Ambergris Caye Reef Escape

About this pack

A 6-day premium trip to San Pedro, Belize, taking in Hol Chan Marine Reserve, Turneffe Atoll, Great Blue Hole and Caye Caulker.

Inside the Ambergris Caye Reef Escape trip

Ambergris Caye Reef Escape opens at the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, close to Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker off the coast of Belize, its name Mayan for "little channel." Covering some 18 square kilometres of coral reef, seagrass beds and mangrove forest, the reserve grew out of a campaign led by biologist Janet Gibson between 1985 and 1987 to protect a natural break in the reef that was both a productive fishing ground and a favourite spot for snorkellers and divers; it was established in July 1987 with funding from WWF and USAID after the government and local fishing cooperative approved a management plan. Today its Hol Chan Cut teems with more than 160 recorded fish species and forty types of coral, while Shark Ray Alley, an area once used by fishermen to clean their nets, now draws visitors to watch the nurse sharks and southern stingrays the discarded fish scraps first attracted.

From Hol Chan the route runs out to Turneffe Atoll, roughly 32 kilometres southeast of Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, and, at some 48 kilometres long and 16 kilometres wide, the largest coral atoll in Belize and in the wider Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. Declared a marine reserve in November 2012 and co-managed since 2013 by the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association, the atoll's mangrove islands, flats and lagoons support more than 500 species of fish alongside 65 species of stony coral, sea turtles, manatees and dolphins. Its waters carry a piece of pirate history too: between 4 and 5 April 1718 the notorious Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, captured the logwood-cutting sloop Adventure at Turneffe during a winter spent harassing shipping in the Bay of Honduras, forcing its captain to join his crew before sailing on toward North Carolina.

The trip's centrepiece is the Great Blue Hole, a near-perfectly circular marine sinkhole 318 metres across and 124 metres deep near the centre of Lighthouse Reef, part of the UNESCO-listed Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System. Formed during several phases of Quaternary glaciation when sea levels stood far lower than today, the hole's submerged stalactites — dated to four separate periods as far back as 153,000 years ago — confirm it began as a dry limestone cave before rising seas flooded it. Jacques Cousteau brought his ship Calypso here in 1971 to chart its depths and named it one of the world's top five diving sites, and later expeditions, including a 2018 submarine survey using sonar, have continued to map its interior and the underwater ledges left by the shifting sea levels that formed it.

The route ends at Caye Caulker, a narrow limestone coral island about 8 kilometres long and less than 1.6 kilometres wide, some 32 kilometres north of Belize City, its village settled largely by mestizo refugees who fled the Caste War of Yucatán in 1847. The island is split by a channel known as the Split, popularly but incorrectly attributed to Hurricane Hattie in 1961 — villagers who dug it by hand recall widening a passage the hurricane had merely begun, a waterway erosion has continued to enlarge ever since. Hattie's storm surge destroyed the wooden schoolhouse being used as a shelter that year, killing thirteen people, mostly children, and the island — barely 2.4 metres above sea level at its highest point — has since been struck by several further hurricanes, most recently Hurricane Keith in 2000, a reminder of the low-lying reef geography that also gives Caye Caulker its shallow lagoon, its dry-reef edge, and the laid-back, boat-and-bicycle pace that closes out this reef-focused route through Belize's barrier system.

• Hol Chan Marine Reserve — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Turneffe Atoll — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Great Blue Hole — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Caye Caulker — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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