip. You won't be sorry. It was amazing. We got to see and swim with virtually every tropical saltwater creature imaginable. So many I can't begin to recall them all, but many nurse sharks, eagle and sting rays, massive grouper and snapper, 200+ lb tarpon, turtles, moray eels, huge schools of horse eye jacks, and hundreds of colorful reef fish of every shape and size. The reef life in Belize is really abundant and very accessible.

After our day long snorkeling outing we hopped on a sailboat of sorts with 18 random folks for the next three days. Each day was a combination of sailing, snorkeling stops, and then cooking up the days catch with copious amounts of rum punch on some secluded island. Easy living.



Raggamuffin tours on Caye Caulker. Pretty budget trips and very informal. I am not even sure if the word formal exists in these places actually. Good times.









At first I was a bit skeptical of the poorly maintained boat and rag-tag crew, but then I saw this and knew we would be alright.





Our sister ship the Ragga Queen heading out for the snorkeling trip.








Massive Majestic Frigate birds followed us out hoping for a shot at some of the bait the guides carried to stir up a feeding frenzy at Shark Ray Alley.










I can't say I wasn't a bit skeptical about jumping into a feeding frenzy boiling with sharks, rays, and all manner of toothy critters looking for a meal. It turned out OK.















I had been hoping to get a few decent underwater photos but at our first snorkeling stop, I went a little deep and it turns out my piece of crap pentax optio W30 (waterproof to 30 feet) was more like a w21-ish. The camera crapped the bed and I wasn't able to get underwater photos of any of the spectacular life we would see later in the day.
















Reggae all day and all night, casting off on the sailing adventure.








We put out a trolling rod between snorkeling stops and picked up a few toothy critters for the dinner pot.




Spanish mackerel










Baby barracuda





Our camping spot on night 1, Rendezvous Caye. Pretty quiet out there.









Couple of shots from our night on Rendezvous Caye














Our next day and night were more or less the same, we stayed on another little island called Tobacco Caye. Didn't take many photos, could have had something to do with the dead sailors pictured here. My head hurt a bit this morning. Rum punch will get you if you aren't careful.





I am more of a beer guy though. Belikin is the local brew and it isn't half bad. Belikin is the national beer of Belize and it comes in regular or stout. For regular order beer, for stout, order stout.



Well, that is more or less it. I have a few more photos of things like monkeys, birds and creatures of the jungle on our last day down there. We took a panga trip up the monkey river to check out the jungle scene and it was pretty cool. Totally NFR although we did see some locals in the village of Monkey River filleting out some massive snook.