Belize (part 2)

8 August 2010

After weeks spent on the Mayan Riviera and the coast of Belize we thought we'd head inland and do something other than water-based activities, only to fail miserably as we went caving and then tubing!

We ended up in a wee town called San Ignacio near the western edge of the country.  Belize is so little, and English speaking that it's really easy to get around. And the Belizean dollar is pegged at exactly 50c so even the maths is easy.

Entrance to the ATM caves

You can see the evil in its eye

We first went to the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) caves which was just amazing.  We hiked and waded about 45 mins through the jungle and across rivers to get to the cave entrance.  I had slipped on the walk in so went to wash my hands in the river at the cave only to be promptly bitten really hard on the finger.  I pulled my hand out of the water in shock and very briefly the culprit, an eel, hung off my finger.  It was really big and fearsome looking as well!  There was quite a lot of blood, but the tour agency cleaned it up really well and sorted me out with a massive bandage, but it was (and still is - I think there's perhaps something still in one of the cuts) really sore. But onwards.....

Teeth marks!

We suited up in our bikinis, board shorts, trainers, helmet and head torch and then had to get into the same river that contained the evil eel and swim into the mouth of the cave.  This was the point where we found out swimming in trainers isn't nearly as easy as swimming with fins!

Looking glam!

We swam, clambered on rocks and climbed small waterfalls for the next hour or so, getting about 500m into the cave system.  At this point our guide pointed to a massive rock, probably about 15ft high and instructed us to climb it.  From there we had to step across a gap and climb onto some flowstone which was still very steep but much easier to climb.

At the top we removed our shoes (but left on our socks to protect the rock from our sweat) and climbed into this amazing cavern that was full of Mayan relics.  There were 14 skeletons in there, of which we probably saw 5 or 6 and lots of pottery.  And absolutely none of it was protected - there were no barriers or marked paths or lighting.  A human long bone at the site was smashed up and it turns out that's because a tourist dropped a camera on it.

Archaeologists have studied the site in detail, but have only removed about 2% of the artefacts (things that are easy to remove and valuable like obsidian blades etc) but have left the rest as some of it is calcified into the rock, but more importantly, there is no museum in Belize that would be able to satisfactorily protect the artefacts as well as the cave does.

The "highlight" of the tour was a skeleton of a young woman which was completely calcified into the rock and therefore sparkled. She's known as the crystal maiden.  I don't take pictures of mummies or skeletons so I'm afraid you'll have to google her or use your imagination!  Lou and I were very much in two minds about the site being open.  Obviously we felt very privileged to visit it but we can't help but feel that visitors are going to do irreparable damage. We went back out the same way we came in, racing through the jungle as twilight approached.

Amazing formations in the main cavern

The following day (because we just hadn't had enough of being soaking all day!) we went cave tubing which, unsurprisingly, involves sitting in an inner tube and floating down a river that goes through some caves.  The caves weren't nearly as impressive as the ATM caves, but it was fun nonetheless.  Another highlight of San Ignacio was this amazing restaurant we found which served us up ginger rum shrimp which we confusingly had with mashed potato as we were all missing mash so much and fed up with rice!!  Sadly the beer in Belize, Belliken, isn't up to much.

From there we went, with our new friend Kim, down on the bus to Placencia on the coast, primarily as we'd heard you could catch the ferry to Honduras from there.  Lou and I had a nice day sitting on the beach, trying to get over our stinky colds while Kim went diving.  Later that day I was asking about the boat (it only goes once a week) only to find there were engine problems and the only solution was to head up to another town and catch another ferry from there.  So, in the morning, we piled onto a bus back north to the town of Dangriga.  The bus driver, just for fun, was playing Dolly Parton's xmas album at full volume, at 7am.  He was cracking up.  The rest of us were less amused!

In Dangriga we found our "ferry" which was even smaller than the ferry to Caye Caulker and massively overloaded given the problems with the boat from Placencia.  Border control came down to the boat to stamp us out of Belize and we got going only an hour or two too late.  The boat took about 3 hours (I was seated on the floor the whole way!) and took us all the way to Puerto Cortez in Honduras......

Also, please have a look at Louisa's blog.  She writes so much better than me and has some different photos too.

Ferry to Honduras