Belize marks the final country in Central America that I visited and Belize was a great way to finish it off. As the icing on the cake I decided I couldn’t just leave without seeing Tikal! So I hopped aboard another TropicAir puddle-jumper and touched down in Flores, Guatemala where I would kick off my exploration of the mega-Mayan city of Tikal.
I had to wake up at 5am today to catch a quick bite before heading off on an hour-long boat ride to the famous Blue Hole — an ancient cave from the ice ages that later filled with water and had it’s roof collapse, creating an underwater chasm with mega-stalactites! It’s hard to describe the feeling of sinking 130 feet under the surface and swimming in a slalom pattern in and out of these giant structures. Dive #2 at a site dubbed “The Aquarium” was an equally amazing sight with crystal clear waters and species of sea-life too many to name. It really did feel like it was all just a dream, but then again I had already woken up, so it must be real.
Boarded a little puddle-jumper flight out of Belmopan today to the island of San Pedro. The plane was tiny, but I’m pretty sure the “terminal” was even smaller, which was weird since the runway was big enough to land a C-130 cargo plane.
Sure you can go to Belize and lounge on beautiful beaches and swim in the warm aquamarine waters of the Caribbean, but that’s easy! For a little challenge why not hire a guide to take you on the “ATM” tour. I’d strongly suggest going with Mayawalks for your tour. You’ll start at the crack of dawn in San Ignacio town center and take a 45 minutes van ride through farmlands before arriving at the edge of a river. From there you’ll literally dive right in and wade across the river in waist high water, a great way to wake you up! After about 35 minutes of walking through the jungle and two more river crossing you’ll arrive at an opening of a cave where a river flows out of. You’ll need to swim through the mouth of the cave opening and into the sacrificial grounds of the ancient Mayans! Lot’s of spelunking through narrow and wet massage ways will finally lead you up to an opening in the cave that contains lots of offerings to the Mayan gods that are still intact and preserve just as archaeologist found them –untouched for hundreds of years! And in the final room of the cave there is even the remains of a female human skeleton who is believe the be one of the last sacrifices to the gods. Times were getting tough, and they had to resort to bigger and better sacrifices, or so they thought. We all know how well that worked out for them.
Before doing the obvious and visiting the Caribbean side of Belize, we headed in the opposite direction to the west to visit San Ignacio and check out some of the 9th century Maya ruins up on the hilltop overlooking the Mopan River. Here’s some of what we saw.
