I felt the diving there was a little on the pricey side, having come from Honduras where it was $20 a dive. I did two dives in Hol Chan and just didn't see much. The visibility was not that good, I did not see a large variety of creatures,the marine landscape was pretty flat and unexciting. The one thing I can say for it is that the fish I did see were huge. And around Hol Chan there were a lot of nurse sharks. It cost $90 for the two dives and I thought I'd be better spending my money doing cave diving in Mexico (and hot damn, was that a better deal by FAR).

I also did a few dives from Glover's Reef Atoll way out in the middle of nowhere. Again, just felt unimpressed, as in general the topography was a lot of sand with isolated huge coral heads forming islands maybe 6 feet cubed here and there. The variety and color of corals was very little. The water was an incredible deep indigo, which I really liked. I was happy when I got out to the wall and could go vertical.

I did most of my scuba diving to that point in Utila and Roatan, in the Bay Islands of Honduras. As far as tropical dives go, I am interested in color, variety, and probably above all awesome landscapes. I live for swim throughs, caves, and above all steep, deep walls. I probably went to the wrong dive sites since Belize is a barrier reef, but I did not get a lot of this and was kind of bored. Other people I know who have done a lot of diving in the Red Sea and the south Pacific say the Bay Islands are not impressive, so I wouldn't say my standard is high, at least for tropical dives. If you're used to cold water with low visibility and current, you'll be in heaven to be able to jump in with no wetsuit.

But do the Blue Hole. Really. Unless you don't like quickly dropping into an otherworldly black pit, swimming amongst stalactites bigger than you are, and ascending with reef sharks that are barely glimpsed shapes in the murky thermocline.