Inland Adventures: Actun Tunichil Muknai (ATM)

On Wednesday, April 7th the whole group spent the day on the Actun Tunichil Muknai (ATM) tour.

After trekking through the jungle and streams, we finally reached the entrance of the caves. We split up into three groups, and prepared for our journey into the cave. Helmet on, check. Head-light on, check. We are ready to go.

At the entrance of the cave we had to swim in the stream a short way to start our hike. During our hike, we followed the pathways used by the Mayans many many years ago.

At one point in the cave, our tour guide, Martin, told us to turn our head-lights off, and to walk through the cave in the total darkness. We had to walk through this part of the cave with our hand on the person in front of us just to make sure no one got lost. It was kind of spooky to walk in the pitch black caves without knowing where we were going, or what was all around us. Martin finally told us that we could turn on our head-lights, and the view was spectacular.

All around us we were surrounded by many different shapes and sizes of stalagmites and stalactites. We hiked around the inside of the caves for about three hours and saw an array of different Mayan artifacts. There was an assortment of different size pots. All the pots were broken or were cracked because they Mayan's believe everything had spirits. Smashing or cracking the pots would allow the spirits to be set free out of the pots. Other things we saw were skeletons of Mayans that were sacrificed to the spirits.

At the end of the trip, it was nice to jump back into the water and feel the heat of the day because the cave and water was very very cold. My group ate lunch, and then we headed back to the bus. Once back to the bus, tired and still wet we got to relax and take a much needed nap while waiting for the other two groups.