That was me after surviving the ATM “Death” Cave in NW Belize. See below.
During the spring of 2011, a friend and I decided to visit Belize – one of the few remaining countries I had not journeyed to in my quest to circumnavigate the Caribbean (See Conversations with the Maya).
During my Belize research prior to departure I talked to an American who had spent 25 years living in Belize. He had returned to the U.S. for a time but was coming back to Belize to stay. I was asking him many questions about the country, the best places to go, natural wonders, diving and the like. He said that the first thing he was going to do when he returned to Belize was to visit the ATM Cave. He said it was out of this world and one of the greatest experiences ever.
You need to know I am not a fan of caves to put it lightly. Once in Jamaica we went on a tour to some mammoth cave across the street from the ocean. I can’t remember the name. It was truly spectacular. They led us down a long staircase bolted to the cave wall. Once at the bottom of that particular chamber, the guide said he was going to turn out the light. He said he wanted to us to experience true darkness. Fuck me. Here I am in damp, mildew cave in the dark wondering when the guide would overcome his sadistic nature and turn the light back on.
When I learned to dive, it is common for divers to explore caves. I can’t imagine why. You can’t see anything which makes it worse because you don’t know what’s lurking in the darkness at 25’ to 40’ below the surface. I declined to dive caves and that was that. There is a Mayan expert who is the poster child for ADD. His name is Helario and he lives in Akumal on the Caribbean coastline of Mexico between Cancun and Tulum. That’s his Mayan name. He is actually an American. Helario marked a Mayan girl and lived in her village for 13 years. He is fluent in Yucatec Maya – one of 28 Mayan languages – not dialects). He is actually brilliant but cannot stay focused on any one idea for more than 30 seconds before he’s off in another direction. Helario is a master diver. He will dive a “cenote” (sacred Mayan fresh water well which is actually a sink hole in the Q. Roo area) to a depth of 100’ to 150’ where he turns off his light and enters a state of sensory deprivation. He says it clears his mind and puts him in a great calm. I didn’t go on that dive either. Jesus.
So, I wasn’t wild about going to this mega cave with some unknown beauty and awe. Nevertheless, we did a side trip of a few days up to the Maya Mountain Lodge to see the infamous ATM Cave or Actun Tunichil Muknal in its actual Mayan name. There was also the upside of going to nearby Tikal in Guatemala – one of the six most famous Mayan sites on the planet. And, I wanted to get away from the hurly burly of San Pedro on Ambergris Caye.
The night before we were to depart with our guide to the ATM cave which I began to think of as the death cave awaiting the next idiot brave enough to in to the bowels of the earth, fear began to crawl across my person like the pestilence in The 10 Commandments. Every minute for the next several hours intensified as I tried to imagine what I was getting myself in to. None of the imagery was pleasant. There was a feeling of malevolence out there beckoning to me – wanting to embrace me with a languorous, wet, moldy kiss. I then caught myself shallow breathing much like an Arab being in a Lamaze class with four wives. In truth, I have never experienced that much trepidation and sheer terror at what was to unfold the next morning. And, as if that wasn’t enough pressure, my friend was a natural adventurist who feared nothing and lusted for anything edgy. In other words, I could go and die or be a pussy, not go, and be the butt of all manner of ridicule and commentary from our fellow cave trekkers. I chose death. At least with death it is over pretty quickly whereas shame and embarrassment can linger for a lifetime.
We had a little, meager “breakfast” at the lodge which I picked at. The guide shows up at the table announcing time to leave. May he rot in hell for being so cavalier on this day of days! I thought to leave a note behind for my family in Austin lest I become one with ATM – a human stalagmite to be ogled by cavers for all time. However, I couldn’t think clearly enough to form a coherent message and I was out of time.
We all climbed in a van – about seven or eight of us and proceeded down a paved road, turning right on to a ranch road (about a 2 hour drive) to arrive at a river. Nobody said anything about a river. The guide laid out the helmets with headlamps to make sure they all worked. Super. Nothing like having a battery go out in the pitch dark with cave monsters lurking to do things to you like the aliens at Area 51. With everything bagged up, we shared backpacks to get to our ultimate destination – the “you know what” cave. I had ceased thinking of it as ATM because the anagram now became “Alas the Morgue”.
Luckily it was the dry season so the river was somewhere around kneecap level but the bottom was strewn with an ocean of slippery, sliding river pebble and the occasional larger rocks. The crossing was actually beautiful and pleasant.
Continuing on our 45 minute walk down dusty path I remembered that this region of Belize features a unique snake called “fer du lance”. They make a rattlesnake look like a gecko. We saw one in a Belizean zoo on the way to Maya Mountain Lodge. It was the devil incarnate. I suddenly thought “Oh shit”!. I wonder if they live in caves!!! Cue the death audio tape in my head and turn up the volume.
Finally, we arrived at our destination which was an open glade featuring a typical native wood “house” and a man sitting on a log eyeballing us with a shit eating grin on his weathered face. We took off the backpacks, sat on benches, pulled out the water and had a little sandwich with chips – probably my last meal.
The guide told us to follow him down a steep hill to reveal where the river had created a pond that flowed right in to the mouth of ATM. He said we would have to wade through the mouth for some distance but didn’t say how far.
We were now saddled up and ready to meet death face to face. I waded in to the pool and lost my breath immediately. The water was freezing just like a cenote. Just what I needed – all the muscles and nerves were now as tightly wound as harp strings. My scrotum retreated to the point where I would have lost a big dick contest to a eunuch.
Have you ever tried to swim with climbing shoes? Your body planes at a 45 degree angle in the water much like a dog paddling with his front paws for a stick in a lake. I was doing my Johnny Weissmuller impersonation knifing my way through the river pond going 10 feet per minute. By the grace of God, the water’s depth decreased and we were once again on gravel rock up to our knees then ankles climbing to our waist and back and forth. I sensed the sound of other humans some way up ahead. Praise God – we weren’t the only ones dumb enough to be descending in to the seventh level of hell.
At first, the cave floor beneath our feet was just wet with river gravel. Then, the water vanished. Oh, did I forget to mention that much of this cave floods during the rainy season? Death by drowning! Options galore!! The Maya do not like caves because they are paths to the underworld where one goes when one dies as opposed to ascending to heaven like Christians and unknown destinations for Lutherans. They call the underworld Xibalba (“She-ball-ba”). So glad that piece of Mayan culture just infiltrated my already pin ball machine brain.
The guide, a fine man to be sure, shouts out, “Turn your headlamps on”! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! We now begin to enter the unknown. The heretofore fairly level cave floor has been replaced by irregular, rocks of all sizes and sheer cut faces that descend in to mini pools. One has to be extremely careful with one’s footing lest you strain or break an ankle. Go deep enough in to the death cave and I’d like to see how they hoist your ass out through some tight places. And speaking of tight places, we come to the first one which is barely enough space to slip into and through as the rock of ages presses on your torso and buttocks. It is time to mention that the owner of the Maya Mountain Lodge – a practitioner of the Bahi’a’ religion along with his virtually mute wife – swore that the cave as no big deal and easy to navigate. He speaks with fork tongue.
We now begin to slowly ascend upwards in the pitch black minus the headlamps which illuminate just enough of the vastness to show how screwed we really are. At one point I see my fellow death marchers being pulled up a mammoth rock about 10 feet high with invisible cracks to place one’s foot. One slip from there and you become a permanent tourist attraction. I can hear the barker now. “For one thin dime, one tenth of a dollar you too can gaze upon the mutilated bones of the only Italian dumb enough to think he could oil his way through the death cave. Behold his skeletal middle finger welcoming us to ATM.”
Up and up we go, inching along edges holding on to the cool, rock wall which is actually an alien shape shifter waiting for one misjudged step. The shallow breathing is getting shallower as I take in thimble full amounts of air making me feel balmy and rubbery. And, my old friend claustrophobia has now joined me cackling along the way shrinking the size of the space and amplifying the sense of what it must have been like for Alan Shepard in Friendship 7’s first voyage to outer space. Except this is inner space and I don’t have a space suit to protect me from invisible radiation now pulsing, invisible, as though from a solar event.
The guide says, “We’ll stop here”. He shines his flashlight (no LED technology) around to reveal stalactites aplenty and the crystalline surface of the cave at this position. Not Indiana Jones cool but not bad. Time to go again: more climbing, more searching for a place to walk, black empty space to one side and the shape shifter pretend walls to the other. Bastards!
We finally arrive at a fairly level area with a not too high rock ceiling poised to crush us to death. Low and behold, there are numerous clay pots in varying levels of decay (and some almost intact) from the ancient Maya. They must’ve forgot to split before the rainy season. We were warned to walk only in prescribed places marked by nothing more than what looked like surveyor’s tape on the round or maybe a painted line. In other words, there was nothing between you and the pots and other antiquities. I wonder how many five finger discounts have been successful over the years. Although, I wouldn’t want to raise my hand to climb back down the death cave holding a freaking pot the size of a medicine ball! All in all, though it was a very fine archaeological site presuming the Belizean boys hadn’t rearranged things to make it look real.
Further and further we move into the very belly of the beast. Air is now coming in to my person via a metaphysical tube the width of a straw. Someone notices that my eyeballs are glazing over, grabbing my arm and snapping me back to the reality of being 1500 feet under the surface with alkaline battery powered headlamps standing between us and a black hole.
I can see the “room” open wider with the “ceiling” extending upward. And there, standing against a sheer face wall, was the oddest thing I have ever seen in a place like this – a metal ladder about 20 feet high tied by rope to some unseen support. I thought, you have to be kidding. No such luck! We had to climb this ladder which went almost straight up to heave ourselves on to a sort of mini cave or cut out in the rock. More surveyor’s tape and painted lines to guide our way! I am now enjoying the unique experience of vertigo wherein one feels like the room is moving and you are swaying toward the edge of oblivion.
And now, we come to the point of that Spiderman exercise to wit a fully preserved skeleton, presumably Mayan. I felt the pulse make a tiny bump in my wrist. Exhilarating! “She is best-known as “The Crystal Maiden”, the skeleton of a teenage girl, possibly a sacrifice victim, whose bones have been calcified to a sparkling, crystallized appearance” (Wikipedia).
It is time to leave for the climb down the ladder to the rock shelf. The problem with this is that there is nothing but space between you and the first rung of the ladder. As I watched my death cave companions grab one side of the ladder and sort of swing their body out in to nothingness to gain a foothold on the rung itself I knew I was buggered. Vertigo is 10 times more potent looking down than looking up. Now, the entire group is fixated on me – the last to attempt the descent. My mind was calculating the changes I would hurtle to the ground like an anvil dropped from a helicopter – calculations that made a Cray super computer look like an abacus. I was now freezing over the drop much like a pro golfer at August National on greens rated 13.5 on the Stimpmeter (lightning fast). The calls below telling me what to do in a cacophony of sound bouncing off the cave walls, stalactites and stalagmites, reverberating like a Mexican radio disk jockey giving a soccer game update at 90 decibels. I summoned my inner fortitude, grabbed hold of the right vertical part of the ladder, shut my eyes, swung my lithe 230 pound frame in to nothing more than air and grabbed the other vertical part of the ladder so hard I left finger imprints for the next fun seekers.
I’ve spent 35 years studying the Mayan culture. The crystal maiden could have cut me a break to warn me off this trip via telepathy. By the balls of St. Margaret, the guide began to retrace our steps to depart back in to the light. I had survived. Bursting with bravado, I screamed “Who’s the man”.
I forgot to say that as we were coming out through the last hundred yards of the ATM, I heard many voices near the cave entrance. There were lines of fun seekers as far as the eye could see about to enter or Actun Tunichil Muknal. These were not veteran spelunkers. This could have been a group touring the U.S. Capitol. I had seen my personal conquest of the death cave as the triumph of the ages, worthy of a feature story in National Geographic. I met as well have been on a play scape at McDonald’s.
The return was uneventful save for the fact that all the muscles in my legs were so much linguini by this point after 2 ½ hours of not breathing. We waded back through the icy waters at the mouth of ATM and I emerged scrotumless to the joy of the warmth of the sun.
We made our way back down the dusty path with the lurking fer de lances cocked and ready for us, when we arrived back at the really beautiful river at low tide. Now my legs were like cooked vermicelli but I walked on through the river knowing that the van and civilization and my bed awaited me. The rocks in the river seemed particularly more random and footing was a problem. Suddenly, I felt my feet and my legs sliding in opposite directions, arms helicoptering above me trying to prevent a broken ass and other injuries. I knew they would drag me back to the death cave to assume my new role as The Ancient Mariner, skeleton and all. Through an amazing display of feline dexterity, I was able to right myself from my own version of a moon walk – a river walk – as I was decidedly going backwards to snake highway. Stabilized and breathing deeply, I heard one of the guys in our group say, “Nice save”. The woman I was with who would have needled me for life had I not gone to the death cave broke out in to a deep, melodious, stomach wracking series of laughter that was greater than any Robin Williams bit.
My lady friend did not know about my terrorized mind the night before. She was amazed I had amassed the courage to go through the experience. Had I known what was in store I would have given it a Pasadena. Nevertheless, I’m glad I went. Someone in the group said they wanted to do it again. I began to walk Frankenstein like with outstretched arms and hands toward her to strangle her so she could never utter those words again or at least until I was back in Austin!
