Once we left the beautiful coastline of Belize behind, we headed inland to quaint San Ignacio, Belize’s second largest city, for a couple of days exploring the caves and mountainous area known as ‘Cayo’.

We only stayed one evening in Placencia following our Raggamuffin Tour, which to be honest, was more than enough. And that is not a dig at the seaside town itself, which had a wicked main strip of a ‘wooden sidewalk’ that wound a path between all the restaurants, guesthouses, galleries and hostels, but more disappointment around our first real dorm experience.

Placencia Harbour

John the Bakerman – a stall off the main sidewalk

We stayed at the Anda Di Hows (I think that’s how you spell it, think “under the house’ with a Belizean drawl!) hostel and it was cheap and … well, cheerful is probably not the right word. It was cheap and, dare I say it, kind of nasty?! But hey, for what we paid (circa $15 per person in a 10 person dorm), I should not be surprised.

There was a terrible waft of what smelt like sewerage from about 5pm when we arrived and it hung around right the way through the night, which was my main gripe… each of the dorm beds had a fan especially for it, so that was something important in their favour! All in all, if we had booked two nights, we would have moved after the first night, however, we would have paid probably double – so lesson learnt, you do get what you pay for!

We did however have a lovely cheap and cheerful meal at Cosy’s Corner on the beachside of Placencia. I ordered the world’s largest burrito which actually fed me for dinner as well as for breakfast the next day! Dave ordered the half fried chicken, which was massive also – both meals topped off nicely but a few icy cold Belikin beers.

World’s largest burrito!

PLUS we got to soak in our last views of the Belizean water before we headed inland for the next who knows how long!

Views from Cosys Corner

When we originally looked into getting from Placenci to San Ignacio, most of my online research indicated the best way was a private shuttle booked through a local driver. The night before we planned to jump on the shuttle, I contacted the drivers and was shocked (understatement!) to learn from two different operators it was US$200 for the one way, 3 hour trip! Okkaaaaayy….. guess we won’t be doing that!

Second best option? Utilising public transport and the old US style school buses to get first from Placencia to Dandriga, then we changed buses at Dandriga and caught another bus to San Ignacio. This option took a bit more mucking around, waiting around but overall, after catching the 6:15am bus out of Placencia, we walked into a hostel at about 11am! And it only cost us the equivalent of about US$15! BARGAIN!

Our chariot to San Ignacio

On the buses we got a great first hand view of Belize’s inland environment, it is so lush, and so different form the coast and the islands. Lots of palm trees still, but interspersed between jungle – crazy! We passed a lot of jungle, and a few small villages and private homes / villages that showed the diversity of the country.

Inland Belize – so lush! And so few people!

Our hostel was called Old House Hostel, and thankfully this hostel was much cleaner than our Placencia one! We had also booked the private double room instead of a dorm as the cost difference was not that significant. The hostel was literally a large, old, two storey wooden house overlooking the town of San Ignacio, and yes the floorboards did creak all the time, but it was mostly clean (it is a hostel after all, so our expectations aren’t that high!) and our room had a fan so we were happy.

Old House Hostel

That first day we grabbed some traditional Belizean food from a local cantina called Cenaidas, which is a local favourite and we were the only non-belizeans in there – always a good (but somewhat daunting!) sign.

I ordered the typical Belizean lunch dish – chicken stew with rice and beans, a side salad and a roasted plantain (kind of like a banana). The chicken stew had so much flavour was super tender and the meat fell right off the bone, it was delicious! Dave ordered the fajitas, and these were also really good.

We both tried one of the blueberry and lime homemade juices were which fantastic – so refreshing and zesty! And our lunch cost us a total of about $12! BARGAIN.

Actun Tunichil Muknal

NB: As you can’t take photos of this site I requested some high resolution photos from the tour company – unfortunately they did not have the best quality ones, however they were kind enough to forward me the below low resolution ones – so all photo credits to Pacz Tours in San Ignacio for the ATM cave photos.

The main reason for going to San Ignacio was to do the ATM cave tour – and no, ATM doesn’t stand for Automatic Teller Machine, it stands for the Mayan words of Actun Tunichil Muknal, and it is a must-do activity if visiting Belize.

The ATM caves are only able to be visited on a guided tour and we went with a company called PACZ Tours on our first full day in San Ignacio. We went told ahead of time to wear closed in sneakers or runners with socks and clothes that could get wet, as well as a spare change of dry clothes to change into at the end of the tour. We were also strictly told not to bring any cameras, phones, video cameras or even go-pros as you would not be able to bring them into the cave at all – upon arrival, we would discover why!

We met our tour group a short five minute walk from our hostel at 8am in the morning, and after waiting around for awhile (Belizean time!), we soon were on the road and after a 90 minute cartrip we were pulling into the ATM cave carpack… by this point, we were all really keen to see what all the fuss was about! As you’re not allowed to take cameras in, there are very few actual photos online so it was quite the mystery what we would be walking into.

Before we even reached the caves, our van had to drive through a river!

Our tour guide (I can’t recall his name, but he was amazing) fitted us all for hard hats with headlamps, offered life jackets to those who were not confident in their swimming abilities (hang on, swimming abilities, we are going in a cave, right?!), then we left all our belongings in the car with our driver who would watch our stuff while we were gone, and we headed off down a jungle trail. The trail ran beside a river, and before I knew it, our path led straight into the river. Oh uh, now we would have to find some other way around it now.

NOPE. That’s why we needed enclosed shoes on – we walked through the river (about hip height) in our socks and shoes and our clothes! Straight into the water, and over the riverbed which was covered with lots of different sized rocks made smooth by the centuries of the running water. This was cool!

Over the next 45 minutes or so, we would make a total of three river crossings and cover a few kilometres before we reached the cave. After a bit of a safety briefing (we would form a single file line behind our guide, and maintain that order throughout the entire tour) and a quick snack before entering the cave (we would be in there for 3.5 hours!), we headed to the cave entrance. I was lucky enough to be right behind our guide so I was the first to see what we were up against…

The cave entrance was actually the river! The river flowed from the cave where it was fed by a freshwater stream from deep within the mountain so it was clear and beautiful! And cold of course!

We then proceeded to single file jump into the river and swim into the cave for 20 or so metres before we could stand. This was seriously such a cool experience already, and I was stoked to see what else was to come – the next three hours would blow our minds! Nothing could have prepared us for this tour, so it was probably a good thing that we hadn’t seen any photos or read too much about it – it was amazing!

We spent the three hours traversing caverns, rock climbs, lots and lots of swimming, eventually making our way over 800 metres deep inside the cave system. There were points where our guide had to literally talk us step by step on how to squeeze between two sharp rocks at neck height (they call it the ‘guillotine’ or ‘neck slicer’!), slide down an internal waterfall (AMAZING!), climb about 15 metres up a rock face that seemed unclimbable – and then climb back down – Australian OHS would not approve!

The cave itself was not only an adventure in spelunking, it was a spectacular example of Mother Nature’s beauty. There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, some covered in crystallised quartz and glittering like diamonds, others in the formations similar to coral. Taking into account that these take hundreds if not thousands of years to form, certainly gave us an increased appreciation for the cave itself.

There were caverns inside so spacious you could have hosted a ball for 300 people easily, including tables and a dancefloor. And all around you would be beautiful and intriguing shadows where the Mayans cut and shaped the rock formations into animals, silhouettes and other (kinda scary) shapes that would only appear when you shone a light on them from a certain angle – again, their attention to detail was supreme.

We saw sacrificial pots, relics and even the skeletons of human sacrifices all embedded into the cave floors over the centuries. Essentially the Mayan people used the caves as a place for praying to, and honouring, their gods, and this is where the pots, relics and human sacrifices came into play.

The flagship attraction of the ATM cave is one human skeleton in particular – it is a whole, perfectly preserved skeleton and the hundreds of years in the cave caused the remains to crystallise so it shines. The skeleton was, for many decades believed to be that of a young female, and therefore nicknamed the ‘ice maiden’, however experts have recently confirmed it is actually the skeleton of a young man, perhaps in his teens. Guess they’ll have to review the way they market the ‘ice maiden’ in future!

By the time we had swum, paddled, traipsed, climbed and crawled our way through this phenomenal natural masterpiece, the hours have flown by, and I think it would be very safe to say that all of us were completely and utterly blown away.

Not only was seeing the relics inside the cave, and gaining a different type of insight into the Mayan times and rituals, fascinating, but experiencing spelunking and the majesty of the ATM cave first hand was something I will never forget. It was surreal and incredibly exciting, and I think this has got to be up there in the top 5 now! Highly recommend it!

Belize Zoo

We had two full days in San Ignacio, and with one allocated to the ATM tour, we did not really have any set expectations as to what to do on our second. Whilst enjoying a few drinks with some of our hostel-mates on the Old House Hostel balcony overlooking San Ignacio, we learnt there was a zoo just out of Belize City that one of the other girls had visited and she raved about it.

When Dave learnt she had even seen a couple of jaguars there, and it was a rehabilitation sanctuary more than a commercialised zoo, we were sold. Despite the fact it would be about a 3.5 our round trip ride on the public buses, the time flew by as we stared out the window at the beautiful Belizean scenery and even the oppressive heat didn’t seem too bad with the windows open and the bus hooning along at what felt like 100kmh!

When the bus pulled over on the side of the highway and told us we had arrived at the zoo, we were abit sceptical – we were literally on the side of a highway, but when we crossed ot the other side of the road, we saw a sign pointing down a long driveway, and knew we had arrived!

Entrance to the zoo!

Tickets were relatively expensive, US$15 per person, however the charitable nature of the zoo’s mission and its objectives meant we were happy to fork out this cost.

The zoo was founded in the early 1980’s by an American woman called Sharon who came to Belize to film a documentary on animals in the country, but by the time her doco work had come to an end, she realised her calling was to set up an animal sanctuary for the animals she had come to know and love over the months prior. The focus is on exotic animals, especially jaguars and tapirs, and will take in injured (those hit by cars, for instance); those orphaned (mother died in a fire) or troubled animals who can not safely live in their wild environment (a jaguar who developed a taste for livestock and risked being shot by the farmers).

Sharon doesn’t pretend to excuse the behaviour of what some of the jaguars did, rather her focus is on educating the public on these majestic creatures so that future generations can live to see them. There are only about 800 jags left in Belize now so they have to start somewhere.

So Sharon set up the zoo over 35 years ago, and it has now become the benchmark for similar approaches around the world, including Australia’s own Steve Irwin, who visited the zoo before setting up Australia Zoo, something which many people say inspired his vision to help the animals whilst educating the public – beyond a simple entertainment activity.

Over the next two hours we wandered around the outdoor enclosures (plenty of space for these animals, which was great to see) – here is a sneakpeak of some of the beautiful creatures we go to see…

White tailed deer

Agouti (this little critter was a wild one, running and stealing the other agouti’s food hahah)

Monkeys (there were two kinds – howler and spider). The fella below couldn’t stop playing with his privates – this was the only photo he isn’t fiddling, but its still front and centre!

Tapirs

Crocodiles

Tortoises

Toucanillos (one of my fave to look at!)

Grey Foxes

 Jaguarillos

Black Panther

Macaw

Ocelot (or Margay, not sure)

A weird lookin’ owl I don’t know the name of

The fluffy faced eagle (probably not its real name!)

Brown pelicans

Peccary (wild belizean pig)

And the favourite by a long way, the beautiful jaguar. We timed our approach to the jaguar’s enclosure perfectly as we were at the blank panther’s enclosure (next to the jags) when we saw one of the zoo keepers, and began chatting to him and asking him some questions about the zoo in general.

Next thing we know, the jaguar (which was asleep at the back of its enclosure in the shade so we couldn’t see him) must have recognised the zoo keepers voice, and his bright green shirt, and we see him come prowling out from his hidehole and right up to the front of the enclosure. Obviously expecting to the fed, he stayed there with us for about 30 minutes with only a (what seemed like) chicken wire fence and maybe a metre separating us.

Jaguar!

He would growl and purr, wagging its tail, then barring its teeth as he sat there and we interacted with it. I was blown away by how shiny and stunning its mottled coat was, and Dave was in absolute awe of its size and gracefulness. His amber eyes would look right at us and I couldn’t help wondering what it thinks when it looked at us – food, maybe?!

It was a real honour and a pleasure to be able to hang out with this incredibly magnificent creature, and we were so lucky to be able to see one up so close and personal – it was a very special visit to a very special zoo, and again, despite the costly entry fee, the whole experience with the jaguar alone was worth so much more to us, let alone seeing the other animals and supporting a very worthwhile cause.

Beautiful native trees and signage around the zoo

The zoo was a great way to spend our last full day in Belize as the next day we were heading into a new country – GUATEMALA!