Scuba Diving Belize, An Amazing Experience
Pleasure Under the Waves
If you’re planning a trip to any tropical destination, a scuba diving excursion should be a firm fixture of your itinerary. Warm-water locations just beg to have their undersea panorama explored at length, and there’s no better way to soak in the grandeur of the planet’s oldest habitat than with an air tank on your back, affording you hours to just swim and take it all in. If you’ve never dived before, you’ll need a short training and certification course before you go, but the small expense and time spent on this is well worth the cost, considering the bounty of ocean life and amazing vistas you’ll glimpse at depths that far exceed the reach of snorkelers hanging close to the surface. Almost anywhere you’d want to dive, you’ll be able to find a reputable dive shop that offers training courses designed to keep you safe during your excursion under the waves.
Great Blue Opportunity
One of the most popular and renowned diving locations on earth can be found off the coast of Belize. Surrounded by tropical reef, the Great Blue Hole is a diving experience unlike any other you’re likely to encounter. Viewed from the air, the hole looks like a period in the middle of Lighthouse Reef, which lies about 70 kilometers from Belize City. A sinkhole 300 meters wide and almost 125 meters deep, the Great Blue Hole is essentially a vertical cave that, while it won’t take you twenty thousand fathoms down, will afford some of the most spectacular views of marine life available anywhere in the American tropics. Made of karst limestone, it is the largest and most impressive of several such formations, called Cenotes, that exist in the Caribbean amidst crystal-clear waters, affording scuba-diving enthusiasts a rare opportunity to see the unfiltered depths, like an elevator ride to the bottom of the sea. The Hole is so deep, in fact, that it’s blue color comes not from any impurities in the water, but from a trick of the light. The water near the hole is quite shallow and it’s bottom can be easily seen, but the light reflecting off the pure white sand at the hole’s terminus creates the illusion of a dark blue dot in the middle of a turquoise field.
Making the Monster
The Hole was formed, according to scientists, during ice ages, when worldwide glaciation lowered sea levels dramatically. Exposed to the erosive elements of wind and rain, the caves formed over a period of tens of millennia, and when the ice melted and the seas returned, the roof eventually caved, exposing the underwater pit and inviting in any creature capable of penetrating its depths. A bevy of amazing wildlife can be glimpsed on a trip to the Hole, including giant groupers, reef sharks, and even hammerheads. If you’re headed to the vicinity of Central America, don’t omit a stop in Belize to check out the Great Blue Hole. Even if you’ve never dived before, you’ll need only a few days to get certified and in the water. Most dive trips to the Hole are full-day affairs with at least three dives in various locations. What better way to inaugurate yourself into the community of divers than by tackling one of the planet’s most spectacular underwater sights?
If you’re interested in scuba diving in Belize you can find more info on scuba diving tours here. See Belize Scuba Diving picture gallery.
