20260114 Celebrity Constellation Western Caribbean Day 4 - Belize City, Belize and snorkeling at Caye Caulker

Celebrity Constellation Western Caribbean Day 4 – Snorkeling the #2 barrier reef at Caye Caulker, Belize 

Communication. It's a wonderful thing. It doesn't take much to get your message across. You have to know your audience, and you deliver the message.  

Case in point - today. We time-traveled last night, changing time zones and moving westward, one hour earlier. Not a big deal, right? We've done this plenty of times on cruises. We usually find a colored message on the bed indicating that we should move our clocks one hour ahead/behind before we go to bed. With our overnight time travel, you'd think we'd have gotten a notice like that. But, we didn't. Luckily for us, I happened to look at the daily schedule for what was, at the time I looked at it, tomorrow.

Anything jump out as important?

Here is the notice - they could have at least used color to make it stand out

At least we saw it and adjusted clocks accordingly.

We were one of three ships in Belize today. We had the Carnival Miracle and the Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas.

Miracle on the left, Rhapsody on the right

We met in the theater at 9:15 this morning. It sure seemed silly as we weren't scheduled to drop anchor until around 10:00. But, being good passengers, we went to the theater on time and proceeded to sit and wait, listening to the anchor as it dropped just in front of us.

We were one of several excursion groups that got called to make our way to the tenders. Belize is a tender port, meaning that larger ships like cruise ships cannot make it into port due to limited sea depth, and in the case of Belize, a huge barrier reef.

We took the island tender into Belize City and then immediately walked to the next dock and boarded our boat for the day, Maze Runner, operated by Exotic Shore Excursions.

We boarded and made the 45-minute or so ride to Caye Caulker, one of Belize's outer islands.

Arlona, preparing for snorkeling

We made two snorkeling stops. The first was at the barrier reef. This is the second largest in the world, following Australia's Great Barrier Reef. We split into groups of 6-7, each with a dedicated guide. Our guide, Isaiah, Sho, did an awesome job locating sea life and showing us around. We had a great "Sho-time". We saw many different fish, including an eel and a barracuda. 

Our second stop was at a place they called Shark and Ray Alley. As soon as we got out, we were surrounded by rays and nurse sharks, looking for a handout. Here is an automated edit from my Insta360 Ace Pro 2. Please excuse any editing anomalies.

While at the second stop, one of the guides held a nurse shark. Here is a brief video with a couple of photos of Arlona holding the shark, followed by a video of Donna holding the shark.

After a fun day in the water, we returned to Caye Caulker, where we enjoyed a nice lunch and, of course, a local beer.

After lunch, we boarded the Maze Runner for the ride back to Belize City. We wandered around, doing a little shopping before boarding a tender for the ride back to the ship.

After returning to our room, we caught a nice glimpse of the sunset

We showered, rinsing the salt of the day off. We surprisingly weren't hungry, so we went to the Martini Bar for a cocktail. There, we met a couple who previously lived in The Villages and had lots of connections there. We enjoyed a nice conversation with this interesting couple. As it turns out, we have mutual friends that they cruised with previously, and we cruised with them on our Africa cruise last year. Once again, it is a small world.

We finally decided to get something to eat, although neither one of us was particularly hungry. We opted to skip the restaurants and hit the buffet, where we could pick something small. We ran into our friends, Tom & Donna, and wound up having a very nice evening in the buffet.

With that, tired from the day in the sun and water, we returned to the room. Tomorrow's daily program had another time-change notice, so we're time-traveling again tonight, losing the hour tonight that we gained last night. It sure seems silly and would have made more sense to just stay on the ship's time today rather than switching times and switching again the next day. But what do we know?

Tomorrow, we will dock in Costa Maya, Mexico. We have no plans other than to walk into the port area and walk around a bit. It should be a relaxing day tomorrow.