The morning of trek we woke to a nice quite camp, a camp without the lonesome cockerel crowing at 4am waking us all up. After the usual breakfast of porridge we all cleared our bashers and hammocks down, packed our bags and grabbed any rubbish lying around them as well. We then set about tidying camp, although after inspection from Colin showed we needed to look a bit harder for rubbish.
We started our trek a bit behind schedule but with the good spirits we made up for it with the pace. The trek was a good opportunity for us to practice leading a group as we took it in turns through the 3 days to lead a different section with little or no help from Colin who's answer if someone asked him a question was ''I'm not the leader, I know nothing'' which meant we had to make sure we had got information from Marcus, the guide/hardcore SAS trainer.
The first day was a good day of our first encounters with some caves, first of which was called dark night cave, about a kilometer long with indian creek running through which meant at points we had to get our toes wet but it was worth it to see the spectacular inside, the next was daylight cave which hense the name was light inside because it wasn't as long but still amazing, especially when Rhona spotted a fer-de-lance, the most aggressive snake in Belize, just chilling on the bank right where we were walking past.
Then the next entertaining bit was when Marcus showed us a jaguar skull he had found on the trail a few years ago and now hides it so he can show groups, even though each tooth is worth $400...
We reached camp around 3pm but we had to cross some questionable logs to get over the break in the loggers trail, none of which I would have said could take my weight be the resident fat boy of the group but with spreading our feet across 3 of them they held up just fine. We got camp set up swiftly and with our priorities in order we got the water boiling for a cup of tea. Then a quick dip in the river with the dead flesh eating minoes to get clean and crack on with dinner.
The next morning we knew what had to happen from yesterday’s example so we were ready to rock on time at 7am, we started the day with some tunes from the beautiful voice of nick but the extent of his lyrics ran out after the first line or two so we flicked through the play list pretty quickly.
I think the pain of the feet and a slight case of jungle fever had started to set in which caused some strange conversations to occur.
We then got to the trails of one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Through the thick jungle and up a hill we came to today’s treat, a huge cave opening with huge stalactites up to 10 feet long hanging 30 meters above our heads. The clearing where we had left our bags looked like the surface of mars. This was a more extreme cave than the 2 previous with some rope work required just to get down to the river entrance.
We climbed through the cave and came to a rocky beach where we gathered around Marcus for tales of the Mayan culture. We all stayed engrossed in the story until we were rudely interrupted by some snoring form Dan who had fallen asleep in the darkness. We then progressed on through to a chamber where Mayans conducted sacrificial ceremonies to honor their gods. We saw some Mayan pottery that dated back to around 800 AD. We made our way back to the light and worked our way back up out of the cave system to rejoin the logging trail once again. The logging trail took us to a coconut and orange plantation where a feeding frenzy ensued. By the time we moved off it had began to rain, and continued to do so until the next morning, which made setting up camp a bit more interesting, I don’t think we had ever moved so fast to ensure we didn’t get even more wet.
The next day had an interesting start having to cross some rivers along skinny logs where some people managed to stay dry and others didnt.*cough Elise and Sarah cough*. We passed the stunning blue lakes and finished with a 5 mile sprint to the end of the logging trail, where we met Kent with ice cold cokes and the pimp mobile to shuttle us back to San Ignacio field base.
