A-Caving We Shall Go

When I was fourteen, my family visited Mammoth Cave. We went on several tours, and saw many outstanding geological formations. It was thrilling, but quite safe. There were smooth paved trails, metal railings, and electric lights strung throughout.

As an adult, I visited Carlsbad Caverns. They’re not as large, but with even more spectacular formations. And just as safe. Later, I returned to Mammoth Cave, but this time went on the Wild Cave Tour. A small group equipped with headlamps, hardhats and kneepads went off the easy, established trails and spent most of a day doing something rather more akin to actual caving. This was more like it. Far cooler, quite strenuous, and miles of fun. By the end of it, we were all soaked, exhausted and filthy.

Two years ago, Elizabeth and Joe and I spent five days at Mammoth Cave. Joe’s age prevented us from repeating the Wild Cave Tour, but we did take its little brother, the Introduction to Caving. This lasted only half a day, and was not quite so demanding, but still acres of fun.

Today, we blew all of that away entirely.

We took an excursion to Actun Tunichil Muknal (Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre), near San Ignacio, Belize. From the center of town, the guide drove a van with seven guests about thirty miles east of town. From where the van parked, we hiked another forty-five minutes to the mouth of the cave.

Water flows out of the cave, into Roaring Creek. A lot of water. So much, that to enter the cave, we first had to swim about fifteen feet to the beginning of the trail. No matter, we were already wet from the waist down, having forded Roaring Creek three times on our hike. Most of our walk through the cave was in water at least ankle deep, and required swimming in several more places. Other passages required twisting and/or contorting into various interesting postures, just to get through.

The cave’s formations, while not the most amazing I’d ever seen, were certainly impressive enough. Stalactites, stalagmites and splattertites, sheets and curtains and all the usual configurations, with lots of colors and sparkles. And most of them were within easy reach, protected from our touch only by the guide’s admonitions and our own desire to protect them. This protection included the exclusion of all cameras from the cave, as dropped or fumbled cameras have in the past caused significant damage to its contents. So this post is without photos.

As an aside, there seems to be a strong effort in Belize to make protecting the environment, wildlife and historical artifacts a matter of national pride. The more-developed world could take a few lessons from the campaigns here.

After an hour or so of trekking through the water, we climbed out and up, took off our shoes, and continued in stocking feet. This afforded some protection to both our feet and the cave floor. Though thoroughly wet, we were not particularly chilly, lending credence to the claim that the air temperature in the cave was in the low 80’s.

As we climbed, we began to see more of the other big draw of this cave tour: undisturbed Mayan artifacts. Apparently, this cave had been used by the ruling and religious elite up until about 900 CE, for various rituals. And the various visiting archeological teams have not taken up their leavings, but left them all in place. There were the remains of many clay pots of varying sizes, all intentionally broken to some degree after their single use. Rocks in many places were arranged for heating these pots over fires. But the high points—presented by the guide with an appropriate degree of suspense and showmanship—were the several occurrences of human skeletal remains. Most likely, these were sacrificial victims, and one was a complete skeleton, stretched out on its back, with a coating of calcite deposited by the cave’s water over the past more-than-a-thousand years.

Having seen the crown jewels of Actun Tunichil Muknal, and received much information about it all from the excellent guide, we turned back. Though we knew in advance we were going only about a kilometer into the cave, the inward trip had seemed like much more. The return seemed like less. Very soon, we were back at the mouth, then trekking through the jungle to our box lunches, on to the van and dry clothes, and finally back to San Ignacio.