Day 8- Matthew and Alex

At around 8:30 we all walk into Ernesto’s with heavy heart, sad to see the village that we have called home for the past week go. We began by all sitting down and exchanging stories about our time during our walk in the footsteps activity, mostly about what we did and also about what was one of the highlights during our time with our homestay families. After this little heart to heart we loaded into our bus for our short two minute drive to the Mayan Women Center and more importantly, the Chocolate Factory. After waking up from our chocolate induced comas we loaded back on to the bus for the trip to Dangriga. Upon arriving to Dangriga we unloaded the bus and reloaded into two boats and spent the next hour travelling to Tobacco Caye.

Upon arriving at Tobacco Caye we had to small tour of our new paradise, were we learned about the mangroves that keep the small island from becoming any smaller, the sea grape tree that is said to be in the middle of the whole island and the barrier reef that the island is sitting right next too. Then after a short half an hour break we had the typical safety talk about snorkeling and about the coral ecosystem, then we were handed the snorkeling gear and sent to the water’s edge to have our first practice dive. After completing some simple task, such as clearing our mask and snorkels of water and assuming the swimming position we were given the ok to go out on the coral reef just offshore. We were amazed by the amount of color variety of coral as well as the abundance of all the different species of fish present.

After an hour of relaxation and food, we went out on a night snorkel were we saw all the more nocturnal fish as well as some octopi and huge moray eels. All this was truly amazing but watch out for the next post all about our day out snorkeling and having fun.