Actun Tunichil Muknal –The Cave of the Stone Sepulcher is one of the most thrilling caving experiences Belize has to offer. Actun Tunichil Muknal or the ATM–as it is more commonly known–is located in the Roaring Creek Valley near San Ignacio.
This is a sacred place to the Maya people especially during AD 250-909. The Mayas believed that gods, who provided rain and crop fertility, resided in this underworld. The rulers and high priests would enter this deep dark world to leave gifts of food, blood and even human sacrifices for the gods. This cave offers a unique chance to see earthenware vessels and human remains, left exactly as when archaeologists first explored the cave in 1993.
Visits to the cave are allowed only with a specially licensed tour guide from San Ignacio. It is an uneventful drive until the turn off onto a dirt road. The next 7 miles takes us through local villages, passing cows, pigs, chickens, bean and cornfields. Orange groves give way to stands of Teak and Mahogany plantations. We park up in the rustic picnic area–toilets were out of action when we were there, however, there are many trees around–construction of a toilet and changing room block was underway.
Our guide hands out our hats and we are off, shortly after we have wade Roaring Creek. This is when you realize that yes you do need closed toe footwear. Preferably a pair of trainers or boots that you don’t mind getting wet!!! Water shoes will do, but you will regret not having a better degree of protection. We follow our guide Lenny along a well-trodden trail alongside the river working our way upstream. We cross the creek twice more, each time followed by the local “Nibbler” fish, stand still long enough and they will nibble away any dead skin, even give you a pedicure if you were bare footed. After about 40 minutes, we reach the hourglass shaped entrance.
A hunter stumbled upon Actun Tunichil Muknal in 1989. Standing at the edge of the deep pool created by the outflowing Muknal stream, we peer into the darkness…………… I wonder what thoughts were going through that hunters mind as he stood here? Our guide hands out our lights, shows us how they operate and helps us to secure them to our helmets. This is when it sinks in, that yes we are going to go inside this sacred place, which also happens to be a cave system that stretches for 3 miles.
This adventure is not for the faint of heart and should be undertaken only with an experienced guide. Luckily for us Lenny our guide is a very experienced caver and has spent hours in this system. He explains that just inside the entrance, there will be some tight areas, which will open up into bigger chambers, we are to follow him and listen to instructions!
To enter you have to swim. We clamber out onto a small embankment just inside the first chamber, switch our lights on and enter the underworld! We climb rocks, squeeze through passageways, and wade through water ankle to chest deep, avoiding the submerged rocks that can turn ankles or break toes! Our pace is slow and steady; the only sounds the splash of our path and the flutter of a few awakened bats.
Our guide points out some of the massive stalactites that hang in convoluted ribbons over our heads, some of them forming immense coral type heads. They sparkle with the calcite left behind from the steady drip of virgin water that has formed them. Elsewhere the ceiling and walls are ochre red or webbed with fine veins of calcite and golden sulphur. Our guide uses a secondary flashlight to point out items of special interest one of them is a “mock scorpion”, actually a spider which eats cave crickets! Not too sure, what they eat in this dark underworld?
We enter a wide curved passageway and Lenny tells us we have reached the Stelae Chamber. This is of major archaeological interest in this cave. High above our heads on a wide ledge sit two slate Stelae,
This is where those long dead high priests and rulers performed their rituals, this is where they cut themselves with obsidian blades to offer their blood to the gods. How did they enter the underworld? Did they swim in holding torches overhead or clamber through a lost passageway?
Shortly after, we reach our entry point to the main chamber, a huge boulder, which when shown how, is fairly easy to climb, a little further in and we remove our shoes, socks we keep as they offer a little protection for us and prevent our body oils from contaminating the surface. The chamber is vast, one of the biggest yet discovered, the floor is a series of convoluted ridges and swirls, broken here and there with large flat-topped rocks, columns and stalactites. We are told to walk only on the ridges, as the cavities contain fragments of pottery and bones, easily crushed by a misplaced foot!
There are earthenware pots everywhere…… placed in the walls, on flat stones, on the floor, nestled against the walls, some intact, some ritually killed, purposely broken to release the energy they contain. All of them would have contained a offering to the gods, they vary in size from a few inches to a couple of feet in diameter. Many of The pots scattered on the cave floor are crusted white from previous flooding’s. They sit as if waiting for the next visit of the high priests; glaze still glistens on some of them.
Our guide pulls our attention to the somewhat more grisly artifacts that lie half-buried in the cave floor. A human skull gazes upwards, the skull has a distinctive flattened forehead–a common practice among the ancient Maya, achieved by binding a flat board across baby’s foreheads–Just below a slight elevated area, we find more skulls, nestling amidst a haphazard jumble of bones. Sacrificial victims washed down from their original resting places above perhaps.
The skeletal remains of 14 individuals have been identified here, where they willing sacrifices, did they willing come here to start their journey into the spirit world? Perhaps we will never know I do know that at least one of them was a child. It seems impossible to be this close to so much history; we walk within inches of bones and pots that have been here centuries. Some of these offerings have lain undisturbed for 1700 years.
Actun Tunichil Muknal has one more gift for us. To reach the Cave of the Stone Sepulcher we climb upwards, scrambling up boulders, until we reach the side of the chamber, propped against the wall is of all things an aluminum ladder. This is the only way to gain entry to what is possibly the caves greatest mystery, we squeeze through a tight passageway and enter a small chamber.
Sprawled on its back, arms and legs akimbo is a complete skeleton. The “crystal maiden” so named because of the sparkling calcite with which she is encrusted. The mystery is why she is here so much higher than other offerings, was she an offering or a accidental death? Archeologists now think that the skeleton may actually be that of a male, maybe the “crystal maiden” should be the “crystal prince”. Perhaps that is what he was? Did he descend to offer to the gods only to die lost and scared?
The prince is not alone in this small chamber; just beside the entrance is a jumble of bones topped by a large skull. On closer inspection it is obvious that the dome of the skull is enlarged, scientists believe this may have been caused by illness or maybe a birth defect.
Sadly this skull displays why cameras are no longer allowed inside Actun Tunichil Muknal, a large rectangular shaped hole gapes, no doubt made by a dropped camera. No one has admitted to the act. Public access to this amazing place, may be curtailed and it is in considerable jeopardy. I feel very privileged to experience this sacred place, the awe of seeing these lofty chambers and to feel so close to these ancient people.
It is time to say farewell to our mystery maiden, we slowly work our way back down, don our shoes, climb back down that 8-foot boulder and stand once more in its sacred waters. Lenny leads us on a different path–ending up with us hooting and laughing as we penetrate narrowing clefts which lead into hidden passageways too narrow to swim and too deep to walk. We sit in water-filled chutes and shuffle our way down, then watch our 6ft guide squeeze through an impossibly small gap. If he can do it so can we!
All too soon, we spot the light of day! We emerge from the underworld, awed, exhilarated & very privileged.
omig, what a wonderful site, lucky you!
wow, sounds like an awesome adventure!