We hadn’t even heard all that much about Pelican Cays until this year. Were our ears plugged up? Was our attention on all the other lovely places in these cays? How could we have missed knowing about this fabulous spot until some of our friends went this year?

It’s an easy 16 nm trip NE from Placencia. The harbour is very deep (60 feet mostly) once inside the coral bars, and there are 3 mooring balls available on a first come – first served basis. A tiny bar/restaurant on Hideaway Cay welcomes visitors and the snorkeling is supposed to be great. What more could one ask? Add in the satisfaction of completing a challenging pass over a shallow bar and it becomes even better.

We followed a combination of waypoints from Freya Rauscher’s book and from Rendezvous for the northern approach. Moorings and Sunsail charter boats are instructed to use the southern entrance and this worked to our advantage on this visit. We spotted a charter boat coming East across the Inner Channel as we neared the waypoint and thought, “Oh dear, we will be in a race for a ball.” But it veered off South, allowing us to make our turn across the bar and snag the ball by the time they made it back up through the southern entrance. (Fortunately they were experienced sailors and weren’t put off by having to anchor.) Once inside this well protected harbour, the scenery is stunning – a series of mangrove cays linked by narrow coral bars that show off crystal clear turquoise water in contrast with the dark blue of deeper water. Those bars make for fabulous snorkeling.

Over the course of our 4-day stay, we sampled 5 different areas within short dinghy runs, and returned to 2 of them more than once. Because the bars separate very deep water from very shallow, we were able to swim among coral heads 4 feet below us, and along walls that dropped off to 60 feet, and even suck in our bellies and float across knee-deep water.

Oh the colours! Oh the textures! Oh the fish! We’ve marveled at snorkeling the wall at French Cay Harbour in Roatan, and the rugged bars in Cayos Cochinos, and the underwater “gardens” in North Long Cocoa, Belize, but this place wins the prize for both Jim and me. On our first 2 days, we had prime snorkeling conditions: flat calm water and clear sunny skies.

Coral heads comprised of golden brain coral and green and purple sea fans and clumps of brown sea rods with lavender tips and stubby little red sea fingers are all scattered across the shallows. Bright purple plumes wave in the soft current and the small leaves of bright green sea lettuce waft ever so slightly, and even the rigid coral has minute hairs that move and pores that open and close. Smooth sticklike rods catch the light and move it along the length of them like those neon wands we use to play with. Clouds overhead will shade an area and then as the sun breaks through, it will light up as if a spotlight has been directed at it. We swim between some of the coral heads, looking right and left, and over some of them, looking straight down into crevasses and nooks and crannies less than a metre below our noses. We hover beside or over such spots watching the tiny movements of the plants and the coming and going of the fish.

Medium sized and small and miniscule fish swim through these underwater gardens. Some are nonchalant, going about the business of feeding unconcerned by the hovering creatures nearby. Some are shy and hide under overhanging chunks of rock, peering out to see if we are still there. Blue-lipped gray angelfish as large as the largest dinner plates in my cupboard swim gracefully by, turning slightly to peer up at us, flicking past and then circling around to have another look. Schools of hundreds of silvery little fish are almost invisible as we swim through them, and more groups of black and yellow striped sergeant majors, and blue and pink and yellow parrotfish, brilliant blue hamlets go swishing by and butterfly fish with big “eyes” on their tails seem to wiggle their whole bodies as they swim past, while wary cardinal fish and squirrelfish hide from us, peeking out only briefly to see if it is safe to emerge. Tiny neon coloured fish nibble and chew on the coral, flitting here and there with complete disregard for observers.

And then there are the walls. The coral bars that we are drifting over fall deep down into a sea of blue. As I get close to the wall (or more aptly called drop-off) I always get a fluttery feeling, thinking I must not get too close or I’ll fall over! And then I remind myself that it’s like flying – I can go right out there and I’ll still be safe. I like to swim along the edge of the wall, keeping an eye on the aqua blue because I know I will see shapes begin to emerge – so gradually that it’s almost like I’m imagining it, and then the shapes will become clearly formed schools of silvery barjacks with blue stripes running along their backs and tails, and dozens of yellow tailed goatfish that go cruising by me and disappear into the blue again. The most fascinating fish this trip was the scrawled filefish that Jim called me over to see. Look it up! It is the most amazing fish with bluish lines and spots on a yellow-green body. It has a long nose and a broomlike tail and it stayed absolutely still under a fan of green coral as we watched it.

(We carry the excellent reference books, Reef Fish, Reef Coral, and Reef Creatures by Paul Humann and Ned Deloach onboard. We used to try to take photos, and we do still carry a camera sometimes, but there are much better pictures online and on other people’s blogs!)

We’ve seen only a few smallish barricuda here and they have been uninterested in us. We’ve each spotted a lobster antenna or two by looking carefully under the overhangs. Jim saw a stingray, and we both watched a spotted eagle ray swim past the dinghy one day as we were crossing over a bar, and our friends Peter and Mary saw a shark (I’m not sure if that was before or after Peter speared a fish.) Lovely plump cushion sea stars in reds and oranges and yellows lie among the turtlegrass in the sandy spots. We often hover for several minutes at one cluster of texture and colour and action, and then swim (or drift) along to another.

Jim and I tend to each go off on our own while snorkeling, lifting our heads from time to time to scan the water’s surface for another snorkel or the splash of fins, and we try not to get too far from the anchored dinghy. We’ll spend 1 ½ to 2 hours at a time in the water, emerging only when we are chilled. It’s surprising to me that even in water that’s 30 degrees, we can still get chilled.

Fortunately, we have time to snorkel, warm up, snorkel, warm up, go exploring by dinghy, fall into bed at night and do it all again the next day! We have both declared that snorkeling is our favourite activity, and this is our favourite place to do it.