Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ATM PRACTICALITIES
Tours of ATM
can be arranged through almost any hotel in the region, or with specialist tour
operators in nearby towns such as San Ignacio (see p.137). The precise price you pay, and how
long it takes, will depend on your starting point; typical tours from San Ignacio set off around
8am, get back around 4.30pm, and cost around US$110 per person. As visitors are forbidden to
enter the cave without a guide, and you can't recruit one at the site, there's no point making
your own way to the
trailhead
.
The only facilities of any kind at ATM - no food or drink is available - are beside the car park
at the end of the road, where modern
changing rooms
, equipped with showers and toilets,
enable visitors to change before and after the tour. Beyond this point, it's essential to wear
something that you don't mind getting drenched and very muddy, as well as closed-toe shoes
for hiking in water - reef shoes or Crocs are more suitable than hiking boots - and socks for
walking and climbing on the travertine limestone deep within the cave. Your guide will
provide you with a life-vest and helmet-torch.
Visiting ATM
Tours begin by wading waist-deep across Roaring Creek, which you cross twice more
during the 45-minute rainforest hike to the
cave entrance
. After clambering down to
this gaping hole in the hillside, you have to swim across a 20ft pool to reach the path
within. To the Maya, such caves were entrances to
Xibalba
, “the place of fright”, and
the abode of the Lords of Death; as you look back towards the upper world, a mighty
Maya warrior seems to be silhouetted on one wall of the cave.
Long periods of wading upstream, during which you're repeatedly obliged to squeeze
between jagged outcrops, are punctuated by occasional dry sections. Fortunately the
water is never cold, so there's no great hardship, though bats swooping out of the
darkness can be disconcerting. A mile or so along, a short but intricate climb up from
the river channel brings you to the main
ceremonial chamber
.
It's believed that the ancient Maya ventured ever deeper into this cave system during
the eighth and ninth centuries, performing rituals designed to summon rain in periods
of drought. At first, the only traces of their presence are large ceramic vessels that poke
from the glittering, crystalline cave floor; then, further in, you start to spot human
shapes, indistinct beneath the accreted coating of limestone. It's likely that only
shamans and their sacrificial victims ever penetrated this far, their final frightful
procession lit by flaming pine torches. And those victims are still here. Fifteen
individual
skeletons
have been found, including six infants and a child as well as adults
ranging from their 20s to 40s. None was actually buried: they were simply laid in
shallow pools in natural travertine terraces. The tour culminates with the spectacle of
the complete skeleton of a young woman, splayed out below a rock wall, alongside the
stone axe that may have killed her. Nearby, another grey skull bears a stark white hole,
having been shattered in 2012 when a clumsy French tourist dropped his camera while
attempting the ultimate close-up - hence the ban on cameras ever since. Given the
sheer dangers of visiting the cave, and the value of its extraordinary contents, it would
be no surprise if more stringent regulations were introduced in future, or access even
stopped altogether.
4
Spanish Lookout
Belize's wealthiest
Mennonite
settlement,
SPANISH LOOKOUT
, stands five miles north
of the George Price Highway, across the Belize River. To reach it, either cross the
bridge just north of the village of
Blackman Eddy
, at Mile 57, or, more excitingly,
take the hand-cranked ferry that stands 1.5 miles north of Central Farm, five miles
further west.
ACTUN TUNICHIL MUKNAL
P.125
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