30 March 2024
Today, I’m headed to Belize, a new-to-me liveaboard location to do some diving. The travel time to get here is a whopping 4.5 hours, direct, so I’ll hop on a plane in the morning and by the afternoon I’ll be on my boat! So much more convenient than my trips to Indonesia.
Unfortunately, I never think about the drive-time when I book my flights, so while a 7am flight sounds good on paper, but the 3am wake-up… not so much.
Good morning sleepy plane:
The sun was just barely starting to rise when we departed MSP, but fortunately, most of the shades in the plane were down, so I napped on and off for the majority of the flight.
AND! I got upgraded to Comfort+! An aisle seat instead of the window I had booked, but I got to board through the fancy Sky Priority lane and they brought me extra snacks and drinks. Plus, look at all this legroom:
…I wonder if I would have been able to use the Sky Priority lanes to check my bag- the main line was quite long, though it did move quickly…
Belize also deplanes on the tarmac like my tropical destinations tend to do:
But they had what felt like extra security urging people along, so I just snapped these couple quick pictures and moved on:
Customs was super-smooth (being at the front of the line probably helped) and I found the Aggressor agent quickly outside the airport.
Unfortunately, the hotel they usually stash us at is under construction, so we’ll be waiting at the airport today. There’s a restaurant with an attached viewing area, so that’s my home for the next several hours? until the boat is ready for us and we can board.
Plane through the grate:
Me, making a bit of a face:
It’s fairly loud and fume-y here, so I hung out for a bit, but ultimately moved to a less polluted location.
Finally, after a long 5+ hour wait, the last of our group finally arrived and we departed for the dock. If I had realized just how long of a wait it was going to be, I probably would have just taxied myself over and hung out here.
Welcome to my home for the next week, the Belize Aggressor III:
When I booked this trip initially, I was the only person in my room, but at some point, they combined me with another solo female diver, so we’re bunking together in room 7:
Layout courtesy of https://www.aggressor.com/boat/BAIII
This is the dive deck:
My station is the second on the left, with the black/teal-highlight suit hanging above it.
(these pictures are going to jump around a bit time-wise- it took me a couple days to get decent pictures of the layout, though I realized when I was sorting through my photos that I still missed a few things)
Heading aft, those are towel cubbies on the right where warm dry towels awaited us after each dive; there’s a giant rinse tank for cameras on the left and the nitrox mixing station above it:
To get to the dive platform itself, you have to walk down a couple stairs:
The crew helps put on fins once you’re down here, but everyone gears up first before coming down. They also preferred we not jump with cameras but instead handed them down once we were in the water (which ended up being very nice- I’ve always just jumped with my camera, but I might start having the crew hand it down to me instead). The ladders to get back up out of the water had little platforms on the bottom that made standing back up so easy.
Definitely not my favorite setup, but there were parts (like the camera service and ladders) that I came to enjoy.
Moving inside, this is the indoor lounge:
The white door in the middle leads out to the dive deck, the stairs to the right lead down to most of the rooms (there’s one cabin on the upper deck).
This is also where the menu for the day was posted:
SO MUCH TASTY FOOD!!!
Continuing toward the front of the ship, this is where breakfast and buffet lunches were served every day:
To the left is the galley, which was open to us anytime they weren’t actively cooking:
And the last room on this level is the dining room:
It seemed strange to me that there was no exit from this room, it just kinda dead-ends. I guess I’m used to the Amira, where there were multiple entrances to almost every area of the ship.
Moving below deck:
To the right (well, as you come down the stairs- it’s the picture on the left) is Room 8 and the engine area, to the left (right picture) leads to 7 more rooms including mine, Room 7, which is the open door just past the blue picture.
Rooms on this boat are TINY!
Fortunately, my roommate was super cool (she was actually one of the first people I met at the airport while we were waiting for the shuttle) and had no bed preference, so I was able to have the bottom bunk!
Each room did have its own bathroom:
Small, but functional (though I did learn that the toilets toward the front of the ship didn’t work quite as well and there were a few… backups…)
If you go back out to the dive deck, there are stairs leading to the upper deck:
A small bar area to the left that we used on the last night, lounge chairs and a hot tub (which I never did try out).
And up one more flight of stairs is the sundeck:
Which is a great place to watch the sun set:
Goodnight, Belize!
…so… slight change of plan… in the middle of dinner, the boat’s generator went out.
I was sitting in the back dining room where it got quite dark but remembered an old camping trick of directing a light into a glass of water to make a sort of lantern. No pictures, obviously, but it worked decently well and a few other people did the same thing so we could still see. Unfortunately, the boat started getting quite warm without the A/C running. Obviously, we’re stuck in the harbor until it gets fixed.
Fortunately, our engineer/divemaster Jay was able to find the part we needed and got it working again! (Plan B was to get a hold of the guy who usually does the boat’s maintenance in the morning and have him work on it, which would likely delay our trip). Unfortunately, the A/C works most efficiently in deeper water and the harbor is quite shallow, so the boat’s still a bit toasty. It may be a bit of an uncomfortably warm night but, since the plan is still to spend the night in the harbor then start motoring to our dive site in the early morning since it’s only like 1.5 hours away, at least that boat’ll be stationary and quiet.