Belize - Day 2

Despite being on "island time", we woke up early to watch the sunrise.  The instant coffee and cloud cover didn't put a damper on it, though.  It was still so peaceful.

At 10am, we headed out for our snorkel reservation about a 15 min. walk up the coastline.  There, we got fitted for our gear.  They even had +5.0 prescription goggles for the little one.  After liberally applying our reef-safe suntan lotion, our guide, Zach, boated us out to the barrier reef.

We saw huge schools of fish, lots of coral, and conch shells.  

Then when we came upon a shark or stingray, we dove down to get a close up.

  

Sometimes the water was really shallow and we had to watch our flippers.  We didn't want to hurt the coral.

Under the rocks below, our guide found an Amore eel, so Ashlyn had to go see it.

 On the way back to the boat, we saw this sweet sea turtle nibbling on the sea grass.

Our next snorkel spot was shark and stingray alley.  Zach had a scented bait stick which attracted the marine life.

These are nurse sharks.  They aren't aggressive like most of the sharks we see on TV.  Although that gave me some comfort, we still opted to jump in on the other side of the boat!  

I had fun swimming after the sting rays.

The little one was finally getting used to the snorkel mouth piece and enjoying the salt water, so we stayed a few minutes longer to look at the large shells.

 Then one last selfie before we loaded up...

The boat ride back to Caye Caulker was quite intense!  I was sure one of us would fly out from going top speed and hitting the waves.  These three seemed to be all smiles, though.

 Then one wave smacked the side of the boat and I gripped on for dear life!

Safely back on land, we decided to get a drink and get the saltwater taste out of our mouths.

Then walked over to the west side of the island to catch the sunset!