Belize, Bones, and skeletons at ATM

Its our 2nd morning here and I am writing from the kitchen house at Lower Dover. Our hosts make amazing breakfasts with local ingredients, fresh papaya, pineapples, and eggs from the chickens who live on the property.

Lower Dover rocks.  If you ever come to Belize say here.  Its located smack dab in the middle of everything! Its an Eco lodge where you have a private bungalow and an outdoor shower.  There is even a Mayan ruin complex that is quite large and very unexplored.  Every summer archeologists come here to uncover parts of the ruins.

Enough about Lower Dover I want to talk about yesterday.   We spend most of the day in the Mayan Underword or Xibalba (pronounced She'll ball ba). You can read about Actun Tunichil Munkal or ATM here. Basiclly, its a place for Mayan sacrifice over 1000 years ago.  To get to the cave you have to take a tour, no choice about this but it is very worth it.  Then you hike for 40 minutes to get to the mouth of the cave.

So after the hike to the opening its time to jump on in to some frigidly cold water, swim a short distance and then start to hike/scramble/swim for a kilometer.  There are no photos's of this as my camera was in a dry bag.  So after a final accent over a giant scary boulder that Chris was convinced I was going to die on you arrive in a place not of this world.  It is Cilbalba!  A place of death. Skeletons and pottery are every where.

This is the skull of a 40 year old man.  If you look at his teeth you can see that his teeth were drilled.  This means her was probably royalty.

 

The pots are always placed in the same formation.  One pot up to heaven, one on its side to earth, and one facing down to the underworld.

Femurs and bones from the 40 yr old man

This is the highlight of the cave.  THE CRYSTAL MAIDEN herself.  She is covered in Calcite and can seem to glitter a little in the light from the calcite that has formed on her bones.  She is believed to be about 18 yrs old

This is a close up on her skull.

Ok so we are off again to Xutantunich  mayan ruins and everyone is waiting on me!!

More later........