Girl Travels Alone Part 2: These Caves are UnBelizeable

            Last night I ate the Creole Special and drank a Belikin at a restaurant on the outskirts of the downtown area in San Ignacio while Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” played and I read Yes Please.  I got back to my hotel around 9:30 PM.

            Great night.

Seen on the walk home.  LOTR quotes are appropriate anywhere.

            The next morning I wandered down to Max Tours for the Actun Tunichil Mikal tour, or ATM for short.  There would be cave exploring, Mayan artifacts, pots, and skeletons from human sacrifices.  I was told to bring a bathing suit.

            I did not realize we would be in a cave the whole time because my reading comprehension is poor.  I also didn’t realize the point of the bathing suit was because we would be wading waist deep in cave water for almost two hours, also because my reading comprehension is poor.  The only shoes close to suitable I had were my running shoes (spoiler alert:  they were not particularly suitable).  I was told to bring a change of clothes, and I still wasn’t getting how unprepared I was.

I had half of these things, and that's only because they were provided to me.

            Julie and Albert and I rode in the back while the tour guide made a stop for another couple, Jess and Lucy (actually I don’t remember her name, but his name was Jess).  Jess and Lucy were a couple from Seattle who were finishing up a three week tour of Belize.  They spent some time in Placencia, my next stop, and said they spent a day on the beach drinking rum and occasionally grabbing coconuts from low-hanging palm trees and breaking them open for mixing.

            My next location sounds like a garbage time, is what I’m saying.

            We then stopped at an archaeologist field base or something – some sort of home where archaeologists live, I don’t know.  I don’t think either of the two guys we picked up there were archaeologists.  One of them wore a button down shirt to our cave exploration trip, and the other one, upon hearing he needed a second shirt, simply went the other direction and took the one he was wearing off.  The guide (also named Louis, as luck would have it – maybe all guides down here are named Louis) politely told him that wasn’t going to fly and sent him back in for a second shirt.

            Shirtless man – let’s call him Dave because I don’t remember his name – walked back to get a shirt.  He had a tattoo of an eagle on his lower back.  He had two missing front teeth and he smelled like cigarettes.  He is the most grizzled person I’ve ever met with a tramp stamp.

            Dave was a pretty nice guy.

            Louis was the most terrifying driver I’ve ever been in the car with.  We were speeding at what felt like 80 miles an hour.  The van was old.  I kept thinking I heard chickens squawking in the background but it turned out to be weird noises the van was making as Louis sped along at 100 miles an hour.  As Louis sped along at 120 miles an hour, I was sure this was how I was going to die.  “Caitlin shouldn’t have gone down to Belize by herself,” people would say, and I would protest that I was just trying to learn more about Mayans and caves and actually I could have died in a car accident anywhere thanks much, but it would fall on deaf ears because I would be dead.

            We got to the entrance and are told there will be no phones.  We were given hard hats with tiny flashlights on them.  We were not given waivers to sign.  We were told no phones because it would ruin the artifacts.  Tourists are the worst, basically, and you only have those exactly like you to blame.

            All pictures concerning the tour are things I found online, taken back in the days you could take your camera with you.

Quick selfie action before they took my phone away.

            The walk to the caves was gorgeous.  In the background we saw hills covered in trees.  It looked like walls of trees.  Jungle trees.  Within five minutes we came across a river.  The path picked up again on the other side.  There was no bridge or boat or rocks to walk on.  We were supposed to wade waist deep in river water – three times I found – to get to the caves.

            I had no idea what I had signed myself up for.  I had done as little research as a person could possibly do.  Rainer and Martin from the night before told me I absolutely had to do ATM and I just listened.

            Here’s the thing.  The caves were the main attraction, and they’re amazing.  I’ve never done anything like this before.  It was incredible.  But even before I got to the caves, I stopped myself while wading across the river the second time and looked around.  I was surrounded by jungle.  I was waist deep in the middle of a river in the Cayo District surrounded by jungle.

            On a Thursday.

            So I was into this ATM thing right off the bat, is what I’m saying.

            On the way to the cave, Louis told us a story of a young girl, maybe 12 years old, who kept bragging about how easy the cave traveling was.  “This is easy,” she said.  “This is a piece of cake,” she said.

            At one point they came across an orgy of snakes writhing around and procreating.  The girl just lost it.  She started crying.  Bawling.  Sobbing.  She couldn’t handle these crazy snakes.  She could handle climbing a level described by the tour group as “requires some agility,” but she couldn’t handle snake fornication.

            I pictured this nondescript 12-year-old obnoxious know-it-all crying about snakes and I laughed.  Oh man.  I’ve told myself this story like 7 times already and it’s still funny.  I laugh every time.  I’m laughing now.

            (I’m not laughing now.  I’m in a public place right around the corner from my hotel and I’m on my third drink so I’m trying to keep a low profile.)

            Finally we arrived at the caves.  Louis went into a long speech about what we were and were not allowed to do.  I was sort of paying attention but I also just wanted to keep going.  See, I was still unclear on how the cave thing worked.    I saw water in the cave entrance, and I saw the group in front of us dive in, and I still thought there would be some water and then it would be dry mostly.

Entrance to the cave, where I still thought it would be a mostly dry trip.

            After about 45 minutes of wading through cave water I realized I was mostly wrong about the very little conjecture I had done regarding the water-to-dry-land ratio.  And even when you’re on dry land, these caves are still so wet.  The light on your hardhat shows flecks of water in the air constantly.  It’s not raining.  You’re just in the wettest air you’ve ever been in.

            The caves are also pitch black.  The hardhat light was necessary. 

            Louis told us these caves were mostly used for rituals.  People didn’t explore without a religious reason usually.  They were first used in 250 AD, and then around 400 AD the ball really got rolling.  Mayans saw the caves as a sacred place, which is why Dave was required to keep his shirt on.   In fact, the direct translation for cave in Mayan is not cave.  It’s called “place of fright.”  Caves were meant to be feared.

            Oh, but the caves were beautiful.  The stalagtite and stalagmite formations were unlike anything I’d ever seen.  Glad the internet can help share what I saw with anyone reading this!

Caves.

            These caves were discovered around 1991.  When considering Tikal was discovered by Americans around the mid-20^th century and became a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1970s, we have a part of the world that is only just sharing its history with the rest of us.  How amazing – how exciting!  This is why tourism has skyrocketed in Guatemala and Belize.  This is why they’re cracking down on drugs, and why as a tourist you can get away with pretty much anything.  The economy has entered such an upswing since tourism became popular around here.  The Belizeans and the Guatemalans are happy for the extra money it brings in.

            The other thing about these caves is that sometimes the spaces we were in were very tight.  I am easily claustrophobic.  The guy in front of me, Dave’s buddy Tommy (I also forgot his name so let’s just use that) was very, very slow.  I was not slow, and I also needed to keep moving sometimes. 

            “Keep moving forward,” I said, trying to sound as calm and sweet as possible.  “I’m a little claustrophobic.”

            But oh my god Tommy was slow.  I felt my breathing get more and more labored.  Finally he made it through the crevice, and I could see the bigger space on the other side.

            Then Tommy stopped.  He looked around at his new surroundings.  He marveled.  “Wow,” he said out loud.  OKAY GREAT MOMENT TOMMY but I can’t breathe right now so can we marvel when I’m not in the crevice anymore?

Somebody else's pictures that I'm using to demonstrate small crevices in the trek.

            I did not think my claustrophobia-in-caves thing through.  This is for the best, probably, because otherwise I might not have experienced the caves at all, and they were truly amazing.

            At one point Louis told me to climb up to a new level that wasn’t on the ground floor with the water anymore.  We took our shoes off, because this is where we were going to see all the artifacts and skeletons.

            People volunteered to be human sacrifices.  It was considered an honor to die in this holy cave.  They would die by being savagely beaten to death as a form of penance.  
            I am glad I live now.

            They would break pots as sacrifice to the gods, in the hopes that it would bring more food.  They would do a monkey dance for more rain.  They thought a full moon was a moon full of water, and a crescent moon was a moon about to spill out her water, and rain was when the moon was totally upside down.

  Pots.

Pots, with added red tape that says "hey, tourists - no."

 This dude was brutally beaten and had some teeth removed for the ceremony.

            Also invented by the Mayans?  Grills.  People would pull their teeth out and put something like jade (I don't remember the actual name) in their gums instead.  This was to flaunt their riches.  In the case of the skull right above, this man's gums were still open, which is how archaeologists know the teeth were taken out for ceremony and not for some sweet grill action.

            Louis started talking about drugs when discussing the holy rituals.  He said people would lick certain toads for their hallucinogens.  Sometimes they would smoke marijuana.  He said all kids stories have drugs in them.  Alice in Wonderland.  Snow White – one of the dwarves was named Dopey - hello.  Peter Pan talked to a fairy.  I did not agree with his analysis but I was still entertained.

            The guides I've had so far love talking about drugs.  Guatemalan Louie nonchalantly told us the stops and searches from the militia were to curb the drug trade, like that’s a normal thing and everyone should respect that.  Max told us as a tourist they will never search our bags, because they assume that if there’s something wrong we’ll start acting funny and call ourselves out.  The trick is to not know you’re carrying drugs.  That’s why when the drug lords send people across the border with drugs, they do it to people who don’t know they have anything on them. 

            This is all valuable information for when I become a drug mule.

            Louis offered a wealth of knowledge.  Did you know brown eyes are an adaptation to too much light?  And blue eyes are for people who see less light.  And straight hair – that’s a cold weather adaptation, whereas curly hair is a warm weather adaptation.

            Fun history note – when the French and English used to fight (which was all the time, always, for most of their histories) and the French won, they would cut off the two forefingers of the English soldiers, because those were the fingers required for using a bow.  When the English won, they would show them their two fingers as an act of defiance.  Americans cut that act, with all the same vitriol and attitude, down to one finger.

            And thus flipping the bird was born.

            History is so cool.

            We also found out why we weren’t allowed to wear shoes or have cameras in the cave.  One tourist stepped on a full femur, centuries old and still going strong, and broke it.  One lady dropped her camera on a skull that had been in great shape for hundred of years and broke it.  Some super cool dude found a perfectly preserved skeleton – an entire skeleton, preserved in a cave in its complete form for centuries, the only remotely one like it in a cave setting in all of Central America – and decided that was a great place to spread his relative’s ashes.  Bold move, ashes dude, and now that part of the cave is blocked off for everybody.

A photo of the skull before tourist lady dropped her camera in it.

Hmm, what a great place to lay some cremated ashes.

            On the way back Louis had us turn off our lights for a moment and then we walked single file in the dark in the caves, sort of just hoping we wouldn’t hit a rock and that Louis’s instructions were good enough.

            It was an amazing experience.  I didn’t have to do any thinking.  It was a “Louis, take the wheel” kind of moment.

            I quickly changed when we got back and dug in to some homemake chicken and rice and plantain.  My socks and shoes were soaked through.  I think I have to retire these socks.  I've had them since 6th grade, so I've known them longer than I haven't known them.  It may be time though.

Farewell, beautiful socks.  14 years strong.

            I found out this morning that my shower is supposed to have hot water, and I guess maybe I was racist for assuming that it was all showers in this hotel that were like that and not just mine.  Also, I’m a little self-conscious as I write this in a public place, because I’ve run out of underwear already (for someone so proud of how good she is at traveling, I am literally never prepared for anything) and I feel like everybody can tell by looking at me.

            Okay, I’m going to have dessert now.  The restaurant I just ate at offered a dish with fried chicken feet and gizzard and legs and wings and liver.  I’ll eat anything but the chicken feet weren’t great.  They’re just bone.  I do not recommend chicken feet.

            Okay thanks for reading everybody stay golden pony boy.

Chicken.

 Mmm.  Rum cake.