Adventures in San Ignacio

From the chilled island of Caye Caulker we moved inland to San Ignacio, also in Belize. 

We boarded a ferry from Caye Caulker to Belize City, then a taxi to the bus station with the intention of catching the public bus to San Ignacio. There are lots of private transfers / shuttle options but catching the bus with the locals is far cheaper and doesn't take much longer. Ironically, in the only English speaking country in Central America, we managed to get on the wrong bus and spent about an hour correcting this mistake.

Fortunately, we arrived at one of the nicest apartments we have stayed at so far - it was huge, had amazing air conditioning and even a washing machine (quite the luxury in Central America). Our Airbnb host helped us to arrange a tour for the following day - we were going zip lining and cave tubing!

First: zip lining. 

As you can see, the zip lining gear is super flattering!

Michael on his first real zip line (they make you do a little trial one first).

I am not great with heights (something that has seemed to come up repeatedly on this trip) and was hoping this wouldn't be an issue with zip lining - I used to love the flying fox at school camp, so I figured this would be a similar concept. Turns out, I had nothing to fear! Zip lining is AMAZING! It is just scary enough to be fun, but no to scary that I spent the whole time freaking out!

Looking amazing in my super heavy zip lining gear. 

We had to 'hike' (walk, really) up small inclines / stairs to get between the different zip lines - I had thought that I had lost a lot of fitness on this trip but after seeing the American's in our group struggle with this, I realised that I am not too out of shape (or maybe they were just VERY out of shape...).

Some of the stairs we had to climb to access the zip lines - they make sure you are still attached to a cable the whole time. 

Michael on the longest zipline - for this one you had to make sure you didn't 'break' and maintained speed or else you could slow down too much and not make it the entire way.

Jungle zip lining - what an amazing experience!

I also took a short video of one of my zip lines: https://youtu.be/DJu9oBLmyIc

After getting pretty sweating, lugging around in the zip lining gear, we were happy to be headed off for some cave tubing. 

Our guide was really cool and suggested we jump into the refreshing water before we starting the tubing adventure. We actually got really lucky and were the only people to have booked this specific tour, so we pretty much had a private cave tubing experience!

The start of our cave tubing journey.

Our guide was really cool and very knowledgeable, he was of Mayan descent and his parents had taught him a lot about Mayan traditions and cultural beliefs - which he passed onto us. He started by telling us that they Mayan's believe in the Upperworld (heaven), middle world (earth, or where humans live) and the Underworld - which he constantly referred to these caves as. For the Mayans, the caves were sacred and considered to be a portal into the Underworld - often religious sacred rituals and human sacrifice took place here.

We slowly drifted though the caves and into the darkness, it became really quiet and still.

The caves became pitch black, which meant limited photo opportunities, but this is a photo of our guide exiting one of the cave systems and going into the daylight. He actually explained that as a sacrifice (or punishment?) the Mayans would leave people in the darkest part of the cave, at which point you cannot see anything and it's very difficult to be able to find your way out - without any day light, after a long period of time, people died or went blind, sometimes never finding their way out. He added that all the animals that live in the cave are blind and as they never see the daylight.

Michel entering the cave system.

This photo provides a pretty clear picture of how dark it got inside the cave - our headlights were the only source of light in the darkness. It was actually strangely relaxing to float along in the darkness.

After several hours of drifting in and out of the darkness, and a few little rapids to keep us on our toes, we emerged into the daylight!

I look like I have almost been swallowed by my tube!

It was quite nice to be able to see out Belize jungle surroundings! We were also really fortunate that in the height of the rainy season, we had no rain all day!

As you can see, by this point, Michael had gotten fairly relaxed!

After a full day of adventuring, we were treated to an awesome lunch of chicken, rice and beans (a Belize staple) and some rum punch (which Michael embraced). 

It was definitely a day of firsts (zip lining, cave tubing) and a once in a lifetime opportunity for us and we had an absolutely amazing time adventuring in Belize!

The following day in San Ignacio was definitely more slow paced! We had a huge sleep in (it had been a while) before heading to Cahal Pech - the oldest known Mayan site in Belize. We walked here from our apartment in San Ignacio, it was only about 1km walk but uphill and in the blazing sun, it was quite sweaty!

Cahal Pech is quite small and not as well known as some of the more famous ruins we have visited (Tulum, Chichen Itza etc.), but this was nice as it meant that there were very few other visitors. 

Before checking out the ruins, we walked through a small museum, which provided us with some information about the history of Cahal Pech. This area is composed of seven interconnected plazas (named by archaeologists) with a few small temples and two ballcourts - the Mayan's certainly liked their ball sports! 

Cahal Pech was built around 600 BC and abandoned around 800 AD - I am still yet to discover the reason behind the abandonment of all of these Mayan sites!

One of the strangest things I learned in the museum was that, instead of using cemeteries, the Mayan usually buried the dead under their houses so that their spirits remained within the home... creepy!

One of the ball courts at Cahal Pech. 

This was one of the coolest ones we have visited as you could walk around and explore the whole seating area and see where all the viewers (and even the noble / rich) would have sat while the sport took place. 

The tallest temple at Cahal Pech - I am not sure of the name as there were no signs or information anywhere. 

We made it to the top!

The second tallest temple at Cahal Pech - I could not resist climbing it. In many Mayan sites you cannot climb or access the sites, due to preservation, so it was really great that everything here could be explored so easily!

From here, we visited the local market, got some street food and ice cream and spent the rest of the day relaxing. 

It was a very short, but very enjoyable, few days in San Ignacio. After Caye Caulker island life it was good to a more realistic taste of life in Belize.