The past few days have been an absolute adventure. I will upload pictures when I am back in San Pedro, and I must say they are pretty amazing. I'm every bit of exhausted from the adventures and the fact that the hotel we are staying at is above a BUSY road and a club, and with my light sleeping, sleep just does happen much here. I'm just happy that we have went on our amazing adventures! :)
Monday we took a water taxi to Belize City. I thought it was a great ride, I could have slept like a baby if the seats were more comfortable! In away I liked that trip better than the airplane (because it costs less), but nothing can touch the sights you see when you are flying on the plane to San Pedro. Once we were in Belize City we all ate lunch and got a transfer to the local bus station. At the local bus station we were offered a few options on getting to San Ignacio. They said we could take a nonstop 15 passenger van for 20 USD or a Chicken Bus for 7 BZE (3.50 USD). We all decided that we wanted to save money and just take the chicken bus. The guy said we could go to the side of the road and get on the bus if we wanted to save our seats, or we could just wait for it to pull up to the gate in an hour. We decided to wait but we saw our bus. It was one of the older school buses (like the bus you used to have to ride when your school bus broke down)...it was painted over with white, blue and red and there was still some yellow on the top I think. Before we got on the bus one of the guys that worked at the station "made a deal" and said that when the bus pulled up for all of us just to run to the back and get in through the emergency exit so we could sit together. So, we see the bus moving and we run to the gate, well, as the bus is pulling up this MOB of people attack the gate and everyone is running through the bus gates LIKE A CHICKEN. It was INTENSE. Annnnd half of the people getting on the bus were getting on through the emergency door. People are rushing us to get on the bus, to climb over people that are trying to get their small children on the bus so it was nerve racking. Of course I didn't push through anyone, I almost did but stopped. Well to get on through the emergency exit you have one person that you step on and then he will lift you up and someone else grabs you and pulls you on the bus. Luckily I had a seat and we fit three people in our seat but there were many people that were standing. Capacity was 84 people, but I'm sure that there were between 110-120 people on the bus. We stopped several times and it was almost as if we never came to a complete stop for people to get on/off if it was just one person...they just jumped from the front or back exit. It was crazy. We were stopped at a lot of checkpoints and luckily when they came on to check the capacity of the bus it had died out a lot by that time. We stopped at another bus terminal in Belmopan and only a few people could get on because of the checkpoint down the road. There were too many people on the bus (standing not in a seat) and one of the workers told them to get off. Everyone got off except for one lady. She refused to get off because she had class in Guatemala on Tuesday morning. I have mixed feelings about seeing this happen. If it was in the U.S. it wouldn't fly. People would have been rude to the lady because the bus couldn't leave and the lady would probably have been escorted out. But instead the bus just sat there until something happened. Finally, a man got off the bus and she was able to sit down, but it is crazy to think that sometimes people cannot get to where they need to go because the buses are so crowded.
Tuesday was a fun adventure day. We took a bus ride to Caracol. We first made a stop at one of the caves. It is one of the smaller caves in San Ignacio and it is made of mostly limestone. It was beautiful. We were able to walk around it for a few minutes. After that we finished our bus ride to Caracol. Caracol was amazing and we were able to learn a lot of the history of the temples and things. I found out that most of the "hills" and "mountains" are actually temples and burial areas, and they all contain artifacts. But, they don't want to reveal all of them because then you will ruin the wild life, the trees, the howler monkeys and the birds. It is a battle of history versus nature in a way. But there were still many uncovered things we could see. We also saw a spot they had just started uncovering. It was cool because you could see how thick the dirt was to get to the artifacts. The dirt is literally about three feet deep. Our tour guide was amazing and you could tell he was passionate about his job. I found out that he went to school for archaeology and his job is actually working at places like Caracol and then he does the tours to go with that. I think that helps stir the enjoyment we had on the tour because he really knew a lot of information and he was very passionate. After a day of HIKING up and down many stairs we headed to Big Rock Falls. It was a hhuuuuggge hike to the falls. I fell a few times but nothing out of the normal slipping and falling that I do :). After like 10 minutes of hiking we made it to the falls. It was amazing. I did a small jump and then I rock climbed the falls to do a higher jump. I was so SCARED. I was scared of not jumping out far enough and scratching my back on the rocks. It took me so long to go so the tour guide finally just pushed me....but I'm glad. I had the tiimmme of my life falling down so quickly. I believe someone said it was like a 50 ft fall, but I'm not positive.
Wednesday was an amazing day. We went to the ATM (Actun Tunichil Muknal) cave here in San Ignacio. It was so amazing. We started our journey with a hike through the jungle. We had to walk through three places where the creek passed through the jungle...so think like the movie Forrest Gump but not that deep! After a 15 minute or so hike we made it to the area just before the cave entrance. The beginning of the group made it to the picnic area a little earlier than everyone else so we decided to go down to the cave for a swim. It was SO cold at first, but I think it was the change from hiking in the heat a little to getting in a cool body of water. There were a couple of places that you could jump from a cave wall in to the water. I was scared at first so I just did a little jump and after that I wanted to do the higher jump. The jump wasn't actually high at all because it was inside a cave, but it was very slippery and you were supposed to lean back when you climbed up. Of course, I did something wrong and my feet slipped out from under me. I decided that there should be no jumping from a slippery spot for me. I only bruised my elbow but I promise you never realize how much you use your elbow until it hurts! I still went through the ATM cave though! It was amazing. We split up into two groups. My group went first, and during the first half of the hike you are in and out of the water. There are a few spots where the water is deeper and you have to swim, but in most spots you can just walk through the water. We were able to see the lime stone and how much it shines in the cave. Once we got to a certain point where we weren't going to be back in the water until we left, we had to take our shoes off so we would not ruin the artifacts. You had to wear socks as well so the oils from your feet would not mess up anything either. This part was really neat because we were able to learn more about the history of the cave and the rituals that took place. We were able to see broken pottery that the Mayans would break during their rituals and we also saw 3 different skulls, one was just a skull, another was a full body and looked bunched up, and the third one we saw was cool because you could really see the full body. We also saw many pillars that when light is shown on them they cast awesome shadows of their Gods. To me, I saw the Gods, but there were times when I could see other things in the shadows as well. It was very neat and interesting. After we toured the upper area of the cave for a while, we went back and put our shoes on and started our journey back. We got to a point and the tour guide asked us if we wanted to take a different way up this rock. Dr. K said he had never been that way and the guide said it would be a little tough. I was scared because at that point in time my arm was hurting and it was getting hard to use my right arm for a lot of support while climbing, but we still went! I am so glad too!
We went across this one scary area...there was this white stuff on a rock and we had to avoid it and climb around it because it was calcite...I looked down and noticed that it was all dark under this rock, so I have no clue what would have happened if you slipped on this rock! But we all made it sliding around and scooting around! During the ATM tour, I really learned you have to trust yourself, but you can't be too confident. I think that is why I slipped before we even started spelunking. I was too confident in myself for jumping on Tuesday, and I should have been more careful. In the cave, I was very careful and I noticed that you have to be balanced with 3 limbs before you can move whichever arm or leg. Also staying low to the ground really helps keep some balance. I was pretty mad at myself after the tour because words cannot describe how badly I wanted to go to Crystal Cave, a tour that a few of us had talked about doing the day before. It is supposed to be one of the most challenging cave tours in Belize. I asked our guide from the ATM if I could make it in Crystal Cave and he said with my elbow swollen and hurt I would need to re-think about going. I know everything happens for a reason though and now I can put it on my bucket list to come back to San Ignacio for Crystal Cave!
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