I've been really terrible with updating this. My goal was to keep updating as I went along my trip, but I ended up feeling less and less like spending time on the internet. I also had some difficulties with transferring pictures to the computer in some internet cafes and the way I had gone about uploading pictures to the website was a pretty time consuming process. I found a pretty cool plugin for Movable Type (the blogging software I'm using) that makes it much easier to upload pictures in a presentable way, and I even fixed the pictures from the first post. You can click on each thumbnail for a higher resolution version. I'm now settled in Quetzaltenango (Xela), where I'll be for the next two and a half weeks studying Spanish, and I'm going to attempt to catch up on the backlog of photos I've been meaning to post.
San Ignacio, Belize is about 10 miles east of the border with Guatemala and is very different both in its landscape and demographics from Caye Caulker on the coast to the east. San Ignacio itself is a dusty town without all that much to do, but there are many interesting things to do in the region surrounding it. The west of Belize is host to one of the highest concentrations of Mayan archaeological sites in all of Meso-America. Cahal Pech (Place of the Ticks) is located up a steep hill from downtown San Ignacio. As far as Mayan sites go, it's not incredibly noteworthy, but I found it quite interesting as it was the first one that I have ever seen. Despite being cleared of most of the vegetation that once covered this site, it still has an overgrown look to it. Archaeologists are still discovering Mayan sites in densely forested areas of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize on a regular basis, using satellite thermal imagery, as the limestone used in the construction of these sites shows up differently from the rest of the jungle with which they've been overgrown.
Our second day in San Ignacio, we went to Actun Tunichil Muknal (Cave of the Crystal Maiden.) Amy and I both really enjoyed this. Cars can only get as close as a 45 minute hike from the entrance to the cave, down a trail that crosses a waist-deep river three separate times. Once you get there, you strap on helmets with headlamps and put all your belongings into a drybag and enter the mouth of the cave (or the mouth of mother nature, as our slightly overzealous guide referred to it.) We went upstream through the cave about half a mile, over jagged rocks, where the water gets deep enough that you have to swim for brief points. The cave was a Mayan spiritual site where they would practice ceremonies, and after the upstream hike, you get to a dry point where there are many remains from pots broken to release spirits. There are also fossilized human remains scattered all about, believed to be victims from practices of human sacrifice, including a skull missing its two front teeth after a tourist stepped on it some yeas back. Climbing a steep ladder takes you to a chamber where you see the cave's namesake, the Crystal Maiden, the full remains of a teenage girl that have been covered over with calcite which has preserved the bones and also causes them to sparkle.
