Friday, July 31, 2015

After an enjoyable day of travel, our group of educators from around North America met just outside of the airport in Belize. We were greeted outside by Jennifer – our instructor from World Leadership School (WLS), and Juan - who is the local coordinator for WLS, and taken to our first destination – the “Macal River Tent Camp”.

Upon our arrival to the river camp we were greeted again by another friendly face, Dosocio, who lives and managers the camp. We also had the privilege of meeting Dosocio’s lovey wife who not only cooked all of our gorgeous meals but also did her best to teach us some simple Mayan words. We enjoyed an amazing dinner of BBQ chicken; however, our favourite meal was certainly the next mornings breakfast – eggs, bacon and local delicacy of ‘fried jacks’ – basically a donut type pastry that was delicious.

After a great start – we were off and traveling to our first sightseeing destination with Patrick – who is one of only 22 certified guides in Belize. Our destination was the ‘ATM’ caves – Actun Tunichill Muknal Caves – a place where the Maya civilization  would venture deep inside to worship, make offerings and make sacrifices to their gods.

Patrick led us on a 45 minute hike through the local jungle, across shallow rivers and patiently pointed out numerous interesting plant and animal life - one cool item was the local rubber tree – which actually bleeds a white sap which after some time turns into actual rubber! We finally arrived at the ATM Caves – we were amazed at the sheer beauty of the place and were encouraged to have a swim in water that; according to Patrick, had never presented itself to the sun – it felt amazing!

The entire cave tour was full of adventure and personal challenges for many of us. We swam, climbed through, over, around intricate rock formations and finally arrived at a football sized stadium cave deep within the mountain. We observed Mayan artifacts – pots, fire places and the coolest/scariest of all – human remains – obviously the result of human sacrifice. At the deepest point of the tour were introduced to a young teenage girl and a younger boy – both sacrificed and whose remains were still perfectly preserved after 1600 years! Cool!!

After lunch and another long drive – we arrived at the Guatemala Boarder where we crossed and headed towards our second sightseeing destination – Tikal National Park – we are so excited and looking forward to seeing Mayan ruins and more artifacts which we will hear about in our second day blog.