Most people's blogs seem to follow a regular pattern of entries every few days but I can see that ours is quite the opposite! Ours is a bunch of info all at once, often going backwards in time (such as this one is going to be) and then nothing for weeks while we're out making more memories! Oh well, I figured I would describe our visit to Half Moon Cay in Belize and was too tired to do it last night.

The picturesque small island named Half Moon Cay is what put Belize on the map as far as tourism goes, at least for the atolls. It's also pictured on the front cover of our cruising guide, and I'd look at it whenever I was starting to lose focus on this trip while living in Boston! Sitting just inside the Southern rim of Lighthouse Reef, it's about half pure white sand and palm trees amidst varying shades of brilliant turquoise water, and half lush, bright green foliage with HUNDREDS of pairs of nesting frigate birds and red footed boobies this time of year. Right off the Southern tip of the island is the famous drop off with spectacular diving and all of this is part of the Belize Audubon Park. Seven miles North is the Blue Hole where the stunning aerial photos that Belize is famous for are taken. That too is park.

Rich & Jan accompanied us to the island and we anchored right next to each other in front of the cay. The roar of the waves hitting the outside of the barrier reef was unnerving but kind of cool. Over the hours we were there, the boat got a nice fresh coat of fine salt spray from the moisture in the air from the waves- ugh! You can climb the rusty steel lighthouse to get a really great view of the island and surrounding reef and the colors are quite stunning with the browns of the reef, yellows of sand, turquoise water and green palms. There are a few park staff who live on the island, 2 weeks on and then 1 week off. Talk about solitude....

The most exciting part for me was walking the trail to the opposite half of the island which winds through cool, tall woods and then up to the observation platform where you find yourself in the middle of a massive mating and nesting frenzy. The magnificent frigate bird, with 7 foot wingspan and the red footed booby (with cute reddish-orange feet) are usually enemies at sea. The frigate bird frequently steals the booby's food since frigates cannot land on the water. They eat by stealing food and scooping fish and the like from the sea surface while in flight. BUT, during nesting season, they nest together and get along! All you could see were nesting birds everywhere and male frigate birds displaying their red, puffed up throats to the females to attract them. And then some of them would unite! When we came back a week later, there were fluffy baby chicks in some of the nests. We all really enjoyed just watching all that activity from such a good viewpoint, with the place to ourselves for much of the time. It was funny, this dive guide had a group of Japanese film crew there for a bit since in Japan this year, there is a focus on reef ecosystems. They too were very interested in the birds as an aside. The dive guide was getting a little burned out and said to Jon: "I never thought I'd say this but: I think I've seen enough boobies!".

We also dove the reef twice since it was THE BEST dive we've ever done. Mainly because of the bottom characteristics and amount of life on the reef. It was really rough on the water and we were nauseous getting our gear on in the bucking dinghy but once we slid in, all that faded. The bottom was bright white sand filled with fish, then you swam toward the drop off but instead of the usual cliff like drop, the reef actually went upward first so there were all these beautiful coral formations complete with tunnels to swim through to the wall. Jon loves tunnels! We got the best view of an octopus ever. Jan spotted it hopping from one coral head to another and we all just watched it change color as it moved along. The water clarity was stunning and since there's no spearfishing in the park, there were large fish all over including grouper, hogfish, tarpon, jacks and king mackerel. For me, having the white sand on one side of the reef adds a neat perspective to the dive and when you have to head up to shallower water toward the end of a dive, I love to actually stand on the sand in my fins and just look around. That's the only time you can really "land" or touch anything since usually, the bottom or wall is a thick carpet of sealife that you'd harm if you touched.

The Blue Hole is over 400 feet deep and is a sunken cave. There actually isn't much for fish or reef structure there at all, but once you get below 100 feet, there are stalactite and stalagmite formations to see. From what we'd heard, the Blue Hole is best appreciated from the air and that diving it was mainly just to be able to say you'd done it but we were still intrigued. On our second visit to Half Moon, we motored up to it, dodging numerous coral patches which kept me up on the bow for an hour in the blazing sun to keep a good watch. Plus the wind was honking that day. When we got up to it, we weren't too impressed and with the wind blowing so hard, the water wasn't very clear. I mean, the concept is really neat, but given that our dive compressor was broken and we only had one scuba dive we could do- either the Blue Hole or a second dive at Half Moon, we decided we weren't doing the Blue Hole! We dinghyed around it, through it, ate lunch next to it and then motored back to Half Moon anchorage before the sun got too low. Hope we don't live to regret it!

I was really pleased with the pictures I got of the birds and some of the underwater ones are OK too. We definitely see where we have improvement to make in our photography but we both think we're taking better pictures than previous trips. We fully intend to return to this spot again since we can't seem to get enough of it. Maybe, just maybe, we'll see a whale shark one of these days.

Today we just scoped out the town of Placencia some more. Took a nice walk along the long beach that's here and got a good ol' American cheeseburger (well, sort of) at the Purple Space Monkey Cafe while we caught up on out internet stuff. We met up with some other cruisers and compared notes and I made 15 bean soup for dinner early in the day so we wouldn't heat up the cabin during the evening. The heat is really picking up with the sun feeling stronger every day. We both jumped in the water this evening to cool off. People are raving to us about the Rio Dulce, where we plan to keep Evergreen for the summer. It's a river so there's FRESH WATER!! No more salty boat for a few months. I also plan to make an air conditioner a top priority and I don't think I'll get too much resistance from Jon either!