The Belize Trip Day 5 - August 5, 2009 - The Birds

After having dried ourselves off from our Blue Hole excursion and had some snacks to eat, it was off to the next activity planned for the day, a visit to Half Moon Caye to visit the Red-Footed Booby sanctuary. It would be the first time we set foot on dry land since we arrived in Belize four days earlier. Because the island did not have the docking facilities to handle a ship the size of the Sundancer II, we boarded the smaller boat to take us there.

Below is my roommate Sam with Marnie, the ship's first mate.

Besides Red-footed Boobies, another of the avian denizens of the island is the Frigate Bird. I was fortunate that the one below hovered long enough for me to be able to get a good shot of it properly centered.

Above is yours truly, though I believe it was taken after we had made our way to the end of the island where the observation tower was to observe the boobies. If memory serves, I had dunked myself with some water to cool off, which explains the dark area on my shirt.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a good picture at the observation tower. There were a lot of boobies, but they were at a bit of a distance, roosting on the trees. It reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock movie the way there were all gathered there.

The shot above is pretty much self explanatory.

When I saw the formation in the picture above, at first I thought it was a series of jagged rocks sticking out of the water. Even though it vaguely resembled a ship, I wasn't sure that it was. However, when I asked Marnie, she confirmed that it was a cargo ship that had gotten wrecked there.

Below is a big-assed termite nest.

Another common resident of Half Moon Caye is the iguana. If you happen to go there, you will see a lot of them scurrying about or simply resting in the shade.

After about an hour and a half on Half Moon Caye, we were all quite hot and looked forward to getting back in the boat and returning to the Sundancer II. Before we docked with it, we did a pass around her in order to get some photo opportunities. In the shot below, I wasn't quite able to capture the entire ship in the frame.

Here we have Jerry, the Sundancer II's master chef, cooking lunch on the grill in preparation for our return. Here I have to digress a bit. For those of you who have never been on a live aboard before, there might be an expectation that it will a spartan kind of existence, with the food consisting of franks and beans or mac & cheese or something like that. I have to say, every meal Jerry prepared for us was a masterpiece worthy of any fancy restaurant. If there is a culinary heaven, it can be found on the Sundancer II. The food was that good.