The Caves of Cayo: An Inside Look at Belize
IT was noon in the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve of Belize,
and Danny Portillo was leading a group of travelers through a cave.
Spring water rushed from a black void.
Flashlights flicked and pushed shadows off the walls.
Ahead, skulls and broken pots lined a corridor that faded from sight.
By STEPHEN REGENOLD
The New York Times
June 19, 2009
William Pleytez leads a tour in what is believed to have been a sacrificial chamber in Che Chem Ha, a cave on his family’s land in Cayo.
The cave felt haunted, like a wild portal to a time when human sacrifice, ceremonial bloodletting and hallucinogenic quests were common religious rites. “Welcome to the Maya Underworld,” Mr. Portillo said, his voice swirling in a chamber of bats and polished stone.
Tucked under the Yucatán Peninsula, along the balmy shores of the Caribbean, the small country of Belize is perhaps best known for its turquoise waters and colorful barrier reef. But in recent years, as tourism to the country has grown, adventure seekers have tiptoed inland, into the jungle and underground.
Cave tours are now offered by dozens of outfitters around the country, most prominently in the Cayo District, an interior region abutting Guatemala where mountains jut into the sky. The treks are as varied as the terrain. Some are casual day trips, taking visitors along flagged routes and stone staircases, with picnic lunches and cool dips in jungle streams.
Others are geared to the adventurous and able-bodied, requiring strenuous hikes and upstream swims to remote caves where, once inside, participants perform crawling, climbing and squeezing through constrictions under the pale glow of a headlamp.
Most feature jaw-dropping archaeology, including skulls of sacrifice victims and etched clay pots left dusty and untouched for hundreds of years. “Unless you’re an archaeologist, you’re never going to see sites like you see in Belize,” said John Moses of the National Speleological Society, an education and conservation organization based in Huntsville, Ala.
Because of their cultural and historical significance, the caves are controlled by the Institute of Archaeology, a department within the Ministry of Tourism. While there are hundreds of caves that cut and twist into the mountains in the Cayo District, only about 10 caves are commonly highlighted and explored by tour guides.
Among the most popular is Actun Tunichil Muknal, a subterranean cathedral in the heart of Cayo that features rare artifacts and mineralized human remains that date back hundreds of years.
Other caves involve canoeing or river tubing. At Caves Branch, a watery network of caverns near the town of Belmopan, paddlers can float in inner tubes along dark underground streams past artifacts and waterfalls. Flour Camp Cave, a little-visited site in the Maya Mountains with preserved pottery and drooping stalactites, is reached by horseback from a nearby eco-lodge.
“For serious cavers as well as adventurous travelers, Belize is a rare place,” Mr. Moses said.
For most cave explorers the voyage underground begins in San Ignacio, a lively town on the Macal River that serves as a hub for area tours. There are numerous eco-resorts and hotels that cater to adventurers in search of a speleological experience. Many resorts also arrange cave guides, which is how I got in touch with Mr. Portillo, 38, a machete-wielding Honduran who spends up to 300 days a year giving tours underground.
Mr. Portillo works for Pacz Tours, which has an office in town that shuttles vans full of travelers to the jungle caves each morning. On a hot Tuesday last winter, I joined four Americans and a woman from France to see Actun Tunichil Muknal. We drove for an hour through dense jungle hills before setting out on foot.
“You’re not going to believe this place,” said John Coughlin, 56, a construction contractor from Minot, N.D., who wore swim trunks and sandals for the trek. Mr. Coughlin did the tour with his wife last year and returned with his 18-year-old daughter, Hope. “She needs to see this place.”
A trail cut up a river valley under towering trees and past termite nests. In an hour, we were at the mouth of Actun Tunichil Muknal, a vine-draped aperture from which a river flowed. “Ready to swim?” Mr. Portillo asked. Minnows flitted in the clear water. Ahead, the stream disappeared into the dark mountain.
Headlamps on, the group swam against the current, climbing onto rocks and entering a weird underground world. It took an hour of swimming and squirming to reach the main cavern, a soaring chamber where the bones of a dozen humans were delicately arranged on the soil and sand.
Used long ago as a sacrifice chamber, Actun Tunichil Muknal’s most famous victim was a young woman thought to have been killed with a club. The Crystal Maiden, as she is called, rests in a smaller room set apart from the main chamber through a squeeze in the rock. She stares up in a calcified gaze — hip bones jutting, eye sockets empty.