Description: As I said before, the owners of Cave's Branch own about 50,000 acres of land in the Cayo District, including all of the caves that we explored during our trip. These caves were used by the ancient Mayans for their sacred rituals, such as bloodletting ceremonies and human sacrifice. These caves were "discovered" by non-natives in the 1970s, and all of the artifacts that were found were left alone, so the caves stand as a living museum dedicated to the former practices of the Mayan people.
There are two different tubing trips that you can take at Caves Branch - one requires only that you place your rear end in a tube and float for 7 miles. If you do this, there is a chance that you will run into cruise ship passengers, as well as your fellow lodge guests (because they also go off of the private grounds for this). If you are interested in history and don't want to spend your whole day sitting on your butt, go on the trip that we did, which combined tubing with the actual exploration of the caves. We went in the cave backwards, paddling against the current so that we could float out again later in the day. Our guide took us to see three different caves. We would paddle only a short way each time before beaching our tubes on the bank of the cave.
In the first cave, our guide took us up about two or three stories and then let us look over the edge. It didn't feel like we were that high, but it was a long way down. We sat next to a fire pad with broken pottery and then he had us all turn off our headlamps. He spent the next 10 minutes telling us ghost stories. I had to hold my husband's hand the whole time. It was so dark that I couldn't see my hand if I waved it in front of my face. He showed us the formations in the cave and explained how they were made.
We had lunch and then he took us to the last cave, where there was a large Mayan pot sitting in a niche, where it had been left centuries ago to catch the water that dripped from the ceiling of the cave. At the end of our journey, we got into our tubes to float back out. Our guide had us turn off our headlamps again. I thought that I would be scared, but we all started laughing, as we lost our sense of direction and occasionally bumped into each other. I was surprised how relaxing it was to be floating along in the pitch-black darkness. I was almost disappointed when we emerged again into the light.
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