Cave Exploring With Kids

Exploring Footprint Cave

After visiting the zoo, we needed to find a place to stay (close by) for the night.  Additionally, something also to keep us busy on our "weekend getaway with Romen".  Since we were close to the Hummingbird Highway (a beautiful stretch of road by-the-way), we decided to jot down the highway and see if Cave Branch had any rooms available.  Sure enough we were able to get a small inexpensive bungalo and take Romen cave tubing the following morning. 

Hummingbird Highway

Belize Zoo to Cave Branch

Cave Branch Lodge

We opted for a small bungalow to keep our cost down, but Cave Branch upgraded us to a treehouse room, to help make our experience more enjoyable.  WOW!

Romen is definitely enjoying himself

The room was perfect for the (4) of us.

---

Dinner at the Lodge

Choice of fish or chicken.

Tiki torches & the Company just perfect.

---

Romen the Cave Explorer

The following morning Romen knew he was going cave tubing, but I don't think he knew exactly what that meant.  He woke up in his chiper self, and said he was ready to have his adventure for the day.  We ate breakfast at the lodge (7:00am) and by 8:45am we were loading ourselves into an old bus and heading down Hummingbird Highway. 

The bus ride took about 15-20 minutes, we crossed some orange tree farms and then parked.  We emptied the bus, and got into a tractor full of inner tubes and took a short drive where we would hike to the rivers edge.  At the river, we got into our inner tubes and gently paddled to the cave entrance.  Today we are going to explore the "Footprint Cave".

---

Footprint Cave

Actun Chek Cave

Actun Chek in Maya means footprint.  This was a significance site in the 1st millennium AD, as the Maya Empire flourished and then began to decline. Altars and firepits found inside the cave, indicate that this was a place where offerings were made to appease the fertility gods. 

This is one of the more famous cave found in the area.  Footprint Cave gets its name after the calcified footprints found in the deeper section of the cave, along with a number of artifacts and skeletal remains. The cave was looted in 1994, and many artifacts and remains are now gone, but you can still see where there is evidence of ancient fire pits, and  shards of Mayan pottery.  It was quite an unreal and humbling experience to sit next to a pile of ash that might be over 2,000 years old but still looks warm. The cave itself is stunningly beautiful, cathedral-like, with massive stalactites that shimmer in the light of the headlamp.

---

Cave Tubing - Footprint Cave

---

Walking to the River

---

Exploring the Underworld at Footprint Cave
Because we just started the rainy season, the river running through the cave still had low levels in places. So, we found ourselves regularly hopping in & out of our tubes, walking across gravel. This cave had some amazing rock formations surrounding us.

Caves Branch owns the cave privately, so only the government and employees of Caves Branch can access it. This gives Footprint Cave a level of authenticity and ruggedness that you don't experience while cave tubing in Belize elsewhere.

---

Entrance to Footprint Cave

The Mayan people revered caves as the entrance to the underworld, or Xibalba (shi-BAL-bah). as they call it. They saw the world as one big universe comprising of a giant tree. The roots were the stalactites found growing beneath the earth's surface in the caves.  The tree trunk was the surface of the earth, and the leaves were where the deities lived. 

Footprint Cave Tubing - Our guide helped us get into our tubes at the river's edge, we then paddled against the current upstream for aways, until we came to the cave's entrance.  We stopped for a short photoshoot, packed our phones, wallets, purses in a dry bag and hopped back into our inner tubes to explore this cave. 

---

Rock Formations

Rock Formations - The critters and Maya artifacts were intriging, but the rock formations in this cave will leave your jaw on the floor. Curtains, stalactites, stalagmites, bacon, and crystalline formations abound and, illuminated by headlamps as you pass by, many of them glitter beautifully. Some are even mildly phosphorescent, as our guides demonstrated by having us turn out our headlamps to see how much light one of the stones retained.

We stopped along the way to learn how to spot signs of running water in the cave and how this influences cave’s formations.  Deep inside Footprint Cave, you'll find blades, and evidence of many cermeonial fires and altars.

---

Cave Wildlife

Cave Bats

Cave Bats - The Cave myotis (Myotis velifer) is a medium-sized bat with brown or black fur on its back and paler fur on its underside. Its ears are short and pointed and its eyes are small. Migration/Hibernation. During the summer these bats can be found roosting in caves in groups of 2,000-5,000 individuals.

---

Cave Crickets

Female cave cricket Mayagryllus apterus

Cave Crickets - As you walked deeper into the cave, you'll find dozens of long-legged cave crickets Mayagryllus apterus.  All species are flightless and nocturnal, usually with long antennae and legs. There is more than 1100 species of cave crickets throughout the world.

---

Cave Flies

Mayfly -  One of the most interesting organism in the cave was a fly. Mayflies belong to the order Ephemeroptera. There is over 3,000 species of mayfly worldwide, grouped into over 400 genera in 42 families.

---

Cave Silk Strands

Silk strands found on cave ceilings.

Silk Strands - When we shone the light at the low celling of the cave we could see curtains of thin, glistening strands of sticky silk produced by larvae of predaceous fungus gnats of the family Keroplatidae.  You can find these strands all over cave ceilings.  The strands are covered with droplets of oxalic acid, which trap and kill unlucky insects (such as the mayfly), that brush against them in flight.  

---

Pottery & Ancient Relics

Ancient Maya relics. Obsidian blades, pottery shards, altars, manos and metates, and evidence of fire pits abound on this cave tubing adventure. Our guides let us touch some of the broken pottery artifact fragments (which was really cool), as they weren't considered valuable from a cultural or monetary perspective.

---

Cave Picnic

This was an amazing experience for Romen.  He totally did not expect to get to eat a picnic lunch inside a cave.  He grabbed his tortilla and literally couldn't decide which plate to take food from first.  Enjoying a picnic together (in total darkness) should have been an erry experience, but with everyone sitting around sharing stories - it was really enjoyable.  We each built our own tortilla, with all the fixings, filled out tummies and then got back in our inner tubes to explore more of the cave.  The candle light, really made the experience memorable.

After our picnic, we slowly made our way back to the entrance of the cave and floated down the river to the drop off where we started.  We walked back to the tractor, which took us to the bus, so we could head back to the lodge.

This ends Romen's great adventure cave exploring in Belize.  This weekend both his grandma's (& Mami), wanted to treat him to a series of mainland adventures.  It was a great weekend togther.  I am often limited as to the things I can do, so we took it at a pace that made it easy for me.  I enjoyed the time with Diana and Marcy (very much), especially jamming to 1980's music as we drove down the Hummingbird Highway. 

As our cave adventure ended, we hopped into our vehicle and headed back to Belize City, to catch the 5:30pm boat to the island.  Little did we know, we were in for another adventure just around the corner, but that my friends is for another blog post.  So the question Romen has now is, where are we going next?

---

As Always........

We Miss You Jaymin

We think about you all the time, and wonder how you are doing, what you are up to.  It's hard being apart and not knowing where you are.  All our love always.