Near San Ignacio, Belize, there is a cave called the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave (or ATM for short). The tour was a little pricey but it got so many good recommendations that we couldn't pass it up. We weren't disappointed. Our guide's name was Patrick, a half Mayan, half Kenyan man who was said to be an original pioneer of the ATM cave. He spoke with a slow creole drawl and told a lot of stories. Who knows if any of them were true or not, but they were entertaining nonetheless. Just to name a few: he told us that he spoke 5 different languages (spanish, english, mayan, creole, and garifuna), he is a hot air balloon pilot in his spare time, he leads SCUBA diving trips at the coast, and he teaches jungle survival courses to the British Army.

The tour started with a 30 minute trek through the jungle, crossing 3 rivers and a downed tree. Along the way, we passed wild pineapple and lemon plants, as well as cacao trees and one rather large hanging branch that Genny graciously warned us all about by conking her head on it making a loud, hollow thump. Yes, that coconut is ripe. To access the cave, you must swim across a deep pool that guarded the entrance. Not an easy task when you are trying to hold a camera above your head. The pool and river that ran all 3 miles of the cave is fed from a spring at the cave's terminus. After swimming across the pool, we continued to walk deeper into the cave for about a mile, wading sometimes up to my shoulders in water and squeezing through some small opennings along the way. At the 1 mile mark, we left the water and began to climb up instead of in. We replaced our chacos for wool socks and continued for another quarter mile on dry land. The reason for the change in footwear was to protect artifacts that were scattered about the cave by ancient Mayans. I guess they didn't want us to break the already broken pottery. The Mayans believed that anything that was made by hand had a spirit which needed to be released. So, this cave, being a sacred place, was a burial ground for broken pottery, or hoyas. You see, by smashing the hoyas, you release the spirits inside. But that's not the only thing that the Mayans sacrificed in the cave. There were also human skeletons of people who had been bludgeoned to death as sacrifices to the gods to bring on the rain. It was one of the only times so far on our trip when I was glad it was raining. The neatest thing of all was that everything was wide open and untouched; no signs and no barriers. Things were all in their original positions and were slowly getting swallowed by the cave as it creates new formations and erodes others away.

Our trek out went well, and Genny managed to miss her tree branch this time. All in all, a fabulous experience.