Guide to Ambergris Caye, Belize

Diving Belize’s Blue Hole

Ambergris Caye is one of several popular travel destinations along the coast of Belize. It is Belize’s largest island and is known for its vibrant town center and world-class scuba diving. Other popular destinations on the coast of Belize include Caye Caulker, Hopkins and Placencia!

After a few nights in Belmopan (check out my post on Staying in the Belizean Jungle) we dropped off our rental car in Belize City and took a quick 15 minute Maya Island Air flight over to Ambergris Caye. A staff member from our resort met us off the plane, and promptly loaded our luggage onto a golf cart and took us to a dock only a few minutes away from the airport. At the dock we boarded our resort boat which took us straight to our resort. It was quick and easy and convenient!

Where to Stay

There are a plethora of beach resorts to choose from on Ambergris Caye, but none compare to Matachica. The resort is 5 miles from San Pedro town, allowing for complete quiet and relaxation, while still being a 15 minute boat ride or 30 minute golf cart ride away from the town center. The detail in the bohemian decor in the restaurant, casitas, welcome cabana and throughout the entire resort are magnificent.

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Casitas are named after different fruits, and ours was Apricot. They feature a colorful mural by famed illustrator Cécile Gariépy, a walk-in shower and a luxury King-sized bed in which you can gaze at your thatched roof until you doze off.

Mambo Restaurant is on location, and was absolutely delicious. Breakfast was included in our stay, which allowed us to order anything off the breakfast menu! Additional amenities included golf carts for rent, a spa, kayaks, SUPs and bicycles to use at your own leisure.

While the resort was decorated phenomenally, and included all of the amenities one could need, there were a few negatives about the resort I should shed light on. In fairness to Matachica, I cannot imagine these issues plagued only this resort.

1. Mosquitoes – the mosquito infestation was horrendous, and while Matachica attempted to rectify the problem by spraying 3x daily, the mosquito population seemed to double by the hour; then we were also dealing with a complete coating of pesticide on all of our belongings 3x a day. We were hiding our toothbrushes, clothing, etc. so that it would be somewhat protected from the pesticide that infiltrated our casita throughout the day.
2. The sargassum (sea grass) is currently coating the entire coast this summer, and no matter how hard the staff tried, it was just so overbearing we couldn’t swim in the water. It only impacted the immediate shore, a quick kayak out gives you crystal clear waters!

Getting Around

Traveling around the island is easy as pie! Golf cart is really your only option (OK there are a few cars, but very few, and water taxi’s, in my opinion, were overpriced). Our resort had golf carts for rent for $40USD / 8 hours. In my opinion it was a bit pricey for how small the island is, but we made the most of it by getting the golf cart at around 11:00am so that we had time to use it in the morning for a beach trip and then around dinner time in San Pedro.

Golf carting during the day was a ton of fun, though the roads are really rough so its a wild ride. At night mosquitoes plague the island, so golf-carting gets less fun, fast. It became a mad-dash to our cabana from the golf cart after dinner.

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Scuba Diving / Snorkeling

Adam and I are open water certified, each with over a dozen dives under our belt. Still beginner, but comfortable enough that we feel pretty good going anywhere with a good dive master. After a bit of research before arriving on the island, we opted to Dive with Ambergris Divers. There are really only 3 companies on Ambergris Caye that can make it to the Blue Hole; Ambergris Divers, Ramon’s Dive Shop and Ecologic Divers.

Diving Day 1

I told you in my last blog post that I was going to share the good, the bad and the ugly, so here goes. I wish I could report back that I had the greatest time of my life scuba diving in Belize, after all – that was what we came for, to dive the Blue Hole. I’ve got some bad news – but I’m going to share a bit of GOOD first!

Our first day of diving was intentionally light. We did a 1 tank dive at Hol Chan Marine Reserve, and it was phenomenal. For such a shallow dive and a location absolutely packed with snorkelers, the reef was very much alive!

After Hol Chan Marine Reserve we took the boat over to Shark Ray Alley, where we were meant to snorkel with the nurse sharks and sting rays. I was immediately disappointed when I learned that they were going to chum for sharks, and that they were going to chum while snorkelers were in the water. This, combined with the crews general lack of care for the reef systems they make a living off of (ahem, throwing a Pringles can into the ocean), made me incredibly frustrated. Unfortunately, this was far from the worst of it.

Diving Day 2 – A Divers Nightmare

It started when our alarm went off at 4:15am and I woke up feeling under the weather. We were being picked up at our dock by Ambergris Divers at 5:00am for a very full day of diving. The plan was to do 3 dives – The Blue Hole, Lighthouse reef, and then The Aquarium.

It was chaos at the dive shop. They didn’t have our gear prepared and breakfast had been consumed because there was an entire high school dive team from Trinidad and Tobago (and their parents and dive coach) who the crew were completely preoccupied with. Eventually, we loaded the boat.

The plan was to drive 30 minutes through the reef, and another 1.5 hours in open water to the Blue Hole. The ride was incredibly rough, so rough in fact that multiple passengers were launched across the boat, crushing their ribs and bleeding from their legs upon standing up. It was a miserable ride all the way until we flew over a big wave, came crashing down, and broke the hull of the boat. Pure panic consumed the crew on board, who started throwing life-vests at certain people saying “snorkelers, get in the water”. Confused, we were all trying to figure out where we were, and why snorkelers were supposed to get in the water (it was a dive boat, not a snorkel boat, and we were in the middle of nowhere). Finally we saw the water. The boat was sinking.

No land in sight. Dive gear unorganized and unassembled. No direction from crew.

In short – after approximately 5 minutes of chaos, I had my BCD and Oxygen tank on over my swimsuit and white cover up, and I was tossed in the water by a crew member without fins, a wet suit, and my husband. He was still on the boat getting his gear together.

We were separated for about 30 minutes in the water, but reunited after relentless paddling towards one another. It took about 1.5 hours for a rescue boat to arrive. We were completely fine, everyone was, just a bit shaken up.

In my personal opinion:

1. The crew were unprepared, unorganized, and visibly afraid.
2. The Captain drove recklessly through the wake, which wasn’t nearly as bad as they stated upon our return.
3. THANKFULLY there was a high school dive team and their coach on board, they were skilled divers who had a leader, and their coach got them in their gear, off the boat, and to a buoy within minutes of learning the boat was sinking. This same coach helped keep me level headed while awaiting a rescue boat in the water.
4. To my knowledge, the incident went unreported, and the situation was minimized by the staff at Ambergris Divers.
5. The owners of Ambergris Divers are very nice people, truly, but were doing damage control after the event. I am prepared for them to dispute my recollection of the event, but I am firm in my stance.

Ending on a Positive Note

While we weren’t able to do much diving in Belize – we learned a lot about ourselves as individuals and as a couple. It was quite the week, and while we didn’t get what we came for, we flew back to the US with a whole lot more love in our hearts.

Have questions about where to eat and other things to do on the island? Drop a comment below!