Belize, or our voyage through the Underworld

Our final stops were in Belize and Jamaica.  Belize, as you will recall, was a bust on the way down, thanks to a snorkeling trip that took us to a particularly degraded piece of barrier reef (more below).  This time it was a hoot.  The Kid and I went cave tubing on a ship excursion.  Now, when I announced we were doing this on Facebook, confusion ensued.  Cave tubing is just like regular tubing, except that you go through a cave.  What's tubing?  It's the fine art of placing your butt in an innertube and floating down a river.  We do this back home on the James River, but in Belize there were rocks and trees involved, as well as a headlamp.

We took a bus to the tubing site, and were treated to the usual tour guide patter.  Did you know that Belize's official language is English, and that it used to be known as British Honduras?  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  I fell asleep.  Once there, we changed and took our "rain forest walk."  On the ship's menu of options, you could pick either the cave tubing + ziplining option, or the the cave tubing + rain forest walk option.  Terrified of heights as the Kid and I are, we chose the hike, despite what it said about having to carry your tube for 40 minutes through the rainforest.  As it turned out, the "rain forest walk" was really just the walk up to the head of the tube float, and the zipliners had to do it as well.  Ha!

The day was blessedly cloudy, not hot at all, and the rainforest would have been brimming with wildlife had it not been for the crowd of 40 cruise ship passengers yacking and stomping their way through it.  I saw a cool butterfly, and the Kid got inordinately angry with me when I pointed it out to him but he could not spot it.  Whatever, Kid.  We passed these huge limestone cliffs, and were told we would be tubing back on the inside of them.  Cool.  

At the spot where we put in, chaos ruled.  They wanted to divide us into groups of 6, and have us hold on to each other's feet, forming chains of innertubes for the float.  No one was having any of this, except for a small number of particularly compliant elderly folks who linked up and floated away  with their guide. The rest of us "free floated" into the cave, only to then discover the logic of forming the chain.  You see, caves are dark, and it's hard to stay with your group in the darkness.  Also, the river was low, and there wasn't much of a current, so you had to paddle a lot to stay together.  We kind of managed it, at times hearing our guide, and times floating on our own, albeit always in earshot of someone in our huge crowd.

We floated down this huge limestone tube which occasionally opened up into larger rooms with stalagtites, and at other times was illuminated by the openings of sinkholes or "cenotes."   The whole adventure was made even more exciting by the fact that caves are sacred to the Maya, who believe them to be entrances into the Underworld of Xibalba.  Some of the guides played this up, telling their group that they were going into hell and would emerge on the other side.  Our guide was not so poetic, limiting himself to pointing out rock formations, but saying nothing about the otherworldly dimensions of it all.  As the ship's resident Maya expert, I knew we were really in Xibalba, and secretly enjoyed my personal voyage through the other world.  

Once out of  the cave, we floated a ways down the river through the rainforest, dodging trees in the current and dumping out of our tubes for a swim.  Fun was had by all.  

Lunch followed.  Chicken with beans and rice.  Surprise, surprise.  Then back to the ship, exhausted and happy.

No pics here, folks.  The camera would have gotten ruined.  But here's a link were you can see other people's pictures and get an idea of what it was like.  Our innertubes were much fancier than those depicted.