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Down to Placencia and out to Gladden's Spit for whale sharks
04.30
Day 9 Our plan for the day was to drive to Placencia and charter a boat out to Gladden's Spit to try one last time to see whale sharks. We woke up early and packed our bags. While packing, 3 wild parrots flew in and perched on our window sill. They were so curious of us they stayed around even after we went out to look at them. It was odd, they weren't afraid of us.

After breakfast, we left Caves Branch for Placencia. A good portion of the road to Placencia was unpaved. We arrived in Placencia at around 9am and went to Advanced Diving to book our boat out to Gladden's Spit. We did and the lady there said to come back soon because the boat is going to leave. We still needed to find a place to stay so we rushed to find a place.

We ended up booking rooms at this crappy resort with bungalows on the beach. The beach was not that impressive; someowhat dirty. After we dropped off our luggage, we waited outside for the boat for a hour and a half! Turns out the lady at the dive shop didn't tell us the boat was gonna pick us up at 11am. After the boat picked us up we went to pick up another group of people.

The boat ride out was slow. Vance, the captain of the boat said the gas he bought (Shell station) had too much water in it. This caused the engine to stall frequently, and run about a quarter of it's speed. When we eventually arrived at Gladden's Spit, Vance hurried us into the water. We didn't have much time to check our gear before jumping in the water. Swells were about five feet high.

When I jumped in, I tried inflating my BC (the vest that makes me float) but it wouldn't inflate. Another diver discovered there was a hole in my BC! Vance swapped another BC with me. After all the chaos, we decended into the blue water. Underwater, we blew a lot of bubbles because the bubbles attracted the whale sharks.

After about 15 minutes, I saw someone point at something. Out of the blue, I saw a large silhouette coming towards us. It was a whale shark! It was about 20 feet away and was about 30 feet long. I was really happy. Shortly after we saw the shark, we surfaced and had lunch. During our second dive, we saw one more whale shark which was about the same size as the first. At the surface we were all very excited about the whale sharks. Though, we were't as excited about Advanced Diving.

The boat ride back was slow. My original BC had a hole in it. Jeremy's regulator (the thing that divers breath out of) had a funny noise. Gord and Amy, who were dive partners, both had broken depth gauges. Gordon's original pressure gauge was so scratched up he couldn't read it. Though we did see whale sharks, it seems too dangerous to dive with Advanced Diving; a diver's dive equipment is their life support.

When we got back, I couldn't find my mask. I found out that someone from the other group accidentally took my mask instead of his. Later that night we went to another resort, found the people that dove with us and got my mask back. While out, I tried to see if my friend Arnold that I met last time I went to Belize was working at Francis Ford Coppola's Turtle Inn. I just missed him by about an hour.

Copyright © 2005, Jason Jue