Excursions

The next day we went hiking to the ATM cave. This cave was an amazing museum. It had so many artifacts from ancient Maya ceremonies and skelatons. I loved to learn about all the different places in the cave and it made me realize what it would be like back in time when they had nothing. The guide really helped us visualize everything. I loved when we turned all our headlamps off and just sat there listening to him talk about the ancient Maya. I learned so mauch about their culture and it was the best history lesson I have ever had. haha. When we were finished in there we went back to our awesome hotel to shower and hang out until we had to leave for Caves Branch which is in the rain forest. Caves Branch was another story completely! We drew straws to see which place we were staying either the bungalow or the bunk room.. I'll let u guess which one was better. Well I got the bungalow that was made for 6 or 7 people. I was so excited because we had a shower that was inside and one outside while everyone else had a bucket with holes in the bottom of it outside... haha. So we settled in and went to the pool to wait for dinner. Dinner there was served in courses and started at 6:30. We all ate and looked at the excurisons that we could do the following day. I decided on the Waterfalls which looked amazing. After dinner we all went back to our rooms and listened to the sounds all around us. The rooms there were solid but the whole thing was screened in so we could hear everything all night. I love the jungle noises and think it reminds me of home but alot of the other girls were scared. That is how we ended up 13 deep in our bungalow. All the girls came screaming in our room from the bunk rooms. haha. So we doubled up in the beds. It was like a big girl sleep over. lol. The next day we were all exhausted but excited... Esperanza our tour guide was so good. She drove us out into the jungle to the hiking trail to the waterfall cave. I didn't realize the waterfalls were in complete darkness. We hiked up the trail and she told us about different plants and animals and when we got in the cave she told us about the different bats. We climbed and climbed into this cave. We got to go upsatirs.. well I call it upstairs because it was a hidden chamber int he cave that we had to climb up the rocks to get to. We were all sliding in the clay. It moved everytime we grabbed it to hold on. Upstairs they let us hold the different artifacts which would never happen in America. After we saw all the firepits and artifacts we headed back down to continue on to the waterfalls. When we got to the first one I was so scared. It was 15 or 20 feet high and we had to rock climb with our face in the waterfall. We of course had a harness for this one but not for the next 6 waterfalls. This waterfall was very difficult to get up and I thought.. there is no way I can do 6 more of these. Thank goodness it was the biggest one. Once we got to the top we had to jump down the waterfalls. Esperanza would say, "Don't jump here, here, or here. You want to jump right here so you don't hit any rocks." I tried not to think about how dangerous that was and closed my eyes and jumped. It was the most amazing feeling ever, like we had just accomplished so much. When we got back to Caves Branch, we all had dinner and laid by the pool. Courtney somehow got us an upgraded room so Jessi, Brittany, Courtney, and slept like the grandparents in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, head to foot, head to foot. haha. We were in heaven but scared to death of the noises that were so close to us.