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From Away.com
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Ambergris: Diving in Belize with Ease (Cont.)

The unblemished view from an Ambergris beachouse. (Laura Boswell)
We load up and speed off toward the reef, distant waves breaking over its crest against a surreal, neon blue horizon. The ride takes only ten minutes, but we've grown accustomed to the shallow, swimming-pool calm water inside the reef; as we cross over a cut in the coral, the waves become surprisingly Perfect Storm-ish. Still sluggish from a late night spent dancing to Pineapple Willie at Fido's Bar, we stumble into the water, flippers flailing. But then there's the wonderful, instant peace as we descend from the choppy waves into a pure, blissful silence disturbed only by the hiss of our regulators and the silvery bubbles shimmying up to the surface.

Experienced divers who feel they have "done" the Caribbean to death can still find new and exquisite thrills immediately around Ambergris. Today we do two dives, wending through Toffee's coral canyons and then, after a rest and a snack, move farther down the reef to explore Esmerelda's tunnels and arches. Ched is a native Belizean and leads us to a number of as-yet-unnamed dive sights. A number of wrecks, remnants of the area's pirating past, are also nearby.

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Get drawn in: Lighthouse Reef's Blue Hole. (Courtesy, Belize Tourism)
Ambergris-area dives yield fantastic visibility (up to 150 feet) and combine both the comfortable thrill of deep-but-not-too-deep (80 feet max) diving and a dependable circus of wildlife, who always manage to show up all at once. At one point, a large loggerhead glides over us, allowing me to touch his smooth belly while Rob entices a moray from his lair, a green ribbon with teeth that circles and streaks away past silver barracuda hanging slack jawed, watching us with their black eyes.

For more seasoned divers, a two-hour boat ride from Ambergris yields the famous Great Blue Hole, part of Lighthouse Reef, one of Belize's three major atolls. A dark, almost perfectly circular limestone wonder, the Blue Hole is 1,000 feet across and plunges over 450 feet deep. Hammerheads and tiger sharks lurk here (although sightings are uncommon), dropoffs are seemingly infinite, and stalactites and stalagmites jut into the blue like monstrous fingers beckoning you to come closer and marvel at the formations nature made eons ago.

Dives here are deep and short, and therefore come as part of a full-day excursion (be prepared to leave by 7 a.m.), or as overnight packages combining the Blue Hole with sites like the Elbow and its enormous jacks or the Aquarium's black groupers and octopi. There is also plenty to entertain you in the same region if the Blue Hole narcs you out—get in some bonefishing along the Turneffe Islands or go birding on Half Moon Caye, an Audubon Bird Sanctuary and home to a red-footed booby colony.


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