Actun Tunichil Muknal (try saying that after a few sherries), more commonly known as the ATM Cave (thank fuck!) is the most popular tour out of San Ignacio despite the whopping US$125 price tag. Try not to cry. You can’t even take photos inside, all the pictures in this blog were emailed to us and were taken before all electronics were banned from the cave. Why were electronics banned? Because someone dropped a camera on a skull and broke it so that guy is obviously cursed forever and now no one, not even the guides, can take photos. To be fair the guides did say that since cameras were banned they have a lot less accidents and injuries so yay I guess.
We got to the Maya Walks office at 7.45am, met the rest of the group and our lovely guides, then we were bundled into a bus and driven for an hour to the cave. On the way Eric, one of the guides, told us what to expect.
“Is anyone scared of the dark?” he asked. I raised my hand. Okay, I could stay by the guide if I was nervous.
“Tight spaces?” I raised my hand. Eric indicated his body, he’s a man who enjoys his food, and said if he could get through we’d all be fine.
“Spiders?” My hand nearly shot through the roof.
“What about heights?” Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s going to be one of those tours is it? To be fair I’m scared of pretty much everything. Point at it and it’ll probably make me nervous to some degree but it doesn’t stop me from doing shit. I just have to sit down, stare into the abyss and question all of my life choices whilst trying not to cry every now and then. No biggie.
Officially, life jackets and helmets are mandatory, not all agencies enforce this but Maya Walks do. I’m pretty confident in water but if you’re going to give me a life jacket then I’m going to be more than happy to wear it. It’s nice just to be able to float, it’s just one less thing to worry about when squeezing my considerable bulk through tiny holes. Kitted up, we walked the half hour to the cave entrance, and straight away you have a river crossing, the water coming up to your chest, but with the life jacket you can just float and pull yourself along with the rope they have strung across the river. There were two more rivers but they weren’t deep at all and I tell you what, it’s bloody fresh compared with the Caribbean Sea.
Junior was our guide, they split the group as each guide is only allowed eight or less tourists, and as we walked he told us about Mayan history and beliefs and how things are passed down from your grandparents. He told us if they said you needed to boil nine of these particular leaves then drink it for some manner of remedy you just did it. You didn’t question why nine leaves and not ten. You just got on with it, and that’s how traditional medicine got passed on through generations. He showed us a young ceiba tree and explained how Mayans believed it was the tree of life linking the three plains of existence; the branches reaching up to the sky, the roots to the underworld, and the trunk representing where humans and other animals lived.
When we got to the cave entrance it was like being blasted with AC. Fucking hell, this water was going to be chilly! I’d need to watch that I didn’t take a stalagmite out with a fucking nipple or something. We switched our headlamps on, swam a short distance and off we fucked through the caves. The problem with not being allowed to take photos is the fact I use that pictures as a substitute for my terrible memory so I can’t actually remember what order things happened in. There was one particular passage we had to go through which had a rock jutting into it thus making it the width of a human neck, so you had to sink into the water and fit your neck through it. My head got stuck. Well this is it then, I guess I live here now, this is my life, I’m probably going to freeze to death and… Junior told me exactly how to move my head to get through aaaand yeah, that was actually quite easy.
The rocks are insanely interesting. Calcium carbonate is everywhere, coating everything that has the audacity to not move and get wet resulting in some shiny formations. Junior told us that you’re looking at an inch growth per hundred years for the formations so they’re all pretty fucking old, but what really brings you (or maybe just me) to the edge of your geek seat is the fact that if you cut through a stalactite you can age them like the rings of a tree, and you can use isotopes (I don’t know what an isotope is. Google it) to find out exactly how old each ring is, and and and! If it’s light in colour it was dry, and if it’s dark in colour it was wet, and using this plus carbon dating the artifacts found in the cave they know there was about 150 years of drought which coincided with increased use of the caves, possibly because they were begging the rain god, Chaak, for some rain, please! BOOM! SCIENCE! HAVE THAT!
Apparently the majority of the pottery found was deliberately broken as part of the ritual. As you move further into the cave they stop breaking the pots. Humans sacrifices start cropping up. The rituals slowly changed. They changed because they weren’t working and they got more and more desperate. The god they worshipped changed too and eventually, when nothing worked and they ran out of ideas, that’s when they abandoned the area.
So there’s a bit where you have to climb up a terrifying rock then abandon your shoes. It gets a bit rocky, not ideal for padding about in your socks which, by the way, are mandatory. They want to protect the cave from your shoes and the oils in your feet because let’s face it, humans are inherently gross. We were shown ceramics and a skull, the tiny bones of a sacrificed baby, and the remains of an eight year old boy who was likely left alive to die slowly. Tarrant asked if a woman was impregnated solely for her to give birth to a sacrifice, or if the baby or child was just taken afterwards. Apparently there’s no way of knowing this but children born at certain times of the year might have been more likely to be offered up for sacrifice.
At the very end of the cave, as far as you can go, lies a full set of human remains known as the Crystal Maiden. This is who the cave is named after, Actun Tunichil Muknal means the Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre. The bones have been covered in calcium carbonate hence the crystalling. The bloke who discovered the skeleton assumed it was female given the location of the pelvis bones but they’ve since shaved a few bits off for testing and it’s actually the remains of a teenage boy. They really do like to sacrifice them young hey. I think it was to do with purity.
Once you’re at the end you simply turn around and head back out the way you came. We got back to the car park where we were plied with typical Belizian food and rum punch, which I’m starting to think is also very typically Belizian because quite a few of the tours we’ve been on have been quite thr assault on the liver. This tour is honestly excellent though. It’s actually a spectacular show cave in its own right with colossal formations, thousands of years old. The Cathedral is incredible. Throw in the Mayan history and the fact the cave has never been excavated, only analysed, so the remains and artifacts are where the Mayans or flowing waters left them, it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s a pricey tour, but I think it’s absolutely worth the money.
Jump to “Useful shit to know…”
Actun Tunichil Muknal, Cayo District, Belize
Stayed at: Bella’s Backpackers, San Ignacio
Useful shit to know…
How To Get From Caye Caulker To San Ignacio
- San Pedro Belize Express offers the cheaper water taxis.
- If you buy online it’s US$21. If you buy it in the office they charge you BZ$33.
- Caribbean Sprinter are faster but charge US$30.
- The water taxi takes about fifty minutes, then you have to claim your bags which can take a while, then it’s about a fifteen minute walk to the bus station. Obviously you can take a taxi if you like.
- Several buses a day to go to San Ignacio from Belize City.
- You can buy your ticket at the station or on the bus from the assistant.
- You can ask which bus you’re meant to be getting on. It might terminate at Banque which is the border town.
- It took 2.5 hours and cost BZ$10.
- We used Maya Walks for our tours as they have an excellent reputation. Turned out it was well deserved and the guides were excellent.
- If you only want to do the ATM cave there are cheaper options. You could probably get it for US$110 if you ask around.
- Maya Walks charge US$125 for ATM, US$95 for Barton Creek, and US$135 for Barton Creek with the Rock Falls add on.
- They did us a really good deal for booking two tours with them.
Travel & Shit 