Actun Tunichil Muknal

The journey, in full

Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM cave) is one of the best caves in Central America and has been featured by National Geographic, Discovery Channel and History Channel. To get there you need to take a 45 min drive from San Ignacio toward the east on the Western Highway to the village of teakettle then 30 min drive on a bumpy road south of the village to the Tapir Nature Reserve. The Tapir Nature Reserve is a subtropical rain forest that gets at least 100 inches of rain per year with the Roaring River flowing at the edge of the reserve. A 45 min hike leads us to the cave entrance. The hike is not challenging, and most of it is along the river bank. We get to cross the river three times before getting to the entrance. At the entrance there is a nice refreshing pool, which is very compensating on a sunny day. Also at the entrance is where the guide will go over history and safety and divide into groups of eight if you are doing a shared tour. The entrance is a very pleasant place for lunch, but depending on the time of the day that you are going, you might have lunch before or after the caving adventure. The guide will prepare your equipment and share different techniques that are used to go into this cave. Once all the instruction has been given, we swim into this mysterious place which the ancient Mayas considered to be the portal to the underworld known as Xibalba. This was a place that only priests and shamans could venture into while taking offerings to their gods. The biggest challenge in this cave is going from one rock to the other and sliding in between a couple of them. The water passage follows after this section, and the water passage is actually 3.3 miles long, but we don’t get to do it all. As we go through the water, it will sometimes be up to our ankles, knees, waste, neck and some times we have to swim. At one point in the water passage, we will climb up a rock to a ledge, so that we can enter what archeologists call the Mayan levels. This is one of the most attractive parts of the cave, and it is very rich with culture. Over a 1000 pieces of pottery and 14 human sacrifices have been recorded here. To explore this chamber we have to remove our shoes, so it does not damage the formations that we get to walk on; socks or no socks is an option. At this chamber is where we get to see the most impressive formations like rock columns, stalactites, stalagmites, citrines and flowstones. This is also the place where the guides will go more into details about rituals and ceremonies; it is like a living museum.