Blue hole

He had traveled all the way to the Sinai Peninsula from Moscow in order to film himself swimming through the arch, but now it was looking like that probably wasn't going to happen.

The arch is an 85-foot-long underwater tunnel that connects a massive sinkhole right on Dahab's shoreline called the Blue Hole, to the Red Sea.

To get to the arch, you need to enter the Blue Hole directly and descend straight down 181 feet, where you'll reach the top of the tunnel on the northeast side.

But there's a catch.

If on your descent you happen to miss the ceiling of this arch, which apparently it's pretty easy to do, you run the risk of going too deep.

Below 200 feet, you're probably dead.

So if you're attempting to swim through the arch on regular air, you need to be paying very close attention to your depth as you descend so that you don't miss the arch and accidentally drift down below 181 feet to the very deadly 200 feet and beyond.

So earlier in the day, Yuri had gone down to the edge of the Blue Hole and he had found one of the diving instructors that taught inside the Blue Hole.

And they are here for the bucket list experiences.

They book a day trip to the Blue Hole with Frenchies, which is $355 per person.

They also book a three-day overnight sailing expedition down to Dangriga with Raga, costing $600 each.

So the per-person spend is accelerating rapidly.

They publish absolutely no fee schedule.

We pulled their 197-page management plan, and the only prices listed in the entire document are for commercial fishing licenses, not tourist entry.

The only entity that clearly communicates its costs is the Belize Audubon Society, which manages the Blue Hole and Half Moon Key.

They clearly publish a fee of 80 Belize dollars for non-nationals, which equates to exactly 40 American dollars.

And that warning is doubly critical if you are traveling to Gozo for its most globally recognized activity, which is scuba diving.

Gozo is famous for the Blue Hole at Duera.

It is a stunning sight.

But it drops to a maximum depth of 50 meters.

It is a ghost listing dominating the algorithms.

Now, to be fair, the surrounding geography is still valid.

Dwyer Bay, the underwater blue hole, and the inland sea are very real, and they all command ratings above 4.3 with substantial review counts.

But the arch itself is a total illusion.

Guatemala.

Um, i mean there's just so many places like the the blue hole in belize is absolutely amazing too it's one of the most beautiful scuba diving spots in the world the great barrier reef that thing freaks me out what

the blue

hole the blue hole is pretty creepy

i couldn't do it yeah i'll look at it you look

like you're just gonna get sucked into it yeah

I dove Ben's Cavern, which then made me fall in love with cave diving.

On my 11th dive, we dove Ben, uh, Rose Garden, uh, Ben's Blue Hole.

And, uh, y- I participated in a lot of his courses.

He had these beautiful watercolors that depicted all the reef and the corals and the animals, and he had that childlike curiosity for everything.

... that takes a while to...

I also did the Blue Hole, um, in...

Uh, I'm not sure if it's in Belize or outside of Belize, which you go really deep.

Uh, there were sharks and everything.

Also, there's great diving just off Santo.

Now, I mentioned that Afate had a blue hole with three sections there.

Now, Santo has many blue holes to choose from.

Each of them look stunning from what I have seen.

So it is best known for its beautiful beaches and its blue holes.

And if you're going there for very Instagram-worthy beaches, Instagram-worthy beaches that are just off your accommodation, then Santo might just be the island for you.

You can also walk straight from your accommodation into beautiful beaches, walk straight out and go snorkeling right from your accommodation.

But this is another highlight of my trip here and one that was kind of unexpected.