Exploring Barton Creek Cave and Mountain Pine Ridge

After our day trip to Tikal and Flores, we spent a mellow day in San Ignacio, exploring the town and shopping for souvenirs and presents. My favorite part of the day was the farmer's market, which is by far the largest I've seen in Belize. While Amy, the boys, and my folks explored the market, I purchased produce for our Christmas dinner and the coming week. The produce was plentiful and cheap! For example, bananas were 10 for $1 BZE--that works out to five US cents each.

Mom, Dad, and the boys at the market

Another view of the market, with one of the ubiquitous dogs

One of the many fruit and vegetable stands in the market

The pedestrian street in downtown San Ignacio

San Ignacio also has a pedestrian-only street, lined with little shops, restaurants, and vendors selling food from carts. It's really quite charming.

The next day we took a tour to the Barton Creek Caves and Mountain Pine Ridge. For the past several weeks Belize has experienced record rainfall, and Cayo District in particular suffered extensive flooding. Consequently, the ordinarily bad dirt roads were absolutely horrendous, to the point of near impassibility in some places. In order to get to Barton Creek Caves, we had to drive across a raging creek (that actually seemed more like a full-on river to me). The driver asked all of us to move to the back two rows of the van so the tires would remain in contact with the creek bed, then he gunned it--the water came up past the headlights! Fortunately we made it across without getting washed downstream, then we parked at a bridge that had been washed out during the flooding, and crossed the skeletal remains on foot before walking the rest of the way to the cave entrance. Just arriving at the cave was an adventure!

This is the "wake" created by our van, as seen from the rear windows

We need to get to the other side...

...so it's up and over!

We had a short safety briefing from our guide, Juan, before donning life jackets and splitting up into three canoes. The passenger in the bow of each canoe was provided with a very powerful spotlight, which was helpful, because after we paddled into the cave, it was quite dark. The creek was pretty wide throughout most of the cave, and we were able to proceed three abreast. In many places, the roof of the cave was very high, up to 60-70 feet, and covered with a wide variety of stalactites and many bats. In places the creek narrowed, and the ceiling lowered, until at one point, we had to bend nearly double to pass under a very low hanging portion of the cave before entering another chamber that was much larger.

Safety briefing. Mom looks worried.

Getting used to the boats before entering the cave

Checking out the view

Cool formations!

Another interesting stalactite formation

Bats!

The ceiling is getting lower and lower

Near the turn-around point

More cool formations

Ancient Mayan underworld cave canoe-trip selfie

Liam caught this cool gecko after lunch (we think it is a dwarf bark gecko)

Perched at intervals along the ledges of the cave were numerous pots, and at one point, we could clearly see a human skull. Juan explained that the skull was from the sacrifice of a young girl, and archaeologists suspect she was royalty because her forehead had been flattened and elongated (as was apparently the style among the Mayan elite).

About mid way through the cave, Juan asked us to turn out the lights, and it was astonishingly dark, literally pitch black. He asked us to imagine what it must have been like for the Mayans, in their dugout canoes, using only torches, with wild shadows dancing across the cave walls. It was easy to see why they believed the caves and cenotes were the Underworld--it really does feel like a different world in there.

Eventually we reached a point where the water was too high for us to continue into the cave system, and we had reached the limit of Mayan activity in any case, so we turned around and paddled back out.

We had a delightful lunch at the picnic tables outside the cave mouth, then reversed our exciting walk/shimmy/river crossing to get back on the road. On an especially steep uphill portion, we encountered another vehicle coming the other way, and our driver Ishmael had to stop our forward progress and pull of to the side of the road. As we continued upwards, the engine started struggling, the BOOM! Steam/smoke/etc started pouring out of the hood and we stopped dead in the middle of the road.

Boom! The puddle is the engine coolant.

Waiting in the shade, Amy is IDing a bird we saw

We retreated uphill a bit to a spot of shade and waited while Ishmael and Dad tried to sort out the problem. It turns out that engines don't like being submerged in (relatively) cold water and then worked super hard to get uphill, so the engine overheated and the radiator overflow tank blew its lid and we lost all of our coolant. By pouring all of our drinking water into the radiator after it had cooled, we were able to get up the hill to a Mennonite farm where they had clean water they gave us to top off the radiator.

Then we proceeded to Mountain Pine Ridge. This is a particularly interesting area of Belize, because it is at a relatively higher elevation and is covered with pine trees. At times I felt like I was in Flagstaff, or maybe just outside Spokane, except the undergrowth was significantly greener, and I saw a toucan flying between the pine trees! That was weird, but awesome.

The gang at the mouth of Rio Frio cave. They are the little tiny specks in the center-right of the image.

The boys and Ishmael in Rio Frio Cave

The condition of the road leading to Rio Frio cave. We did not try to drive on this.

Thatched roof hut under the pines. Weird.

Keel-billed toucan in the pine trees

Last stop for the day--Rio on Pools

We stopped at an amazing cave and hiked around it for awhile, then made a final stop at Rio on Pools, a beautiful stretch of river with multiple cascading pools. I think if it had been earlier in the day and the waters hadn't been raging so hard we would have gone swimming, but we were content to just look. Another spot we wanted to visit, 1,000 Foot Falls, was inaccessible because the road had totally washed out.

We made it back to San Ignacio around 7:00, which made for another long day, but the evening was quite pleasant and we drank some beers and ate pizza at the tables in Central Park while we listened to a school choir sing Christmas carols. It was a very memorable day.