This morning we left the Rainforest to head back to “civilization” for a while. After a 3 hour stomach churning ride along dirt roads, we arrived at the ATM cave. We took a 3-hour adventure through the cave, which involved swimming, wading, navigating crevasses, and eventually going barefoot to look at the remains of pottery and human sacrifices from the Maya over 1000 years ago. It was weird to me that you can get within a couple feet of these thousands of year old artifacts with only a piece of orange tape between you and a skull.  I’ve found a lot of things in Belize are less regulated than the US and everyone is a lot less concerned about being sued so you can do more exciting things. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures in the cave because a few years ago a tourist supposedly dropped his camera and one of the skulls and broke it.  

After the ATM cave, we headed to where we are staying tonight to get settled in. After dinner, and gasp, a brief period of WiFi access, we rode to the Belize zoo in the back of a pickup truck. Because many animals are nocturnal, we got to see a lot of species we wouldn’t normally see in the rainforest during their active times. We saw several types of owl, a Morelet’s crocodile, a kinkajou, and 4 species of big cat: the puma, jaguar, ocelot, and margay. The zoo keeper also had pieces of raw chicken to feed the cats.

By far my favorite parts of the zoo were getting to hold a boa constrictor and feeding carrots and bananas to a tapir! I still can’t believe what a cool opportunity that was… you definitely don’t get many chances to feed a tapir in Houston. As I write this I’m drifting off to sleep even though it’s only 9:30pm Belize time… tomorrow we head to the reef and you all can look forward to hearing about crustaceans from now on!