Myles away from ordinary: Caves Branch

The late winter solstice sunrise was our alarm clock the next morning. But no one was complaining, since this was what we were getting up to.

Caves Branch, our home for the next few days, got its name from being near a branch in Belize’s considerable underground cave network and popularizing their exploration.

The lodge is located on 50,000 acres of protected forest. It’s massive. So there are all kinds of areas to explore. When we checked in, Caves Branch provided a list of a dozen or so expeditions they offer, rating them on a 5 sweat drop scale. But there wasn’t anything on the list with fewer than 3 drops. So the activities ranged from “Extreme” to “How can this be legal?”

I figured we’d start with Extreme so I talked with Fermin and asked what he thought would be good for our group particularly wide age range. He said Cave Tubing would be perfect. He ultimately wasn’t wrong, but I’ll admit that it did take most of the day for me to see that.

We met our ride by the front desk at 9 am, and I immediately knew that at least Quinn’s needs would be addressed.

[In fact, as I sit here writing this by the pool after we got back (spoiler alert: we survived), he looked over my shoulder and told me to write, “We did a very good truck ride.“ Couldn’t have said it better myself.]

Our main guide, Justo, introduced himself and helped us into the truck. Fermin, who usually works the desk, came along as a backup. “We always send two guides, in case one of them doesn’t make it out.” I was 90% sure he was kidding. Maybe 85%. Regardless, our fate was sealed, since we were underway just a few minutes later.

We drove through one of the two citrus groves in the preserve, stopping at the front gate to receive a quick spray down with an unknown insecticide. As we learned later, several of Belize’s citrus groves are being decimated by an incurable bacterial infection transmitted by a specific type of beetle. It’s a huge deal right now, so I understood the measure. But I’m going to tell myself it was just vinegar and citronella oil in the citrus worker’s unmarked spray bottle.

After 15 minutes of me trying to recall the signs of organophosphate toxicity, we pulled up to the base of one of the small mountains we could see from our room. Justo told us that we’d be exploring underneath it for the rest of the day. He and Fermin handed us inner tubes and life jackets, then led us down the trail.

The dry part of our hike was maybe a half mile to the mouth of a cave with a decent sized river coming out of it. Justo directed us into the water and had us sit on our tubes.

Although a better description might have been “intermittently flail a limb while trying to stay on the tube and not immediately get swept downriver.” We were going upstream into the cave, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at us. There had been some decent rains that week, so the current was no joke. I cranked down yet again on my kids’ life jacket straps, and locked onto their tubes with my feet.

After some comically pointless paddling as we tried to get upstream, Justo swam up ahead, anchored himself to a rock, and tossed us all a rope.

Until then, I was too exhausted to question our decision. (“Left hand in the water, push, right hand in the water, push. Uh oh, I just lost Quinn. Ok. Got Quinn again. Left hand in the…Ah! There goes Mimi.”) But having a moment to pause and breathe gave me the opportunity to ask myself why I didn’t just book a room in one of the island resorts like every other person traveling to Belize with small children.

But my opportunity for self-reflection was short lived. Once we entered the mouth of the cave, Justo had us dismount on one of the shallow patches for a safety orientation.

Wait. That was the easy part?!

He started with the usual spelunking advice (life jackets, helmets, stay together, etc.), but then he continued on with some guidance that I had never before received on an adventure like this. Gems like,

“The bats are just going after the bugs that your headlight attracts. They won’t attack you, per se.” Sorry, Aimee.

Or, “Try not to touch the rock walls. The crystals on them take thousands of years to form. (So far, so good.) But in the area where we hike up above the water line, holding the rock wall is the only thing that will keep you from falling 60 feet. It’s ok to touch there.” Got that, kids? Don’t touch, unless you’re going to die. Then do touch. Please. Do. Touch.

Or my personal favorite, “You’ll see lots of spiders, but we also have scorpion spiders in the cave (wait, that’s a thing?). They look like scorpions, but they’re harmless like spiders. They grow six feet (Justo and I have very different definitions of “harmless”). That’s how you know they’re scorpion spiders.” Good lord. I’m paying for this?

After Justo finished the most horrifying pep talk I had ever listened to, I looked over to Aimee and asked her in all earnestness, “Are you ok with this? All of this?” It felt very reminiscent of when we accidentally took her parents (and a baby) on a 3 day hike through Vietnam’s Grand Canyon.

But thankfully Aimee was ok with this. She’s a special person. Although, I was a little taken back when she answered with such a bright, “Yeah!”

Was it just me? Was no one else even a bit concerned about the 6 foot spiders? The kids clearly weren’t.

With that out of the way, we got back into our tubes and continued our rope-pull leapfrogging with the guides. We gradually make our way another half-mile into the cave, occasionally dismounting to traverse around a (more) hazardous section of the river or check out some interesting natural feature or cultural artifact. There is a ton of Mayan history in those caves, and their relative isolation kept them somewhat protected from looters. We saw engraved pottery shards and obsidian blades dating back a thousand years. Despite having a near-negligible appreciation for that kind of a time scale, the kids seemed to innately understand the importance.

We got back on our tubes and headed a bit upstream to the “60 foot ledge” part of our day. It was mercifully optional, but the kids couldn’t be deterred. “We’re really good climbers!” Not really having it in me at that point to list the differences between crawling around a Flagstaff city park and a prehistoric underground river, I acquiesced and made sure my shoes were tied well. And to that point, Caves Branch has a now-understandably strict closed-toe shoe policy. Aimee actually started her morning picking through their loaner shoe pile after the guides vetoed her Chacos. Until that point, I had been kicking myself for not bringing anything besides flip flops and 6” hiking boots, but was very, very happy with that choice as we set off on the climb.

The rocks, smoothed by millennia after millennia of river flow, were extremely slippery. But Justo knew exactly where to have us step. As they told me, the kids were actually very good climbers. They got a little carried away at the start of the hike, but after Justo led us to a spot where we could look down and see how high we were, they stayed plenty close.

[I don’t actually have any photos of my kids looking down. I was permanently imprinting my grip into the back of their life jackets during that part.]

But it wasn’t just the view. The elevated section had natural formations and historical significance all its own. It really was a great little spot, and more than worth the three years of life expectancy I lost getting to that point.

After we climbed our way back down, the guides set up a charming little candlelight lunch. It felt like the meals on a Colorado River trip. Whether it’s the earned hunger or the surprise of seeing any food at all among such natural austerity, those meals rank as some of the best I’ve ever eaten. This was no different.

As we were chatting over lunch, the scorpion spiders came back up. Justo’s face lit up as he remembered something. “Six legs! I meant six legs, not six feet! My English isn’t great. They grow six legs. That’s how you know they’re not actual spiders.” I had never been so relieved to hear that an insect was “only” the size of my hand.

And despite Justo’s humility, his English actually was great. Most people in the inland sections of Belize are at least trilingual, bouncing between English, Spanish, and Mayan mid-sentence with ease. Justo was no exception. Six-foot spiders haunting my thoughts all morning? Just a slip of the tongue.

The final side hike was a small ledge just above river level. Fermin stayed down with our kids and taught them to make clay and paints from the river stones.

Some of the history was lost on our kids, but none of the arts and crafts were.

Justo took the rest of us up and showed us some Mayan carvings on the cave wall that were part of a remarkably intact site of ancient fertility rituals. Mayan history has always felt very distant (geographically and chronologically), but walking among the same fire circles where many of their future princes and princesses were made was extremely powerful.

From there, the rest of the journey was easy. We floated back out of the cave, and climbed ourselves back to shore.