Novel Travels: Mayans

Technically, this post should be a "B" post since I'll discuss Belize more than the Mayans. I am doing so mainly because I thought the name of the book I wanted to write about was My Man in Belize, however, it is Our Man in Belize by Richard Timothy Conroy. Confession: I did not read this book. Oh, I checked it out from the Austin Public Library, but never got around to cracking it open. When we visited Belize in 2008--on a whim and airline miles--I was in grad school and read books about marketing and advertising.

Our Man in Belize seems to be an amusing book, if the reviews can be trusted. I'm sure the country has changed since 1963--although having been there I think they are driving some of the same cars. (In 1994 my church went on a mission trip to Belize. In my head, I know they did not take the church van. We went on an excursion to Caracol and I swear it was that same church van with the broken shocks.)

Belize Survivor: the Darker Side of Paradise looks interesting, as does The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird. There's also a Wiki page of Mayan literature and many books, especially since 2012 with it's end-of-the-word predictions is just around the corner.

That's all nice, but what I really want to share is this Hulu - Cities of the Underworld - Mayan Underground video. My husband and I did this tour of the Actun Tunichil Muknal or ATM Cave.

All is not as it seems in the video. I'll explain, . We arrived in Belize on the third straight day of rain, so rivers were flowing fast and high while streets were muddy. We found a excursion group and essentially got suckered into joining the ATM tour in two days. "Everybody wants to do this tour. People tried yesterday but could not go in with the rain and were disappointed. You have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." We paid our money, gave the tour outfitter our first names and hotel name, and were told to wear swimsuits under our clothes.

Two days later, we were the oldest cave tourists on the bus. Thirty-four and 30, for the record. The bus passed over two short bridges overflowing with water. In Texas, a high-water sign would have warned us not to cross. We parked next to several other buses and proceeded to walk through a rain forest. In the Cities of the Underworld video they cross a river three times. This is true, though it is more like a creek and, even in the rainy season, was not as high as implied in the show. Water only came up to my thighs. I'm 5'2", on taller people, the water was just above their knees.

We were given hardhats with lights and told to take off our shirts and attach them to the hard hats. We did have to swim into the cave, with our heads above water, but it was a short swim. The length of an SUV really. THEN the fun began. I thought we were done with the swimming. Nope, we spent the next hour walking through water. It would be up to my chest, then down around my ankles. The guide spoke to us all through a game of telephone, he would tell the person behind him "Stay left, avoid the big drop off on the right." That person would tell the person behind him, and so on. Somewhere along the way, hanging onto a rock, standing in water up to my chest, I began to be afraid for my life. What had we been thinking swimming into a cave with people we did not know? These people didn't even know our last names? I never signed a waiver! No waiver for insurance or saying I would not sue them. Nope, we were not in Kansas (America) anymore.

After an hour of sloshing around, we hoisted ourselves up onto a ledge and were told to take off our shoes. We could only walk around in socks. We walked a few feet and then came to the ancient Mayan ritual area. Broken pottery littered the cave floor. Bones stuck up behind rocks. It was amazing and eerie, dark and damp. Our guide gave a short talk on rituals and how the Mayans got into the cave. Then he showed us the Crystal Maiden skeleton of a teenage girl by taking us up a ladder to the top of the cave. She was mesmerizing.


Then we turned around and took the same way out, up and down, swimming, walking.

So, the point of all this was to say two things, 1) The ATM cave is not as remote and unseen as implied in the video, 2) If you get a chance, go. It's amazing. And the only place to read about it is on tourist blogs and journals online, it's not something found in novels.

See also, Bizarre World.