Rave in the Cave

Actun Tunichil Muknal, Belize - The moment of truth had arrived. "Are you a good swimmer?" asked the guide Juan Carlos. My husband Jerry shook his head, and Juan Carlos looked at him reprovingly.

"I can swim okay," Jerry corrected himself.

Juan Carlos motioned into the irridescent green water of the Roaring River, inviting him to prove it. So Jerry plunged in, his red helmet bobbing in the water as he swam toward the dark mouth of the cave. I adjusted my helmet and followed him, dog-paddling the short distance so my headlamp would not submerge. We climbed out onto a rock just inside the mouth of the cave and awaited the others in our group.

"Okay sperlunkers," Juan Carlos beamed at us, "stay to the left and follow me!" With that, we all switched on our headlamps and slipped back into the chilly water - now waste-deep on the opposite side of the rock - hugging the wall as we made our way into the depths of the cave.

If it sounds like something out of Indiana Jones, it was. Juan Carlos would lead us almost a mile into the cave of Actun Tunichil Meknal, in the Cayo district of Belize, in search of Mayan artefacts that had been left there over a thousand years ago.

We waded through the cave, carefully feeling with our feet for jagged edges and underwater rocks. We squeezed through narrow passes and climbed over rocky crags. "Big drop off coming up!" Juan Carlos would call out, as he was suddenly submerged up to his neck. "All sharp rocks on the left!" he warned, pointo the barely submerged jagged rocks.

The messages were passed back from one person to another, just like the game "Telephone" we used to play when we were kids. "By the time it reached the back, we heard `Al Sharpton rocks'" quipped Jerry. "We knew Juan Carlos had strong feelings about the upcoming election, but we didn't expect that."

Surrounded by darkness, everything seemed close and cozy, as we were limited to the scope of the weak beams of our headlamps. But when Juan Carlos shined his powerful light on our surroundings, suddenly the space opened up. It was vast, hanging with magnificantly abstract stalactite and stalagmite formations. The guide informed us that the Mayans came into the cave because they thought it was closer to the gods of the underworld - which was easy to understand.

After more than an hour of wading and climbing, we gathered on a dry ledge, where we were instructed to take off our wet boots - as welcome direction, as they were filled with pebbles at this point. The rest of the tour would be in socks.

Again, we followed Juan Carlos, shimmying between two rocks and climbing up to another ledge to enter a great, cavernous chamber. Our guide lined us up like ducks in a row: "You will walk where I walk and stand where I tell you to stand. I'm not trying to be bossy, but there are artefacts all over this place and you don't want to be stepping on them." Suddenly he shone his light on the ground, where a broken pot lay at our feet. "These pots would have been used for food offerings," he explained, shining his light on several other nearly intact examples around the chamber. "Almost all of the artefacts found here date to the Classic period, which is between AD 200 and AD 600."

After that initial introduction, each new chamber was more amazing than the last. We discovered the "monkey pot" with a small engraving of the symbol of Tikal. Archaeologists guessed that the pot was a part of tribute paid by that city when it was defeated in battle. Another room contained the "oya altar", or altar of pots, containing vessels that had been used for food offerings and blood letting rituals.

That's right, blood letting rituals. Scholars believe that the Mayan rulers would slit their tongue and the tip of their penis, then mix the blood with incense and burn it as an offering to the gods. Yikes.

After sperlunking through the cave and discovering thousand-year-old artefacts, it was hard to imagine what might come next. But Juan Carlos had saved the best for last. "Okay guys," he announced, "now it's time for the human remains." With a climax like that, you would think the Mayans planned their rituals with the tourist in mind.

We filed him single file to a corner of the chamber and gathered in a circle. When the guide turned on his light, it illuminated a 1500-year-old skull. Other bones lay scattered in the area. They belonged, Juan Carlos informed us, to a 40-year-old male. They don't know how he was killed, as the bones have never been removed from the site. He may have been a prisoner of war or he may have been groomed for the honor; but he almost certainly was a victim of human sacrifice.

That was just the first of many skeletons we would come across in ATM, which contains the remains of fourteen individuals - all of whom were sacrificial offerings. Apparently, six of those were infants under the age of three, and another one was a child of seven years. None of them were buried, but rather left for the gods.

"Imagine this room lit with torches," Juan Carlos said, shining his light on the stalactites and stalagmites which cast eerie shadows on the walls. "Imagine the air is filled with the reverberations of chants and music. Now imagine that you are high on drugs." He had earlier informed us that the morning glories growing wild along the side of the path were hallucenogenic. "No wonder the Mayans believed that they were communicating with gods in this mystical place." And no wonder they did some wacky things.

For our final foray, Juan Carlos shone his light on the ledge far above. "That's where we are going next," he announced, which elicited a few gasps. As we made our way to the corner, we discovered a ladder. No, not a Mayan ladder, but a rickety metal extension ladder that was wedged in at the bottom and loosely tied at the top. It shook and rattled as each member of our group climbed the 20 feet to the top and cautiously stepped onto the rocky ledge. Then we crammed in between two huge boulders to peer into the small chamber behind.

There - encrusted in calcium carbonate - was the complete skeleton of a young woman. She is known as the Crystal Princess because she sparkles in the beam of the light. And she lies just as she was laid to rest over a thousand years ago.

We eventually made our way out of the cave, retracing our steps and swimming back across the river. We bypassed the sacrificial rites this time around. And the only bloodletting was performed by a guy who scraped his knee on a rock. Let's not take this adventure thing too far, right?

I brought a disposable waterproof camera, which obviously was not digital. So I have to wait until I get home to see my photos. In the meantime, these photos were generously provided by Pacz Tours.