Our Day in Belize - Goff's Caye

[snowcat]

Thought I'd offer a quick review of our day in Belize. We took the Goff's Caye Snorkel & Beach excursion offered by the ship (Carnival Elation). We had originally scheduled the Shark/Ray Alley Snorkel offered by the ship, but one of our tablemates had done it previously and said it was a very long boat ride to get there and that the water had been very rough with strong current when she was there. This made us nervous, since we had 70+ year-old novice snorkeler Mother-in-Law with...so, we switched to Goff's Caye excursion and were happy we did. The water was pretty rough the day we were there (but nice and sunny!) The tour operators/guides were VERY, VERY nice...they stopped at Goff's Caye first to drop off people who wanted to enjoy beach or snorkel from shore. Mother-in-law decided to stay at beach since off the boat looked too rough for her....we were glad she decided to stay there as she would not have been able to handle getting in and out of the boat on the ladder in the rough waters. I'm a fairly experienced snorkeler and it was a little intimidating to me too at first, but it was fine when we got in. We snorkeled about an hour and saw LOTS of beautiful fish and coral. One of the guides dived down and captured a lobster to show us. Then we went back to Goff's Caye to the beach. It is an absolutely beautiful tiny (about an acre) island with lots of pelicans diving around to get fish. Mother-in-law had gone with one of the guides snorkeling from the beach...she has snorkeled exactly once before and is VERY timid about it. She said the guide gave them a very thorough lesson before they set out and was very patient. He was so very nice to her and snorkeled right by her and helped her. We were so glad that he was so helpful and that she had a good experience. We spent about 35-45 minutes there on the beach after snorkeling. I would have liked to have spent more time there. They had a little concession area with bottled drinks and T-shirts etc. The ride to and from the ship was about 20 minutes. A beautiful spot. We had time to change, eat a quick bite and take the tender to the tourist village for a bit of shopping after the excursion. We had a great day!

[dmoseley]

Snowcat-

About how many people were on your tour? Were there other groups there at the same time? We would like to go back to Goff's Caye, in about 22 days, but I don't want to go if it is too crowded. Thanks for the info.

[snowcat]

I would estimate that there were about 25 people on the tour. They picked us up right at the ship. We were the only large group at the caye...there were a couple other small speedboats....maybe about 10 people left on the caye after our group left. It wasn't crowded at all and only about 10 or 12 of the people from our group went snorkeling off the boat so that wasn't crowded either. We really enjoyed it and would go back again anytime.