The Blue Hole

December 17, 2002 8:12 AM

1) See! the mysterious Blue Hole of Castalia.
2) Drive east 524 miles.
3)See! the mysterious Blue Hole, lair of the Jersey Devil.
4) Fly 1600 miles south
5) See! the mysterious Blue Hole of Belize.
posted by putzface_dickman (15 comments total)

Let's not forget the Blue Hole of Santa Rosa, NM.
posted by condour75 at 8:19 AM on December 17, 2002

And the Blue Grotto of Capri.
posted by MidasMulligan at 8:20 AM on December 17, 2002

man, there are blue holes all over the freakin' place! I know of at least two in my area, only over the past few years they've been transitioning from "blue holes" into "beer can and styrofoam cooler bluish holes."
posted by mcsweetie at 8:21 AM on December 17, 2002

I was going to mention the Blue Grotto, Midas.

Not that I've ever been there, but I do remember a Dave Barry column about his visit there, and the tour boat captain's insistence that if "you putta you hand inna da watta, you hand, she looka blue".
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:55 AM on December 17, 2002

Or why not the one in Wimberley, Texas.
posted by Espoo2 at 8:57 AM on December 17, 2002

I've been down in the Great Blue Hole in Belize twice. Physically it's exactly as they describe, and the dive itself is a fascinating sort of elevator ride: you go down very slowly, you sort of carefully float around for eight minutes, you come up very slowly. It would be totally devoid of fish if it weren't for the reef sharks, grouper and barracuda who come to mooch food off the divers.

And when you're down there everything's this really curious, flat, middling shade of blue...
posted by coelecanth at 9:15 AM on December 17, 2002

...and then there's the Blue Hole in the Red Sea, at Dahab, Egypt, a site that has meant the death of at least 70 divers; the Blue Hole Project want to find out why...
posted by taz at 9:18 AM on December 17, 2002

the blue grotto is pretty cool. capri itself is an ...interesting place. pricey. went there for a day from napoli, 2 summers ago.

we wanted to swim in the blue grotto, but the boatmen showed no sign of leaving, even as late as 6pm. I jumped into the water, which really pissed off the boatmen, and one of them threatened to whack me with his pole...so naturally I argued with him a few minutes and then got out of the water.

the boatmen finally left shortly before sunset so that we did not have that much time to swim, but it was definitely worth it. indescribable, really.
posted by dorian at 9:55 AM on December 17, 2002

The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta was greatly exagerrated.
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:59 AM on December 17, 2002

Not that I've ever been there, but I do remember a Dave Barry column about his visit there, and the tour boat captain's insistence that if "you putta you hand inna da watta, you hand, she looka blue".

Yeah ... my wife and I spent our honeymoon on the Amalfi coast, and went to Capri for a day (which is now kind of an ugly, expensive tourist trap). But the Blue Grotto was way cool. Never read that Barry column (I'll have to look for it), but we made the mistake of telling our boatman we were newlyweds, and he spent the entire time attempting to sing what we presumed was supposed to be a romantic aria in the most horrendous, off-key, grating voice I've ever heard. We spent almost the whole trip laughing our asses off.
posted by MidasMulligan at 10:09 AM on December 17, 2002

The Blue Hole always made me quesy. It was billed as a bottomless aberation of the natural order, my dad always did his best to point it out to me on the way to the lake. As a child I imagined the ever receding depth of a "bottomless" hole and felt myself spinning just a little as we past the roadside signs advertising this unfathomable mystery.
I was surprised to learn that there were others, with equally creepy surrounding mythologies.
posted by putzface_dickman at 10:23 AM on December 17, 2002

Don't forget the mysterious Blue Hole of Cyberspace.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:26 AM on December 17, 2002

And the mysterious Blue Screen o' Deth (offer good for today only; you'll have to hit the archives if today is now tomorrow...)
posted by five fresh fish at 10:44 AM on December 17, 2002

doh! I am such a putz.
aberration
passed
posted by putzface_dickman at 10:51 AM on December 17, 2002

I've swum in one in North Wales, on the west coast. It was in an old quarry pit, that you had to go through a tunnel to reach. It was blue, and rumoured to be ... three feet deep. No, just kidding; it was rumoured to be bottomless. I found some info here.'w
posted by carter at 12:12 PM on December 17, 2002