Mayan Cave Archaeology

San Ignacio in Belize offers a plethora of well known cave tours, giving the opportunity to explore Mayan history through remains hidden from the light of day for a thousand years. But if you know the right people and stumble into town on the right day, you can get a different kind of tour; ours was led by a dissertation student who has been studying Belizean caves for more than a decade. A bit more cavalier than most tour operators-- talking about psychotropics, strip clubs in New Orleans, and how he was ¨going to party [his] balls off tonight¨ between eagerly pointing out cave art and eroded architecture-- but no less passionate or knowledgeable about the caves we were exploring.

And what caves! There was no squeezing between boulders; some of the rooms were a hearty stone´s throw across and football fields long. There were intricate carvings, indicating the life that went on in the caves, and there were bones, skulls and teeth, to indicate the death. An altar of sorts that lit on the equinox, the sun´s rays illuminating droplets falling from the cave roof, and faces carved into stalagtites only visible by torchlight. And always the allure of more, deeper into the abyss: bat guano quicksand, pure azure lakes, caverns magnitudes of size larger, with no end found yet. ¨Real National Geographic stuff ¨our guide intoned appreciatively. I couldn´t have said it better.