"Unbelizeable"- The first three days in the jungle.

One of the huge highlights of our trip was exploring an old Mayan cave called Actun Tunichil Muknal, or ATM cave for short. After an hour hike through the jungle we got to the mouth of the cave. We had to swim in and then hike up on some rocks. We explored deep into the cave for three hours. We saw some crazy things in there and everything was dated between 700A.D. and 900 A.D. That is almost 2,000 years old! To have walked where people that long ago walked( and swam!) was a strange feeling.

This was a cave that was used for sacrifices and was considered a very sacred place. This is the only intact skeleton in the cave and is a female that was about 16-23 yrs old when she died. Somehow standing next to her was not eerie. There was actually a peaceful feeling in the cave. My feeling about the remains that we saw in the cave were that, since they had been sacrificed to God, maybe they were people that had been born with disease, or were dying or severely injured, and the Mayan people believed that they were setting their souls free. Obviously that is Tonya doctrine, but it was my feeling.

This is a HUGE spider that we saw. it was called a tailess scorpion spider and was trying to attack some crickets that were near and feeding off the salt deposits on the stalagmites.

A random skull that we saw in the cave that was from a male. I think I remember our guide saying that he was about 35 when he died.

The stalagtite and stalagmite formations inside were huge, beautiful and absolutely amazing to see. I wish you could see how huge this cave was. We had to wear helmets because at times we were sqeezing through small holes to get to the next part of the cave. We bashed our heads a few times and were grateful for the head protection. We were also grateful to have a light on our helmets, as without it the cave would have been extremely dark. Throughout our time in the cave we never knew if we were going to be hiking rocks or in water up to our armpits. It was a pretty surreal experience. I would recommend going to Belize just to see this.

The McCall River. It was so blue and beautiful.

We went on a four hour horse ride through the jungle to some old Mayan ruins. We rode along the McCall River. It was the most crystal clear, turquois water I have ever seen in a river. Breathtaking! We had to put our horses on a ferry to cross the river, so we could get to the ruins. By the end my rear end was aching pretty bad. Our guide Luis said I was "saddle sore". It was an amazing journey.

Our trip to Belize will be one that I will never forget. We had some amazing experiences and met some truly remarkable people! This is a picture of us with our cab driver named Manny. He picked us up from the airport and we called him to take us wherever we needed to go. He was one of the friendliest people we have ever met and did his best to make sure that we were taken care of. We found most Belizians to be so kind and happy. Manny was extremely interested when we asked him to take us to church on our first Sunday. He asked us many questions about what we believe in and we were able to bear our testimonies and teach him about the gospel. He said that he felt like God had sent us to him. I felt truly humbled to have had such a neat experience with this man who told us he was seeking to find his calling in life. "I know that God has a plan for me and I am just trying to figure out what it is", he told us. All of a sudden it truly seemed that there was a reason why we had chosen to go to Belize.







Video of old pottery that we saw in the ATM cave. I don't know why the blog put it here, but here it is.....