Photos: walking the caves

[Bob7]

Belize is famous for huge limestone caves with crystal caverns, stalagtites, etc, and the popular tour is rubber tubing through the caves. We’ve done lots of tubing before at water parks, and preferred to walk the caves to get pictures and poke around, and get some exercise. So 4 of us reserved a cave walk of the St. Herman’s Cave at Blue Hole National Park, through the Cave-Tubing.com company, run by Yhonny and his guides, for $60 p.p. plus $5 for a good lunch of chicken, rice, beans and lemonade at Cheers. Yhonny was great at arranging our reservation and answering all our questions promptly by email, and Tim was the perfect guide, knowledgeable and entertaining. Knowing when we were sailing he was very conscious of the time while en route and had us back 1.5 hours before departure so we could do a few things we wanted before catching the tender boat. Good vehicle, newer van with a/c.

 

The park is a 1 hour 15 minute drive down a fairly good highway, bit bumpy at times, no prob. $4 p.p. park entrance fee, then a 10 minute easy walk through the lovely forest to the cave. We took bug spray but didn’t even open it, only saw 2 lazy mosquitoes all day, and a few flies.

 

I’ve posted a few shots below, here’s the link for all our shots, click on the Belize album:

http://community.webshots.com/user/bob42ca

 

The shot below is looking out from the entrance. You can see the steps going down, which were originally carved by the Mayans who used the caves for religious and tribal ceremonies:

 

The shot below is a pillar left after erosion. We had to shine our flashlights on our shirts so the photographer could locate us in the picture. Make sure your camera can focus in the dark, some can’t. We used both digital and 35mm. The flashes were rated for 20 feet but thankfully went beyond that:

 

The shot below is a fascinating rocky chamber with gold colors, I think maybe I should have put some in my pockets, paid for the cruise:

 

If your group is not very physical your guide will take you halfway, to the end of the path markers, but if they can handle it you’ll go to the end, some climbing over wet sandy or rocky spots, stooping for low ceilings, the end section is trickier. Here’s another interesting formation there:

 

The cave is about three quarters of a mile, and about halfway through we met some other cavers who had set up a lovely buffet on a white table cloth on a sandy area beside the underground river with candles, very exotic, Jake and his friends from Colorado. Bummer that this shot is blurry, either I was back too far or moved the camera:

 

There is no walkable exit, so we then returned the way we came, often seeing things we missed the first time. There are 2 routes from the park station to the cave, the lowland easy path and the highland path with climbing and great views of the area. We took the highland path back to the parking lot at the station, lovely views, can't post here, I'm at my max 5.

 

Then we drove a few minutes to the Blue Hole, a pretty sink hole pond in a jungle grotto with a small beach, where you can take a dip.

 

We heard there is another cave within driving distance of the ship that has a long suspension foot bridge near it, and if anyone has information on it we’d like to hear about it.

-Bob

[elaineb]

Bob - Any pictures of the Blue Hole? This sound more doable to me than cave tubing. I'd rather be able to walk out if I get claustophobic. Thanks for the great pictures of the caves!

[Bob7]

Hi Elaine, yer welcome!

Yes I'll put a Blue Hole shot below. How you feel in the caves may depend on what type of claustrophobia you have, confinement, darkness, or ‘burial” (what’s overhead). If confinement (tight spaces) bothers you, you’ll be fine. These are large caverns, high ceilings, your light hardly reaches the edges, there’s lots of room to move around off the path and explore. There are some tight side passages you wouldn’t go in. If darkness bothers you, everyone shining their lights around should fix that, if you can sit in your rec room with a flashlight and the lights off you passed the test. But if the idea of being underground bothers you, that could be a problem, the way some people can’t go down scuba diving b/c of the thought of all that water above their head, in this case a mountain being over your head. But as you say, if it’s a problem you can walk out, can’t do that in a tube.

 

Here's a shot looking down on the Blue Hole at the top of the stairs. It has a sandy shore, you can see a girl and mom swimming. It turns a deeper blue as you get closer to the blue hole part, 25 feet deep. It's a lovely grotto, great way to cool off:

 

Here's another low ceiling shot towards the end of the cave, your guide will give you the option of not going into these tigher and trickier areas. The worst we did was bump our heads on the ceiling a few times (but we didn't drop our beers :-))

 

and this is a gorgeous rock globe formation, lots of interesting nature features like this, glad we could stop instead of floating by on a tube:

 

More interesting rock colors and formations in this shot:

 

And this shot is where the path goes right down along the underground river. The small rock is in the middle of the stream, the larger ones are on the other side. Sandy shore. We washed our hands off here. It was cool but damp in the cave and a skinny dip would have been great, but ya don't want to tick off those Mayan gods (or have yer guide tell stories about ya):

 

If anyone has done the huge Tiger Sandy Bay Cave at the Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary we'd love to hear from you, it was second on our short list.

Full cruise review at this link:

http://www.cruise-addicts.com/reviews/readreview.php?id=0000004977

-Bob

[elaineb]

Bob - Thanks so much for the additional pictures. Just incredible. Still deciding between this and getting someone to take us out to Goff's Cay....:confused: