Mike in the Wild

Map and notes by my side, I drove my rental car out of Mahogany Bay Cruise Center, eager to explore Roatan's reefs from a number of beaches.  My goal was ambitious: write the definitive guide to snorkeling on the island.  However since I was visiting from a cruise ship, the Sky Princess, I had only a few precious hours.  And I was sick, suffering from the start of a respiratory infection that had left me with laryngitis that morning.  Nonetheless I was determined to get a start on my research and savor my first taste of the local coral reef.  The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the world's second largest, surrounds the island of Roatan.  The biggest of Honduras's Bay Islands, Roatan is over thirty miles long, lying in the Caribbean Sea north of the mainland.  I had targeted half a dozen sites, mostly focused on the western half of the skinny island.  Fortunately the roads were in good condition with a minimum amount of construction underway on the boom...

Belize is the quintessential destination for anyone eager to explore the Mesoamerican Reef, the world's second largest coral reef system.  The country's entire Caribbean Sea coastline, more than one hundred miles in length, is edged by segments of the reef usually only a short boat ride to the east from local ports.   On my seven-day cruise's stop in Belize, at Belize City, I headed to Caye Caulker, part of the string of barrier islands to the north of the capital city.  The sandy cay lies to the west of a section of the reef that's part of a network of pristine marine preserves.  Nearby was another unbelievable site - or maybe un-Belize-able as the locals liked to advertise - a sandbar petting zoo of sorts populated by timid sharks and gentle stingrays.   I had turned my back on the reef, quite literally, on my last cruise to Belize over a year ago, when I headed west and inland to Lamanai.  While I was in awe of the site's ancient Maya...

I thought I knew a thing or two about barracudas.  After all, I've encountered several in Maui and Cozumel, even writing in detail about them over a year ago.  Slow, shadowy, lurking, uninterested in humans, intimidating in appearance, was how I mostly described the usually harmless, large fish.  After my latest visit to a reef off of Cozumel a brand new word entered my lexicon when describing the predator: terrorizing.  Due to strong winds, I got a late start snorkeling on my single day in Cozumel, heeding red flag warnings all morning on the Mexican island's coral reef-fringed western coast.  But at Punta Sur Ecological Park, at the extreme southern end of Cozumel, the weather and surf were postcard perfect.  It didn't take long once I arrived for me to don my fins and mask and head into the inviting and azure Caribbean Sea.  A buoy marked where a reef that's part of a separate protected park begins several hundred meters from the beach.  It's a...