San Igancio
Our first stop in Belize is a small town called San Ignacio just along from the Guatemalan border. San Ignacio is the mid-point for many a maya ruin/temple, but also the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave. It’s a cave that comes highly recommended pretty much everywhere, although it’s also highly out of our usual budget limit, so it’s not a decision we take lightly. Many calculations are done on our budget spreadsheet (yes, we have a spreadsheet) to find a way to make it work, and we decide to do it, so here we pit-stop.
The town is small with a beautiful, low river running through it, big trees and white benches at the side to enjoy the water inside or out, and a metal bridge that is apparently a small replica of the Brooklyn Bridge. We get to ‘enjoy’ it a couple of times as Google Maps tells us the completely wrong location for our next Airbnb. Note to all, read host directions above Google.
Our accommodation here is a humongous room in the home of Maria and Arturo. The room is so big we even have a hammock in it! It’s wonderful to be back in a giant bed, with ample enough pillows, some privacy, a kitchen we can use, and our own private bathroom, which becomes more valued than usual as it’s time to rejoin the Bad Belly Club. Thankfully we still have some of the super-strong pills from Bolivia to help with the pain.
We’re excited and confused to be in an old British colony and back in an English speaking country, giggling at each “Buenos dias” and “gracias” we now say without thinking at passers by greet us who greet us instead with “Good morning”. Despite my excitment at being able to take a back seat of stranger communications now James can partake again, my hopes are piqued too soon. Our hosts, Maria and Arturo are Belizian but have Mexican and Guatemalan heritage. Whilst English is technically the country’s first language, for many (especially this close to the Guatemalan border) Spanish is most people’s first language as the language of the home. However, the only thing thwarting their understanding of our English is Arturo’s hearing, so we all speak in a mixture of English and Spanish depending on the moment.
They are a super sweet older couple, with Arturo having lived here his whole life. He’s been here before electricity and water was piped in. He tells me about two folklore tales of the area. Tataduende (or papaduende in other regions), a mischievous imp that only comes out in the dark and is conveniently used to scare children. Maria’s mother has apparently seen tataduende a couple of times. The second is a story of the ‘wailing woman’ haunted who the village once, wailing in three spots around the village consecutively so quickly she could not have been a human getting between the locations. A group of locals went to investigate after a few nights… lying in wait for the spirit… then she appeared! They pounced on her and… she was just some pranksters. If my Spanish brain understood correctly, it wasn’t something they were likely to do again after the treatment they got. He also explains that the religion of the African descendents here don’t follow voodoo but something called ‘obvio'(?), which sounds a lot like witchcraft. When he was younger there was a girl who liked him, and the girl’s mother, a known witch, made him a cake. Arturo was too scared to eat the cake for fear it contained a love spell. So his dad ate it and ended up marrying the young woman! Just kidding, nothing happened, except probably a lot of rib-tickling for Arturo being scared of a cake.
Arturo makes us fantastic breakfasts for the two mornings we stay here, including a Belizian stable, the “fryjack”. They’re basically deep fried triangle dough pockets, and Arturo tells us you use them like toast, loading them up with the obligatory beans and eggs.
Alongside each meal, a tiny bottle of hot sauce is ready to go, provided by Arturo who assures James it has just the right amount of kick. It’s also Belizian-made, branded as Marie Sharps. I avoid Ms Sharp best I can whilst James begins a long-standing affair.
Whether it’s because I’m ill, or it’s from being looked after by this lovely older couple, I’m somewhat missing family and home these days. There’s no place like home as they say, especially when you’re poorly! James does a wonderful job looking after me though as I spend most of our down-time lying in front of the fan feeling sorry for myself.
No time for that though when you’re on the trip of a lifetime. Time to down some Bolivian-strength pharmaceuticals and spend the day swimming and clambering through caves!
Thanks to three events of tourists dropping cameras on century old skeletons and wrecking them forever, cameras have been banned from the caves since 2013, so what follows are some stock photos from our tour guide, to break up what I can remember from the trip.
ATM Cave Tour
We made it to the tour agency on time and took a seat and are assigned to our guide Eric. I’d read good reviews mentioning him so I felt very lucky. I thought we might sleep on the journey up to the cave but Eric gave us info basically the whole way, including the now customary warnings of how dangerous and difficult the experience is going to be, but we’re confident we’ll be okay. He recants tales of people who don’t admit they can’t swim, or have had operations or dodgy knees or are hungover, who end up passing out or flailing in the water and having to be rescued as they literally flounder at the entrance that you have to swim through to start the tour. This isn’t said to stop people doing the tour, but to explain they will manage the group specifically based on each individual’s needs. If you aren’t honest, you may just join the “Another Tourist Missing” club they joke! The two guides are clearly very experienced and have fantastic energy.
The other thing to note here is that whilst Eric is distinctly of Latin-american descent, his English has a Caribbean twang, reflecting the Creole dialect in Belize. It’s a curious juxtaposition to see a Latino speaking like a rasta!
We arrive to the starting point and get kitted out with helmets and life jackets. The life jackets are little triangular ones that have a pouch for us to store our waterbottles, and are way comfier than your usual bulky vest types. These prove to be incredibly useful and helpful and I would definitely recommend anyone doing the tour to take the life-jacket!
The tour starts with a half hour walk to the entrance, including three river crossings. None of the following photos are mine or of us unfortunately, but you get the idea…
Whilst the river is ‘refreshing’ you get used to it quickly and then you’re out of it again. We get to the cave entrance and it’s straight back into the water, there’s no way in but to swim. Again it’s a chilly start but actually isn’t too bad once you get used to it. Much of the route involves clambering in and out of the water. At the entrance, as Eric gives us the intro, a fish (mini piranhas as Eric calls them) properly bites me on my thigh, it was no nibble! I spend the next few pools constantly moving to avoid another bite. Thankfully their presence dissipates as we go further in.
We’re told how the Maya culture believes in 13 levels above our one, and 9 levels below into the underworld. There is no hierarchy to the levels, they just are. A theory is that these reflect the hours of daylight and nighttime. With one hour for sunrise and the other for sunset. Hello 24 hours.
The Maya believed they needed to appease the god of the underworld, and so would come and give offerings and thanks at the entrance to the cave. It’s 4.8km long, so there’s no way they got to the end (there is evidence they first entered between 300 and 600AD). There is only evidence of them in the entrance for the oldest part, they believe this is because life was good at this point. However, as the droughts came, they started to go further and further in to get closer to their god.
They also upped the ante of their offerings in desperation. In ultimate desperation, they followed the flow of the water up into a huge open space, which is where they left all their final offerings. There are remnants of clay pots in the deepest part they got to, with signs of smoke and ‘cooking’ where they would put these pots atop three rocks with a fire underneath and cook the contents.
Some would contain a hallucinogenic concoction that they would put up their butt, others would contain different organic matter as offerings. These pots were then smashed or cracked to release the ‘spirit’ or energy within. This is why almost all of the pots are broken.
The Maya would have to do all this in an airless cave, deep inside, with only the light from their torches, there’s evidence of smoke on the walls and ceiling. They couldn’t stay in there long as otherwise they would suffocate.
One of the pots has a little creature decorated onto it, rumour has it this is tataduende! Although it is more commonly known as “The Monkey Pot” (or “jazz-hands” to the Friends fans!).
The Maya would carve into the stalagmites to create symbolic shadows. Eric shows us how they would move and distort in the light of a flickering torch. We see an old lady, a leader in a headress with a crooked nose and slanted forehead who appears to swallow as the light moves, and three rowers whose oars move with the light. Eric does a great job of bringing the experience they would have had to life.
All the artifacts have been left pretty much in tact. Some look like new because they’ve been unearthed by floods. The government has decided to leave the culture and history as it is, to not desecrate this holy spot, so there’s not many answers to be had for many of the questions. There have been some discoveries made by way of xray photography, and analysing some of the displaced relics, that can confirm that all the skeletons of the human offerings were boys or young men, and the organic matter contained in the pots.
Each flood of the cathedral adds another layer of calcite to the relics in the line of the water run-off, so much is now covered in a hard layer of yellow. The ‘crystal maiden’ is no maiden, and no longer sparkles, due to said calcite.
A university found that a body would decompose in these conditions in 20 years. The other saddest offering is that of a young boy who they can find no evidence of how he died, just that he was bound, suggesting he was left there alive to die bound with no way of escaping from the pitch black. At one point Eric tells us to turn off the lights on our helmets, and close our eyes, and then open them again. There’s no difference at all. This is a form of torture and can make people go insane if left in the absolute dark and total silence for a prolonged period. I can’t imagine being left in there bound in the darkness, poor kid. The ‘crystal maiden’ was their final offering of desperation, the victim was disemboweled, his sternum stabbed, his chest cracked open, and his heart removed. Grim. After this, the drought continued, and believing there was no further way to appease the gods, they abandoned their settlement and headed north.
The experience is like no other I’ve had as we swim, wade, squeeze and duck our way through the caves. Eric is a great guide at keeping us separate from other groups so we can really enjoy the experience without feeling on top of others. We only see two descendents of spiders (just as creepy but only with six legs as two have turned into feelers to get them around in the darkness), and a huddle of little fruit bats clustered into a hole in the underside of a rock formation.
All around, the rocks glisten and sparkle from the calcite. Huge formations of stalactites come down from the ceiling, with some joining their stalagmite counterparts forming columns. The stalagmites here are oddly lumpy and bumpy compared to the pointy ones I’m used to seeing. Eric explains it’s because of the variable water flow.
It’s so cool to float about in between the narrow rocks and this huge natural space. Whilst most of the people in their stock photos are walking, I can assure you we spent most of the time swimming or wading through water. It was brilliant!
Thankfully the super painkillers we still have from Bolivia have done the trick and, despite feeling a bit weak, I’m able to enjoy the day without any pain.
The experience ends with us coming back the way we came, and enjoying a lovely cooked meal with rum-punch. We chat a bit with our teammates and they’re all impressed by our adventure and the treks we’ve done. It’s a reminder of how lucky we are for this to be our life for a year and not just a holiday. Another fantastic experience.
James makes a lovely stir fry for dinner and it’s time again to pack and have an early night before heading back into a bus the next day to take us to Belize City, where we get on a boat to the stunning Caye Caulker. Don’t worry though, Arturo reassures me that Tataduende can’t cross water, so we should be safe 😉
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Adventure – exploring the cave system of ATM
Excitement – being told we were “cool” for the trip we’re doing by our group who are all here on holiday. Experiencing being in the darkness of the cave system, imagining how they did that high on [everything it seems] with only a torch to light their way, amazing!
Trauma – some young adults from the USA throwing a water bottle up at a cacao tree to try and knock off a pod dangling off its trunk. They fail but leave the tree damaged from the attempts. So sad each time to see the various ways people disrespect nature.
1 Comment
A brilliant blog, not sure I would have enjoyed swimming with the biting fish, I think you are both immensely brave to take on the challenges you do . Sorry you have both had the dreaded upset tummies again. Unfortunately, I suppose it comes with the constant changing diet and routine . Hope you are both top notch again now. Next to the blog we’ve been waiting for 😉😘