ATM Cave

Actun Tunichil Muknal, which everyone calls the ATM cave, is a river cave in the jungle outside San Ignacio that the ancient Maya used for ceremonies and human sacrifice. The chambers still hold skeletal remains and a large amount of ceramic pottery left where it was placed a thousand years ago. You reach it on a guided hike, then swim into the entrance and wade through the cave for a couple of hours. Cameras are not allowed inside, which is why there are no photos from within the cave.

Inside

This was our first full day in Belize and one of the best. You swim into the entrance, wade through waist-deep water, and then the passages open up into enormous caverns. 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. Even if every artifact in there turned out to be a reproduction, the cave alone would be worth the price.

Fernando

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.

The people we met

Two couples were on the tour with us: 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.