Trip to the Cayes

On Tuesday Nancy and Carol and I "booked passage" to Tobacco Caye with Captain “Doggie” Duran. It was a gorgeous day. 

Carol Steve Nancy

Our first stop was Man-O-War Caye, which has restricted entry because of nesting birds. We saw frigate birds and yellow footed boobies. Their feet really are yellow. 

We moved on the the next caye in search of crocodiles at the edge of the mangrove trees. We didn’t see any, but we were relieved to move away from their area. 

As we trolled over an area of sea grass, the captain threw out a line and hook baited for barracuda. He had a strike in a matter of seconds, and he pulled it in successfully. He had a simple spool of line with no rod and no reel - just strong fingers. 

At Tobacco Caye we dropped off the captain, who was going in search of conch and lobster, while first mate Mark took us over the the atoll to do some snorkeling. Water on the surface was warm enough, but seemed uncomfortably cool below 8-10 feet beneath the surface. 

We got to try out Carol’s new underwater camera and were happy with the results. When we were thoroughly tired, we went back to Tobacco Caye to eat lunch and refresh with cold beer. We lounged and explored the island (exploring did not take long since it is very small). 

When the fishermen came back with the catch, we got to see them take conch out of the shell and clean the catch. The shallow water was full of rays waiting for table scraps. In the late afternoon we came back to Dangriga with a wonderful day of experience. 

I also am adding video footage from the top of El Castillo pyramid at Xunantunich. I was not able to up-load it yesterday because I just learned how to add video to the blog.