Day 178 - Into the depths

San Ignacio / Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM)

It was about an hour's drive to the national park that ATM is in, the way went through Mennonite country, they are similar to the Amish, hard working farming people that follow a simple traditional way of living, though they do use technology. The land we drove through included plenty of corn/maize, as well as plantations of teak and mahogany that wouldn't mature for at least 30 years..

We were set up with our helmets and life jackets (and without cameras, as they weren't allowed at all) and set off for the 4km walk to the cave entrance. Within two minutes we had a river crossing to make, so we used the rope strung between the banks to haul ourselves  across. The water level was higher than usual, due to the rain brought by Hurricane Earl. The eye of the storm had passed through here, and the damage that had been done was amazing to see, fallen trees and debris everywhere, the effects of the storm had closed the caves for 15 days and they had only reopened four days ago, as it had taken that long to clear the track using a large team of workers who were still there.

We reached the mouth of the cave and attached our head lamps, then started the swim in. We climbed over and under large rocks until we reached what they call "the neck slicer", a rock at neck height with a defined edge with a gap above it just big enough to fit your head through. We had to turn and position our head and neck just right, then turn our head at right angles so we could get through the next gap. All of this was done while we were in waist deep water, and as as we travelled through the cave the water in places was even deeper, needing us to swim to move forward. The whole trip through the caves was incredible fun and nothing like anything we have done before.

Along the way we were shown different cave formations and points of archaeological interest. After some time we climbed up a series of boulders where we were told to remove our shoes, it was socks only from this point. It was explained to us and we quickly saw that there were Mayan artifacts embedded and scattered throughout the floor, so by wearing socks the idea was that we would be more careful to watch where we stepped so as not to damage anything. This relates to the reason that cameras aren't allowed, over the years two tourists had dropped their cameras and ended up breaking skulls and pots.

We were nearly at the end where we would get to see the the "Crystal Maiden", all we needed to do was climb up a few rocks and go up a ladder. It was at this point that K slipped and fell quite badly, heavily "bouncing" off a ledge and rocks ending up further down. This was probably the only point in the journey where you could fall this far down onto solid rock, so of course that's where K fell!

K knew that nothing was broken but she was very messed up after hitting those rocks and falling so far, she could just stand but was in a lot of pain. As if that wasn't bad enough, we the only way out was to retrace our steps to the entrance. It was slow going and tricky at times but we eventually made it out of the cave, then tackled the four kilometres back to the car, wondering all the way about what would have happened if it had been worse, if there had been a broken bone?

We later learnt these types of injuries and worse have happened in these caves, more often than you would expect. The plus side of doing "adventure" activities in these countries is that you are allowed to experience things that would normally be considered unsafe back home, the other side of the coin though is that as they are unsafe you need to live with the consequences of doing these risky activities.

Overall though the experience was amazing and we highly recommend it .... just watch your footing at all times and don't fall over!

Note: As no cameras were allowed but we still want to give you some idea of what we saw, in this post I've used pictures from other websites:

• http://www.sanpedrosun.com/environment/2011/07/25/actun-tunichil-muknal-is-one-of-10-top-sacred-caves/
• http://www.jmbelizetravel.com/actun-tunichil-muknal.html
• http://dfwgrotto.org/blog/oztotl.php/2010/03/09/actun-tunichil-muknal-cave-belize-dec-2009