Caye Caulker
When you see the waves whiten at the Barrier Reef just a few hundred yards from the shore, boats full of eager snorkelers and divers, and striped sails of windsurfers dashing back and forth, you know you've come to the right place for water play. You can dive, snorkel, and fish the same areas that you can from San Pedro, but usually for a little less dough. However, one area where Caulker suffers by comparison with its neighboring island is in the quality of its beaches. Caulker's beaches, though periodically nourished by dredging to replenish the sand, are modest at best, mostly narrow ribbons of sand with shallow water near the shore and, in places, a mucky sea bottom and lots of sea grass. You'll also glimpse the reality of plastic-ridden oceans, getting more and more dire, in the speckles of plastic that appear like seashells in the sand.
You can, however, have a wonderful swim at the Split, a channel originally cut through the island by Hurricane Hattie in 1961 and expanded over the years, at the north end of the village, or from the end of piers. The water remains tepid and inviting.
