Cor, I see some special things today..
An early rise is needed to be ready for the ATM (Achtun Tunichel Muktal) cave tour and after a short wait at the tour branch I am on a minibus with some fellow cavers, travelling an hour into the Tapir Mountain Reserve, the most verdant part of the country I have seen so far.
When we disembark, we have an enjoyable but for me very itchy trek through the jungle/forest until reachingthe mouth of the cave.
Having donned helmet with torch, and spearheaded by our guide Emil, we enter the cave. I decide that I LOVE caving. Swimming through the water, wondering at the amazing stalactite and stalacmite formations, having to climb through outrageously tricksy rock formations - I love all of it. Add to this the fact that the Mayans regarded this place as sacred and thatthe whole cave is awash with Mayan artefacts and you have the ingredients for a truly memorable experience.
The Mayans were largely agricultural and so their world was all about the earth, the sun and the water. They perceived the world to be flat and regarded the sun as a god that came from the underworld beneath each day. It stands to reason, therefore, that they would see these vast labyrinths of caves as portals into the world of the gods, whence water came and where they should make their offerings in order to appease these gods.
Only high priests were allowed into the caves, always elaborately dressed, painted and disguised to trick the gods into believing they were one of them. The deeper into the cave and the more treacherous the journey, the closer they believed they were to the gods and, along the single route we take, are littered scores of Mayan pots, each of which would have been brought in as an offering centuries ago and broken in half to release the pot´s soul, which would have been initially crafted into it by a shaman.
The deeper into the cave we go, the more elaborate the offerings become: as the Mayan civilisation began to crumble its citizens came deeper and deeper into the cave out of desperation. For this reason, the pots farther in are of the later eras and at the very farthest reaches of the caves one sees more hardcore types of sacrifice - animal and then human skulls - culminating in the perfectly preserved skeleton of a girl with a broken knee, fractured jaw and missing vertebrae (they believed the more pain the closer connection with the gods) at one uppermost zenith of the caves.
Wow. I´ve never seen anything like this before and am now very interested to see the Mayan ruins at Caracol tomorrow.
After a scrumptious curried lunch, it is simply the return leg and I get back to San Ignacio about 4pm, with time to attend to a few domestic chores before grabbing some dinner. Happily, I bump into Michael from Caye Caulker and we share a few beers, discuss pedagogy, the nature of literature in translation, how perceptive faculties can supercede analytical ones and the problems this can create, before retiring (separately) for the night.
An early rise is needed to be ready for the ATM (Achtun Tunichel Muktal) cave tour and after a short wait at the tour branch I am on a minibus with some fellow cavers, travelling an hour into the Tapir Mountain Reserve, the most verdant part of the country I have seen so far.
When we disembark, we have an enjoyable but for me very itchy trek through the jungle/forest until reachingthe mouth of the cave.
Having donned helmet with torch, and spearheaded by our guide Emil, we enter the cave. I decide that I LOVE caving. Swimming through the water, wondering at the amazing stalactite and stalacmite formations, having to climb through outrageously tricksy rock formations - I love all of it. Add to this the fact that the Mayans regarded this place as sacred and thatthe whole cave is awash with Mayan artefacts and you have the ingredients for a truly memorable experience.
The Mayans were largely agricultural and so their world was all about the earth, the sun and the water. They perceived the world to be flat and regarded the sun as a god that came from the underworld beneath each day. It stands to reason, therefore, that they would see these vast labyrinths of caves as portals into the world of the gods, whence water came and where they should make their offerings in order to appease these gods.
Only high priests were allowed into the caves, always elaborately dressed, painted and disguised to trick the gods into believing they were one of them. The deeper into the cave and the more treacherous the journey, the closer they believed they were to the gods and, along the single route we take, are littered scores of Mayan pots, each of which would have been brought in as an offering centuries ago and broken in half to release the pot´s soul, which would have been initially crafted into it by a shaman.
The deeper into the cave we go, the more elaborate the offerings become: as the Mayan civilisation began to crumble its citizens came deeper and deeper into the cave out of desperation. For this reason, the pots farther in are of the later eras and at the very farthest reaches of the caves one sees more hardcore types of sacrifice - animal and then human skulls - culminating in the perfectly preserved skeleton of a girl with a broken knee, fractured jaw and missing vertebrae (they believed the more pain the closer connection with the gods) at one uppermost zenith of the caves.
Wow. I´ve never seen anything like this before and am now very interested to see the Mayan ruins at Caracol tomorrow.
After a scrumptious curried lunch, it is simply the return leg and I get back to San Ignacio about 4pm, with time to attend to a few domestic chores before grabbing some dinner. Happily, I bump into Michael from Caye Caulker and we share a few beers, discuss pedagogy, the nature of literature in translation, how perceptive faculties can supercede analytical ones and the problems this can create, before retiring (separately) for the night.
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