Day Four – Belize and Cave Kayaking
This was one of the days which I’d be looking forward to ever since we booked this trip. Each one of our cruises I’ve tried to book a kayaking excursion. I also love caves. When I saw that there was an excursion for cave kayaking in Belize, I knew I had to do it. Laura, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic, and opted to stay on board the ship for the day.
Belize City doesn’t have a cruise terminal. Ships anchor offshore and tender boats carry passengers ashore. It was a 40 minute ride to our arrival terminal. The city was a bit surprising. It was much more developed than the other places we had visited. There were supermarkets and other commerce. They had a “Publics” with the same logo as Publix. There were also lots of schools and churches. These large religious signs were found all over the city.
From the terminal it was another hour’s ride out to the Nohoch Che’en Caves Branch Archaeological Reserve. It turned out a bit longer because our bus had a flat tire and we had to wait a bit for a replacement bus. That didn’t take too long. When we arrived we switched to another old school bus that took us up and over a steep hill.
This was more of an adventure amusement park than archeological reserve, with ATV rides, zip lines, kayaking, and tubing. We were outfitted with helmets and life jackets, then hiked through a stunning rainforest to our launch site.
We reached a wide sandy area where kayaks had been staged. Here the river was open, but upstream and downstream it went underground again. We would be paddling upstream for about a mile, then returning to this spot. After that we would switch over to tubes.
To say that the scenery was stunning would be an understatement. There were stalactites and other rock formations. Occasionally a cenote would open open, and rain forest vines and vegetation would appear over the river. We stopped and pulled out at one of these for our guide to talk about some of the flora around us, and how remote we were from any towns.
I was really wishing I had brought my GoPro. I couldn’t keep stopping to take photos. They would rent you a helmet with a cheap action camera attached, but then you had to buy the video once it was done. No thanks. As it was, I still took a ton of photos. I won’t post them all here, but they are in an album on my Flickr site.
We paddled back to our initial launch site. The current wasn’t too strong, but it did mean we made it back quicker. There we switched over to tubes. They didn’t let us float alone, but rafted us up, with one guide pulling us along.
I wasn’t too crazy about that. I wish we had just been able to kayak the whole way. But there were some little ripples (I wouldn’t even call them rapids) that might have caused some folks trouble, and it did get shallower in places. The benefit was that I was free to look around without worrying about running into things, and my hands were free to take even more photos. That’s probably a good thing, because there were many more rock formations along this stretch.
Eventually the cave opened into a larger chamber and we could here a rush of water. A creek entered the river, falling over several cascades. Our guide rotated our “raft” so that each of us was dunked under the falling water.
Too soon we were reaching the end of our trip. I’m used to paddling anywhere from 8 to 10 miles on an excursion, so this seemed too short for me. There were many side channels that I would have loved to have explored.
We were soon back on the bus and heading to Belize City. I boarded another tender and headed back to the ship.
There were now a fleet of cruise ships anchored offshore, with a larger fleet of catamarans and other tenders bringing tourists back and fourth.
This was by far my favorite part of the trip and I had a hard time coming down from the excitement. Laura and I went back to our favorite bar and joined the trivia group. After dinner she turned in early, but I was still keyed up. I stayed up and watched a 70s disco party in the ship’s Centrum. There were quite a few characters in attendance.
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