We’ve been on kind of a lot of cave tours.  But now that we’ve toured caves in Belize, there’s no going back to the tame U.S. versions.  Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed in the ATM cave because several numbskulll tourists apparently dropped them on priceless artifacts.  However, you can check out this link to get a sense of the place.  Or try this video:

My family had a great time at the ATM cave. The cave has a much longer name in the Mayan language (Actun Tunichil Muknal), but everyone calls it ATM cave.

To get there, we had to walk about thirty-five minutes through the jungle and wade through three rivers. The park we walked through was beautiful. When we got to the cave mouth, we took a break for a few minutes to get ready for our hike in the cave. Our guide told us not to take pictures in the cave because people had damaged artifacts in the past by dropping their cameras or knocking pebbles onto to artifacts.

I liked the cave so much better than I liked the caves we toured on our cross-country trip. It was in the middle of the jungle and was so much more natural and much less changed by humans. The other caves had huge, built up entrances with gift shops, and paved walkways inside the cave. They had blasted away bigger passageways for people to walk through. In this tour, we climbed, swum, and squeezed our way through tiny passages. It was so fun!

At the cave mouth, the first thing we had to do was swim to a ledge about ten feet into the cave. The water was deep and freezing. We turned our headlamps on on the ledge. We walked for a while into the cave. We walked and swum through water and over rocks. Near the end of our hike through the cave, we climbed a rock face. At the top, we took off our shoes and walked in our socks so we wouldn’t damage artifacts and formations.

Our guide showed us lots of ceramic Mayan pots. A few were almost whole but none were complete because the Mayans would break them to release their spirits. Sometimes they smashed them and sometimes they only chipped them. We came to a large chamber. The floor was eroded away in swirls. As we walked across it, our guide showed us formations and told us about Mayan history.

At the end of the chamber we climbed a ladder. In the cavern at the top was a fully preserved skeleton of a Mayan sacrifice. Our guide told us that the Maya had gone through a time of drought. As they got more desperate they ventured deeper into the cave to pray and started sacrificing humans. Eventually they moved away. After that we made our way back out of the cave.

We are stretching things to come up with new modes of travel for Jen’s list. You might remember the excitement she experienced taking a golf cart taxi from the dock in Caye Caulker. After that we felt like we had to really scrape to come up with boat-pulled inner tubes to add to her list of conveyances.

Avril gives an old-fashioned milking demonstration. She usually uses a milking machine.

Zoe opens the gate.

How, we asked ourselves, would be continue our progress while stuck out in western Belize, with its highly developed system of taxis and buses?

Well, it turns out that western Belize is the perfect place to find new conveyances.

Nadia locks one in.

In this part of the world, where Mennonite dairy farms dot the hills over the sister towns of Santa Elena and San Ignacio, they ride cows! At least girls 13 and under do. Our hose granddaughter Cayla showed the girls how, even as her aunt Avril taught them how to milk cows.

Lanie gives food.

Concocting in the kitchen

More than that, they got to make ice cream, and repaid Avril for her time and patience (and fresh cream and eggs) by adding to Avril’s recipe book. She said she’ll always think of our family when she makes mint chocolate chip ice cream, since our girls were the ones who suggested using mint from the farm’s garden to make flavor it. (Though the real credit should be shared with our neighbors Cheryl and Kevin, who have made mint chocolate chip ice cream for us on several occasions.)

Lanie performs for the puppies

The end result

Although we were not able to ride them, the puppies on the farm deserve a mention, as well, because they entertained us so well. And while we’re at it, Avril’s sister Naomi cooked us several great breakfasts and a wonderful taco haystacks dinner, complete with home-made cilantro cream dressing.

The other new form of conveyance in the San Ignacio area is almost as off-center as cow riding. The hand-cranked car ferry that gives people access to the Maya ruins site called Xunantunich almost seemed superfluous.

Hand-cranked ferry

The ferry itself spanned more than half the river. However, the driver was very kind, giving us some Mayan historical facts as he took us from point A, on the modern side of the river where the bus stop is, to point B on the side with the antiquities.

Point B wasn’t actually where the antiquities were, but it was at least the correct side of the river. After the ferry, we still had to walk a mile to the gates of the park and another half-mile to the ruins themselves. Much of the distance was conducted over an uphill grade.

It was like Sturbridge Village, only made out of rocks.

The temperature was over 100 degrees. We nearly wound up sacrifices to the demon god of heat stroke, but we had just enough water and just enough energy.  We climbed most of the structures, including the colossal “El Castillo.”  From its top we were able to see a village that was in Guatemala.

Nadia climbs El Castillo.

At least that’s what the guard up there said. This was the guard with no rifle, but with the smart phone blasting hip-hop music. We did not speak with the guard holding the rifle. Apparently, there is some tension between Belize and conquest-minded Guatemala, and El Castillo provides a good vantage point for the Belizians to keep an eye on the Guatemalans.

Lanie at the top

Otherwise, it was very calm and quiet at Xunantunich, the second-largest excavated Mayan site in Belize.  It once supported more than ten thousand residents.  Over the hills in Guatemala is Tikal, which once was home to over a million.  At the height of the Mayan empire, there were between one and two million people living in Belize. Currently, Belize has about 300,000 residents.  The country is littered with historical sites, both above ground and deep inside caves.

Despite our discomfort, it was definitely worth the trek to this site.  We would have been missing a major part of the country’s culture — and its appeal — if we hadn’t explored this facet of its history.

While my sisters went SCUBA diving my friend Ganya and I went tubing.

We went to the tubing place. The woman said we could do it at 11 o’clock.   My friend and I swam in the pool till it was time to go.

When it was 10:45 we hopped on our bikes and rode over. A man took us down to the dock and we boarded our boat. Soon we were out to sea.

Getting into the tubes was the most difficult part.

The man fit me in the smallest tube. He let Mom out first, then me, then Dad, then Ganya. The man told us to go slow. We slowly floated out behind the boat.

It was amazing. The water was so blue, and we were so close to the water we could see it all around us.

This is the first round of two from the surfboard.

Slowly the boat pulled us. It was fun. The captain set out a surfboard with drinks on it. The purple cups were filled with orange juice. The yellow ones were filled with alcohol. (Ed. note: Not completely full of alcohol! The adults got rum mixed with fruit juice.)

We sipped our drinks and closed our eyes. It was peaceful and fun.

On our last day at Caye Caulker we went scuba diving. Everyone went except Lanie, Mom, Dad, and Ganya Brooks. Diving was really fun. We went out on a boat to the reef. When we got there we put on our air tanks, vests and flippers. The vests were what the air tanks strapped onto. They had controls so you could inflate and deflate them to go up and down. Before we left, we had to do some training. We had to learn how to clear our goggles and get the water out of our breathing tubes if they got water in them. We also had to learn how to find our tubes if they got knocked out of our mouths.

Once we had our equipment on and were done training, we sat on the side of the boat and rolled off backwards into the water. When we were in the water we let ourselves down slowly so we didn’t hurt our ears. We swam around on the bottom and looked for fish. We saw some flounder. We also saw a lot of cool coral formations.

On the first dive I had to stay near the top of the water because my ears started hurting if I went too deep, but on the second dive my ears didn’t hurt so I went all the way down. The first dive went down 5-10 feet. The second went down 20 feet. It was really fun.

“No shirt, no shoes, no problem”

It’s hard to believe we’ve been on Caye Caulker, a small island in Belize, for almost a week already.  More Caribbean than Central American in feel, the motto here is “Go Slow” and people take it pretty seriously.  We’ve slipped into the rhythm ourselves, and the days have slid away like pearls on a string.

We all laughed with delight when we got off the ferry here and saw the tropical paradise: streets made of white sand, lined with palm trees and brightly-colored buildings, with the impossibly turquoise sea stretching out beyond.  Better yet, Caye Caulker is also a safe and friendly place.  We ride our bike around the car-less streets, weaving among pedestrians and golf carts.  Rastafarians smile and shout out greetings from roadside shops, and we smile and wave back.  Everyone seems to know everyone on this tiny island, and it feels like if you stayed for a few weeks you’d know everyone too.  It’s a far cry from other places I’ve been in the Caribbean, where wealthy tourists are barricaded into their resorts to prevent any possibility of contact with the native population.

Rush hour

We have a lovely house with a pool, and our friends the Brookses have the same a couple of blocks away.  We’ve spent much of our time swimming — in the pools, in the ocean at “the Split” (where a channel cuts the island in two), off the dock that our house has access to — and biking around town.

THEY NEVER STOP EATING

Less happily, we also seem to spend a great deal of time thinking about our next meal and running to the store, since feeding 12 people is not a casual endeavor.  Fortunately we found vendors of fresh tortillas, and no one has complained about frequent meals composed of some variation on tortillas, cheese, salsa, and guacamole.  It seems like one meal is barely finished before they want to eat AGAIN.

Luckily we’ve also been able to sneak out for a few adults-only restaurant meals.  The other day the kids were very excited to create their own “restaurant” and cook while we went out.  Preparations were elaborate and they lived up to their agreement to clean up afterwards, so everyone was happy.

Today we split up into two groups.  Zoe and Nadia joined most of the Brookses for an adventure that they will be describing in the future, while Bob and I took Lanie and Ganya on a tubing trip.  We were pulled along behind a boat through the clear, blue-green waters around the perimeter of the island, with juice and rum punch being passed back to us at frequent intervals on a surfboard.  A good time was had by all.

Tomorrow we sadly say goodbye to Caye Caulker, heading back to the mainland and into the western mountains.  We also say goodbye to the Brookses, but not for long — we’ll be heading home in just over a week!  It seems hard to believe.  Two more stops in Belize and then we’re done.

Lanie beholds a loggerhead sea turtle

Yesterday we went snorkeling. We stopped at 3 places. First we went to Hol Chan, which is where there is a channel in the barrier reef. We saw some sea turtles and lots of fish.

After that we went out to lunch. The restaurant served breakfast all day. For lunch I got banana pancakes.

Exploring the deep with the Brookses

Zoe and I climbed a coconut tree and picked coconuts for the restaurant. After lunch we went to a place called Shark and Ray Alley. We saw a bunch of nurse sharks and sting rays. We got to pet a shark.

At Shark and Ray Alley

Sharks and rays

Nadia pets a nurse shark.

Zoe reaches for a ray.

The third place was called Coral Gardens. Our guide said we were going to see a hammerhead shark there, but he was only teasing us. We did see 3 manatees and a lion fish.

Cool coral

Not a hammerhead