ATM Cave

Actun Tunichil Muknal, which everyone just calls the ATM cave, was our first full day in Belize and one of the best. The Maya used it for ceremonies and sacrifices, and there are still skeletal remains and a large amount of pottery inside. Some of the pottery is in such good condition that John half-suspected it might be too good to be true. We're planning to read up on it now that we're home.

Cameras aren't allowed inside, so there are no photos from within the cave. That's a shame, because it's spectacular. You swim into the entrance, wade through waist-deep water, and then the passages open up into enormous caverns. Even if every artifact in there turned out to be a reproduction, the cave alone would be worth the price.

Our guide was Fernando. He was excellent, and we later learned he'd been trying to get into medical school before his family ran out of money. He's the kind of person where a little help would change the trajectory of his life, and we met several people like that over the week.

We also met two couples on the tour: Josh and his partner from England, an ecologist and a healthcare worker finishing a four-month trip through South America, and Kevin and Adrian from the States, who turned out to be staying at Villa Cayo too. We had dinner with Kevin and Adrian at Crave that night.