Last night in San Ig. What a trip!

Today we went to the Actun Tunichnil Muknal (ATM) cave. It was discovered in the mid 1980s and National Geographic did a documentary on it called "journey to the underworld". Incredible.

Here is a video from YouTube of the cave, this is not our tour but you can see what we saw. I have no pics to post till we're home...didn't bring the iPhone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW9bdBVPeDQ

In our tour group there was another Canadian couple and a man from Mexico. Our guide Orlando was fantastic.

The ATM cave was the one thing on this trip I was nervous about. Enclosed, dark spaces...scrambling over rocks to get up on high ledges...swimming through rock crags...in the dark... a half mile underground. Did not sound like fun to me and Wayne knew there was a good chance I'd have a panic attack half way through.

Well, I tell ya...it was all that and then some but I was fine thanks to Orlando...and my helmut! Hahaha! Our group was small and Orlando was great at coaching..."right foot down, grab the ledge on the right, left foot up on the next rock...". My brain does not automatically tell me where my feet should go, so as long as I followed orders I was in good shape. The actual caving was pretty fun.

Our jungle hike to the mouth of the cave was great! Orlando showed us a bunch of Maya medicinal plants. One lowers blood pressure, another cleanses parasites from your intestines, and he showed us the Mexican heather flowers that are used as an antibiotic to treat ear infections! Pretty cool!

Seeing ancient remains of Maya human sacrifices and pottery was mind boggling.

The back story is that between 800 and 1000ad the Maya were in trouble. Extensive drought put this agriculture based civilization into very hard times. The rain God was not responding to their animal sacrifices and blood letting ceremonies so the shamans moved their activities further into the "underworld" and the sacrificing of humans escalated. The most spectacular part of the cave is the "crystal maiden". The calcified remains of a young woman who was sacrificed deep in the cave.

Still cannot believe they let us go in and walk around these precious artifacts that are just as they lay over a thousand years ago!

Deffinitely one of the high points of our trip.

Tomorrow we head to Belize City. We're stopping at the zoo and then it's back on a plane to head home.

We've had a great time but we're excited to go home and see our kids...all 8 of them!!! :)

Thanks for the comments and emails! We loved getting notes from home while we were gone.

Belize is such a beautiful country we highly recommend it! I don't think you'll find as much fun or as many friendly people anywhere in Central America or the Caribbean.

See everyone soon!