San Ignacio
After two days of travel (flight from Cuba to Cancun and then onto Chetumal on the Mexico Belize border on day one and then from Chetumal (with a quick visit to a Mayan musuem – put all the ruins into context!) – to San Ignacio, Belize, via Belize City on the second day) a couple of days in one place was very welcome!
Getting into Belize City proved a little problamatic, the three hour bus journey was already into hour five and we were stuck in a traffic jam with the cars not moving and a carnival parade passing by. We were going to be there at least another hour, so we decided to get off and walk to the bus station, which didn’t take as long as expected, thank goodness.
Once there we were approached by a guy offering us a taxi ride to San Ignacio for a very reduced rate (BZ$40 (c. gbp10) compared to the usual BZ$150) so we took him up on the offer…it was still light, there were two of us, he’d shown us his licence etc. We were glad we did as this cut the c.3 hour journey by bus to 1.5 and it meant we arrived with a little bit of daylight too.
San Ignacio is a funny little place, near the Guatamala border, with lots of things to do. The first day we hired a canoe and guide and hit the Macal river for a spot of wildlife spotting and general relaxing (although going upstream to begin with wasn’t that relaxing – it was quite hard work in places). Iguanas, a snake and jungle passed us by and after about 2 hours or so we arrived at a fairly random place where we had lunch before zooming back downriver to San Ignacio.
The way back was much quicker, and only one scary incident – and it wasn’t with a rapid either! The guide decided that we would go and take a closer look at the snake that we’d seen on the way up, so we did – only we got a little too close and had to reverse back under the branch it was sitting on … just as it decided to fall off the branch land in our canoe. The worst part was not being able to see where it was. We had to paddle over to the otherside of the river before we could get out the canoe and get the snake out. It was “only” a small boa constrictor, but it was certainly one our more adventurous moments on this trip!
The next day we went to Actun Tunichil Muknal cave (also known as ATM), which involved a hike through the jungle, with a couple of river crossings, before arriving at the cave’s entrance. From here it was a swim, scramble and climb through the cave system to reach a dry cave with Mayan artifacts and some human remains. The most famous being that of a young girl (probably a sacrificial killing) – and almost an intact skeleton. In the dry cave we could only walk around in our socks – no shoes allowed, to protect the artifacts and fragile evironment that we were in, with all the stalagmite/tites around.
It was quite a surreal environment to be in, the cave system was much larger than I expected – sometimes I couldn’t see the roof with my torch light – although there were some narrow passages to negotiate and I was always worried I was going to slip and fall onto the rocks, which were quick sharp in places.
Tags: Belize, San Ignacio, Travel
Jenni
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