2nd Excursion

On Wednesday we went to a caving/museum place called ATM (Actun Tunichil Muknal).  We had to hike a bit to it, which was fun.  We had to cross a river 3 times to get to it and we had a camera happy guide named Martin. 

We trekked through the woods and into the river wearing all of our clothes (including shoes, which my purple high top adidas retain a ridiculous amount of water).  

After a good hike we come up to the main camp part before we get to the cave and I see one of my favorite things:

After getting the pic of the lizard we head to the entrance of the cave we're going into (hence the helmet attached to me in the pic above the lizard).  

We get there and see an amazing entrance to the cave. 

We go into the mouth and swim around a bit, do some jumping into the water off a formation in the cave. From here some of us follow a new guide, Emil, who's been doing this tour for 11 years, so we feel we're in good hands.  We head into the cave and do some squeezing and climbing and walking and get to an area that is a in location museum.  In this area are old Mayan artifacts from well over a thousand years ago. 

These pots are still very well preserved and were broken by the Mayans for ceremonial purposes.

The picture to the right is of a skull of what is believed to be a human sacrifice.

Below is an almost complete skeleton of another sacrifice that is found at the very end of the tour.

After this we head back to the entrance, taking a different route than the one we took in that included some more difficult climbing, but it was a lot of fun.  This tour cemented a decision to go to a more intense cave that our guide, Diego, talked about at Caracol.