While staying in San Ignacio, Belize, we took a guided tour of the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave, named the #1 Sacred Cave to Visit in the World by National Geographic. It was expensive at US$95 per person for a 3hr tour of the cave, but it turned out to be totally worth it.
We took a tour with BZM, a tour company based located right across the road from our guest house. They weren’t the cheapest, but they had some of the best reviews and as the other companies weren’t significantly cheaper, we decided to go with them.
Getting to the ATM Cave
Leaving at 7.30am, we were driven the 45 minutes to the cave along with the rest of our small group of 7. We left early enough that we were almost alone in the cave – which started to fill up with other groups as we were leaving.
We were dropped off in the car park and supplied with helmets, lunches and bottles of water. We then had an easy 45 minute trek through the jungle to reach the cave entrance. Our guide entertained us along the way with facts about the jungle and promises that any snakes and jaguars we saw probably would eat us.
Into Mayan Hell
Entering the cave, we were slightly surprised to find that we’d be doing a fair bit of swimming and moderate “caving” – i.e. climbing up and squeezing between gaps, while water flowed around us. This began with an icy swim across the pool at the mouth of the cave.
Our reward to getting into the cave was to be able to look back towards the entrance and see a giant sculpture of the face of one of the Mayan gods illuminated by the last of the light we’d see for a while.
Before going further, we learned about the importance of the cave to the Mayans. They considered it to be home to the 9 levels of their underworld and the Gods who reside at each level. As such it is the site of offerings and human sacrifices previously only known about through literature. It was not until 1989 until the cave was rediscovered. And since then it has been preserved exactly as the Mayans left it over 1000 years ago.
We passed through the trickiest part of the cave – the “breakout”, which involved several tight squeezes and a bit of care to negotiate. The passage became easier after that as we moved into the large chambers of the cave.
The caves were adorned with sparkling crystal formations and paved with deep blue and red rocks washed flat by the stream. Along the way we saw a number of Mayan tricks, where the shadows of carefully cut stalagmites formed scenes of worshippers entering temples.
Discoveries in the ATM cave
Continuing deeper (actually higher), we became surrounded by broken pottery. Once pots containing offerings of cocoa and corn, the pots were then smashed to release their souls into their next lives.
Deeper (and higher) still we began to find human remains such as skulls, some normal, some conical at the top (an indicator that their owner was an elite, whose skull was so shaped with wooden boards at birth). At the deepest point of the cave we encountered the most prized offering – a voluntary human sacrifice; the so called crystal maiden lying fully preserved and sparkling from calcification on the cave floor.
We learned too that the decline of the Mayan civilisation was evident in the cave. The original cocoa offerings dated to the peak of the Mayan civilisation showed the abundance of resources at the time. But as the Mayans depleted their resources drought set in and the offerings of food dwindled, replaced by increasingly desperate offerings of blood then lives.
Conclusion
The ATM cave provides a real insight into the Mayan culture which both complements and in many ways surpasses that which can be gleaned from visits to the many Mayan ruins. And it has the added bonus of challenging but enjoyable cave exploration. Well worth the price of admission.
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