trip report Belize

[Jim Lynk]

Trip Report- Belize, Glover's Reef, Manta Resort
11/2 to 11/7 1997
Summary: good diving in a unique "desert island" setting. Excellent food,
facilities, housing and staff. Very hard to get there, so significant chance
of transportation and luggage problems. Owner had us pay for a mistake
made by his staff.
Diving
-setup and practical details.
A medium sized (25 ft?) open boat was used for the dozen guests. You leave
your hardware on the boat between dives and overnight. You walk to a dock a
couple of hundred yards from where you stay. You don't bring a hat or a
change of clothes or towel because the dives are all nearby and they bring
you back to the dock after each dive. There are three dives a day with an
hour or two between each, and twice a week the last dive is at night, with
dinner right after. You go back to your cabana, rinse off, hang up your
skin, and wait for the next dive. No beach diving is available. They have a
big new boat which is only used to go back and forth from land, not for
diving. The dive sites are picked by the boat captain, not the divemaster.
The divemaster didn't talk to anyone or interpret or prep us for the dives
until the last day (when tips are handed out). He felt his job was safety-
he hung above us watching everyone. All dives are drift, with a very slight
current. The boat follows you.
-underwater.
To summarize you drift along a wall with lots of coral and moderate fish
with about 50 feet visibility. Big animals and fish are rare. I found more
coral than Hawaii and Cabo, more fish than Grand Cayman but not as much
seascape diversity. People who had gone to Cozumel said the visibility was
much better there. We got a little bored with the same old wall each day.
We suspected that more variety would be available if they drove the boat
farther, but the crew didn't want to. The only variation is Hole in the
Wall, their premiere signature dive site. Here there are towers between
sand fingers which give a great feeling of flying. We went there twice.
Night diving was shallow, with reduced visibility as the bottom was stirred
up by the divers. We saw sleeping nurse sharks, lobsters, bioluminescense
and turtles.
-snorkeling.
If you swim out the channel to the reef face you get very good snorkeling.
Yachts travelling by have heard about the spot- they anchor up and dingy in.
It is right next to a beautiful white sand beach.
Housing
You stay in a raised cabana with it's own covered porch and hammock. They
were new and in good shape. They each had a bathroom with bath/shower and
drinkable water (ion filter from seawater). The inside was mahogany
paneled. No air conditioning, but the open screened windows and ceiling fan
worked fine. You could dry out your bathing suits with clotheslines on the
porch. They give you ice water to drink and a pan to wash the sand off your
feet. I thought the places were very nice. Other guests used to cruise
ships thought them primitive. One of our party found a rat in their
bathroom. They live in the tops of the coconut trees.
the Island
It's just like the brochure. All sand and coconut trees. No mangrove
swamps, so no mosquitos- they spray and there is no where for them to
hide. There are sand fleas which will bite at the waters edge during the
day. There is a lighthouse and a lighthouse keeper you can talk to.
Food
Very good food, good variety, reasonable size proportions. Snacks before
dinner. Booze not cheap but reasonable. You all eat at a bar/dining room
out over the water; good breeze, no bugs. At night you can see nurse sharks
and sting rays swimming under and around the bar hut. Bartender a Belizian;
a good listener, a really nice guy, makes good drinks. If you wanted to
skip all the diving and just sit in the bar and enjoy the tropical breezes
and talk to Harry you would have a good vacation.
Transportation
This is the bad part. It is just about impossible to get there, and the
management is not very understanding when you have trouble. It is a two
hour boat ride from Belize City. They don't have navigational aids in the
water or anything but a compass and a floodlight on the boat, so they can't
travel very well at night, which comes early near the equator. If your
plane comes in late they can't wait for you and they won't come back the
next day. They only have one boat a week. It dumps off the old guests and
picks up the new. If your luggage is it won't get to the resort. Our dive
shop group arrived at the airport and the boat to Manta had already gone.
What happened was the air carrier had changed their schedule so that we got
in a little later in the day. Our group leader called the Manta resort
contact in the US and was assured that it would be OK "The boat meets all
the planes". Of course it is a long way from the office person in the US to
the remote island of Glover's reef, and she got it all wrong. The boat had
to leave, even though they knew we were coming because they had to get back
through the unmarked reef passages before it got too dark. They put us up at
another resort owned by the same guy (Blackbird Resort) and brought us back
to Belize City the next day. Then we had to pay our own way on a small
plane taking us to the shore (The little garifuna town of Dangriga) a little
nearer to the dive resort. From there we were taken the rest of the way to
the resort in a boat. The boat was contracted by the resort to carry us,
and when we were about to leave the resort manager asked that we reimburse
him for the expense of that boat trip. We did not.
The point is, should the management be financially responsible for the
mistake of their agent when the agent told us the new airline shedule was
OK? Obviously we think so. We thought he should re-imburse us for the
small plane travel. Anyhow my conclusion is don't try to get to this resort
if you live much farther north than Houston. You need to be sure of getting
into the airport by noon or so to catch the boat. I also wouldn't go if
there was any chance I might need medical care. It is REMOTE!
Belize the country
Outside of Belize City it is a pleasant place. People are better off than
the starving Latins in neighboring countries. The people like Americans and
speak English better than we do. I read that what went wrong with the
Belize City is that after the '61hurricane thousands of Belizians moved to
LA and their kids picked up the gang lifestyle from us. I am embarrassed
that my country has messed up such a nice little place by our bad example.