UnBelizeable family vacation Day 2: Under the Sea (121716)

Wake up and have a bagel in the house before heading to the dive shop. Get loaded up and go to do my first dive of the day. We go down and swim around, eventually getting to 30-35 meters. On the swim we see some more sharks and a giant turtle just cruising through the water. Come back to the boat, do our surface interval and then go down to do the naturalist dive. On this one we are staying close to the coral to look at how the animals interact and get to see shrimp hanging inside coral for protection/a fish that needs cleaning, some organism that lives on the brain coral that if it senses movement it withdraws inside and slowly comes back out. Was cool how he was able to find animals tucked away inside the coral using it for what we all know is one of its purposes. We come up and get back to the dock to have lunch. I meet up with the family at the indian restaurant under the place we are staying and it is tasty, though none of them ordered the butter chicken (noobs am I right?). We then get ready and most of us head to the dock to do some snorkeling. First stop is Hol Chan where at first TAO doesnt want to get in. Eventually he gets over it and reluctantly gets in, though doesnt put his face in water for first half. We go snorkeling out and see spotted eagle rays, manta rays, schools of fish, and some starfish, among other things. We get back to the boat, TAO is emboldened, and we head to the next stop, shark ray alley. We get there, they start chumming the water, and everyone is watching the sharks come on over with tons of different fish (some have hummingbird like noses with weird colors - cool fish with my description not doing it justice) and some rays all swimming around. Guide gets some sharks and lets people pet them. Their skin is tough! Get back in the boat and head back in. Family goes back and I stay for my last dive of the Advanced certification - Night dive. Get everyone on the boat and go back out to Hol Chan. Wait for it to get dark and then into the water we go. We get in there and it is amazing how much different it is at night, like 3-4 hours after just being there. We see tons of rays gliding through the water, sharks sleeping under a rock, and octopus scurrying along the bottom trying to camouflage against the rocks, turtles hanging in a cave and on the floor of the area, giant lobsters nestled in the rocks peering out at us, schools of fish following us around, moray eels swimming along the coral hunting (much more active than earlier in the day), tons of urchins out among the rocks with starfish swimming all around, a squid chilling near the boat on the way back, a HUGE sandollar thing (not sure how it works but same design of a sanddollar but in a giant sphere (4 in big probably), and maybe some other things I cant remember. Swam through a little cave thing which was interesting to see the inside of that cropping. As we were swimming in the deep, I kept looking around, was really creepy seeing the eyes of the rays in the sand glowing at you as you shine over. Once we get back to the boat, we head in and see a few of the boats from the christmas boat parade before docking and heading home. Jeff and I then go to Hurricanes for a conch feast (everyone else had to go eat earlier as the kids were hungry) where we got conch fritters, conch ceviche (much better than last night as it was all acidy), and the conch sautee special. Ceviche and special were really good, while neither of us cared for the fritters. After that we walked around the island a bit while talking and checking out some streets we havent explored yet before heading back to the place to call it a night.

This school's walls were painted all around the premises.

Good place. A little dead but tasty food and nice views.