I’ve wanted to dive the Great Blue Hole pretty much as soon as I got into scuba diving and learned that this particular sink hole was a thing that existed. Then people started telling me it was a shit dive and not worth the really quite hefty price tag (honestly, try not to choke when you start looking at prices) but the other two dives you do it there are cool so I started to reconsider but let’s face it, I’m already in Belize, I’ll kick myself if I don’t do it and if it turns out to be a pile of wank at least I’m prepared for it, right?

It’s an early start which is a shock to the basic motor functions when you’ve essentially been on holiday now for over a year. Oh poor me, I can hear your sympathetic sobbing from here. Breakfast was provided at Frenchies, the dive shop I’d chosen to go with, which is ideal because there will be exactly zero places open to cater to your stomach, not that your digestive system will be open for business at this ungodly hour anyway. I wanted to take a Dramamine though and figured I should at least force a bit of fruit down.

It’s two hours from Caye Caulker to the Blue Hole, less if conditions are good and I think they were. I nod-slept at the back of the boat for most of it but the Dramamine did its job and everything in my body stayed where I left it. We dropped the snorkellers off then headed to where we’d be giant striding into the water. Down you drop to forty metres, and this is what was making me a bit nervous. The depth. There’s rarely any reason to go to forty metres, all the cool shit is usually a bit shallower, but what you’re looking for here are the rocks and those fuckers are inconveniently located at forty bloody metres.

The Blue Hole is a geological dive, there are these huge limestone stalactites left over from when this whole hole was above sea level. You know this because stalactites are formed by water dripping, and water can’t drip underwater, so these fucker formed over I don’t even know how many hundreds or thousands of years but they’re pretty massive so it would have taken a fair old while. Then I think the cave collapsed and flooded as the sea level rose and now you can pay obnoxious money to look at it.

As it’s so deep it’s very short. Three minutes to descend, five minutes to look at it, then you have to start slowly ascending. The whole thing lasted 27 minutes. But it was awesome! A Caribbean grey reef shark meandered along underneath us and I pointed the GoPro I’d hired at it but then I looked to my left and decided that actually, those epic fuck off great big stalactites were way better! We all definitely stopped to watch the big spotted eagle ray cruise past during our extra long safety stop too. That was a cracking end to the dive.

The second site is at Half Moon Caye regardless of who you dive with and this was a cracking dive with a few Caribbean reef sharks. I was happily staring at a shoal of fish when a shark emerged from the blue, sped up and chomped for the fish. I mean, it totally missed but those teeth! We saw its teeth! It happened so fast that not one of us caught it on camera but it was absolutely incredible. It was like its gums drew back or something. Then it saw us and scarpered as quickly as it showed up. That was a brilliant dive though.

We had a spot of lunch on Half Moon Caye and the weather had pretty much gone to shit. It was fine when we descended but by the time we surfaced the clouds had rolled in, the rain was coming down and the water was a bit more choppy. Oh. Good. That’ll be fun for the two hour trip home then. We still had one dive left though so we made our way to Aquarium.

This was a lovely dive with all those gorgeous Caribbean reef fish you hope to see but the star of the dive was the remora that followed us the whole time, possibly deciding whether to latch onto one of us or not. I’ve never managed to get a proper look at a remora before, usually on account of them being quite firmly attached to large, bitey fish, but they’re odd looking fuckers. The mouth is on top of its head and it has, like, a flat plate on its head. I expected it to be flat as they attach to the underside of sharks and turtles but its like it has a textured area, maybe because it chaffs being attached to another animal, who knows?

I took another Dramamine for the ride back and had a lovely nap on a pile of wetsuits. I was woken up just before we arrived back in Caye Caulker when an absolutely huge storm emptied buckets of water onto the boat and the insanely loud thunder we’d experienced in Livingston cracked overhead, simultaneously with the flash of lightning. Yeah nah, I love a storm but not when I’m on a fucking boat. Fortunately we pulled into the dock pretty much straight afterwards and made our way onto dry land. Or waterlogged land because Caye Caulker’s roads are unsealed and turn to mud and treachery in the rain. Whatever.

The only problem with being face down in the Blue Hole is that you can’t actually really see it properly. It’s definitely the most stunning from the air so I went to the woman I’d rented the GoPro from at Tsunami Adventures to see if she could organise a flight for us. She could and she did. Caye Caulker airstrip was shut for maintenance so we went from San Pedro which suited us better because we intended to be there on the Sunday anyway. We rocked up, met the other people we’d be flying with, our pilot collected us and we were loaded onto a teeny, tiny little plane. Obviously we had to take a thousand photos of the plane first because it was so little and cute. Our pilot, Duane, was very patient with us, bless him.

The whole flight is only about an hour and he started by taking us over Turneffe Atoll which is absolutely gorgeous from the air. He did a few turns so we could all get a good view before carrying on. It’s incredible from up here though, it’s outstandingly beautiful. I can’t get over the colour change from the dark blue, deep water to where the reefs start and the water gets shallower. Then Duane nudged Joost, the guy in the front seat, and told him the Blue Hole was right there. I couldn’t quite see it yet, I was sat on the other side of the plane, then he banked the plane almost onto its side and fucking hell, there it was!

It definitely earned the gasps of appreciation from the five passengers in the plane. We were really lucky with the weather too, the sun was out and really brought out the colours around the reef. There was a boat floating over the rim which had the good grace to be really photogenic too and it added scale. Duane circled it twice on one side then turned around and circled it twice on the other side and I didn’t even feel a bit sick so that’s a win all round. I was so blown away by the Blue Hole that I forgot we were also going to look at a wreck.

The MV Transfer was a British cargo ship that ran aground in 2005. Someone fucked up then! It’s sprawled across the reef, a photogenic rusty hulk. He circled it twice, once on each side, and I don’t know if it was because it was a bit quicker, or if the change in direction was more sudden, but there was suddenly a very real risk of depositing my stuff fry jack on the back of Duane’s head. Thankfully he stopped circling and headed back towards San Pedro. I think we were all a bit giddy, not only because of those spectacular views but because we got to ride in a tiny plane. I can absolutely understand how those on a budget would skip this but it’s such an incredible experience and well worth the dolla dolla bills y’all if you have it to spare. From above and below, the Great Blue Hole?

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Great Blue Hole, Lighthouse Reef Atoll, Belize

Stayed at: Stayed at: Willow 2, Island Cabañas, Caye Caulker & Sandbar Hostel, San Pedro Town

Useful shit to know…

• Frenchies on Caye Caulker go to the Blue Hole quite regularly, interest permitting.
• Other dive shops go too. I absolutely do recommend Frenchies though.
• Prices are listed on their website but I paid US$340. This includes all equipment rental.
• I had to pay a deposit online then the balance the day before.
• It doesn’t cost extra to pay by card.

• My camera can’t go to 40 metres so I hired a GoPro from Tsunami Adventures.
• She charges US$25 for 24 hour rental.
• This includes a spare battery, a charger, and the micro SD card.
• If you don’t have the space to get the photos onto your phone it might be worth buying your own micro SD card.

• We booked our flight through Tsunami Adventures on Caye Caulker but we flew from San Pedro.
• The flight was with Cari-bee. They don’t have an office at San Pedro right now so we met the pilot at Tropic Air Cargo.
• They need a minimum of four people to fly and that costs US$250 each.
• If they find a fifth person it costs US$225 each.
• If you’ve already paid the $250 and they find a fifth, Heather at Tsunami Adventures will refund you the extra $25.