Ye Olde Latin American Bus-Ride

Sweating profusely, involuntarily head-banging to the off-tempo rhythm of the chicken bus slamming into potholes, we watched the countryside fly by. As our corn-rowed bus driver swerved in and out of the oncoming lane, dominating all the nearby traffic, we watched cows chewing on 3-foot tall grass and billygoats laughing at children as they stood, baking, tied to coconut trees.

Of all the possible music one might choose to accompany such a journey, our driver had chosen to blast a Christian romance playlist. As I fearfully awaited the inevitable snapping of the bus's axles or popping of its tires, my ears were graced by the suave, unpleasantly soothing voice of a Latino hoping to "lay me down on a bed of roses."

I continued to sweat.

At each stop, peddlers made their way onto the bus hawking homemade banana bread, ice-cold bebidas, and weird-looking things with even weirder names. More than once we drove off before the hustlers had made their way off the bus, leaving them to jump in exasperation from the (slowly) moving vehicle.

The sweating intensified. Air conditioning was a pipe dream.

As the sun set on the emerald countryside, the lush greenery faded away. A canopy of stars occupied my vision instead, and as the heat wandered away towards more Eastern regions, I found myself falling asleep.

Finally, the sweating could stop.

Exploring a Sacrificial Burial Chamber (Actun Tunichil Muknal cave)

The mouth of the cave seemed to yawn, beckoning us in. Water gushed out as if the cave was salivating, eager to consume us as its next meal.

We were already soaked, but we didn't get any less wet as we plunged into the neck-deep water and pulled ourselves towards the first rocky embankment within. A few dozen feet inside and we found ourselves completely cut off from the sunlight. The world was now lit only by our headlamps - a modern twist on the ancient torches the Mayans used to light the same entrance.

The next two hours were spent dog-paddling over abysses, pushing our way upstream past boulders and stalagmites, and sliding through narrow recesses of sharp rock. One particularly threatening crevasse - known affectionately as the Neck Chopper - threatened to leave a gash on both sides of my neck if I wasn't careful.

Fortunately, I'm pretty cautious. No necks were chopped in the writing of this story. We scaled a few looming boulders, hoisted ourselves over a few long drops into boulder-strewn river water, and found ourselves staring at the ancient Mayan sacrificial chamber.

It didn't look ancient, though. Aside from the sheen of crystal and calcite that had grown over the pots, skulls, and skeletons over the last millennia-and-a-half, the place looked like it must have looked when it was still in use.

Smoke stains and carefully arranged boulders marked the spots where the Mayans had balanced bowls of incense over smoldering coals. Stone tools lay next to crushed skulls, an intimidating gesture of times hopefully long-past.

"A Mayan sacrifice had to die slow," I was informed. A series of chills - separate from the cold shivers I was trying to ignore - wracked my body as I stared down at the fleshless body below me. "Because when a person dies slow, they croak. They croak like a frog. The Mayans believe that when the frog croaks, rain comes, so they would make sure their sacrifices died slowly so as to appease the rain gods."

I pulled myself away from the eerie scene and stepped further into the menagerie of gleaming stalactites, quartz deposits, and manganese outcroppings. The whole cave glittered, and if we weren't just a mere mile beneath the sweaty surface of Belize, you could have fooled me into thinking that it was made of ice.

Suddenly, the entire cave became a movie theater.

The Mayans had carved the stalactites and stalagmites into seemingly irrelevant shapes. Peculiar, and obviously not natural, but serving no discernible purpose - until one shines a light onto them.

The result is that perfectly hewn shadows erupt onto the walls of the cave, moving and dancing with the light. The Mayans would use torchlight and fire to project shadows throughout the entire cave, producing rhythmic depictions of sacrifice, journeys to temples, and ritual movements.

As I looked up, I saw the shadow of an elder holding two axes pummelling the face of a victim just beneath him. To the left, the shadows of three Mayan ladies bounced and bobbled as they made their way towards a massive pyramid, holding baskets above their heads.

The river roared beneath us, providing a chilling soundtrack to the violent depictions of Mayan life that were dancing along the cave walls. The melody of the soundtrack was orchestrated by someone banging on a fallen stalagmite. The different spires of the stalagmite had been shaped and formed by the Mayans in such a way that each part plays a different musical note, and I had my first taste of authentic Mayan music.

The shadows were uncanny, the music was timeless, and the ingenuity of Mayan creativity made a serious impression on me. I was in a fully immersive, Imax-sized movie theater, echoing with surround-sound that had all been made with nothing but stone tools and an unmatched affinity for natural material.

The movie stopped as soon as it started, and we moved on. Along the way we saw skeletons that had lain still for more than a thousand years, bound in the same positions that they were sacrificed in. Bundles of bones and skulls lay in holes surrounded by fire pits and broken pots.

We turned back towards the cave entrance, though it was shielded by two kilometers of solid rock. This time, though, the river was on our side. We swam, stumbled, and banged elbows on rocks as the river propelled us back towards the sunlight. At times, the eroded rock was so smooth and slippery that we could slide down it like an ancient Mayan waterslide.

When the sun found our eyes, we all took a deep breath. We were glad to have made it out of the sacrificial chamber. It was obvious that not everyone who entered the cave had come back out.

The Tale of Squiggles' Thoughts

Squiggles was a man who had a great deal of trouble thinking. His train of thought would careen off the track before it even left the station. If Squiggles' thoughts jumped off a boat into a lake, they'd bypass the water and get stuck in the mud beneath.

Conveniently, that was where Squiggles now found himself: sitting on a dock at the edge of a small lake, his legs dipped into the water.

Here, he pondered things. Many things. An absurd amount of things, really, considering that he never drew any conclusions from any of them. Nay, he was not even aware of them: within the torrent of his mind, a hundred discombobulated thoughts struggled for the seat of his awareness, and yet none could ever grab hold of the steering wheel.

It was as it always was.

Squiggles, of course, was aware of none of this. His thoughts generally stayed on the back burner of his mind, where they were frivolously being evaporated into the ether.

At the moment, his focus was certainly not on his thoughts. It was on the sand and dirt swirling around his feet as he kicked about the lake bottom, wiggling his toes in a bemused stupor.

As he continued wiggling, a huge, bald-headed man approached and sat down next to him. A string of wooden beads hung 'round his neck, and the sun reflected dutifully off his shiny, bald head. His eyes glistened with an inner smile that spoke truer than the broad grin he wore on his face.

He hiked up the hem of a silken, orange robe as he dipped his feet into the water next to Squiggles.

Squiggles, of course, noticed none of this. He was watching the storm of sand he had kicked up from the lake bottom,  However, when a third foot probed its way into the swarm of dirt and dust he'd created underwater, and then a fourth, he was quite taken aback.

"There's a lot going on in there," the man rumbled.

Squiggles looked down at the muddled waters he'd created. "I guess so."

"Not down there," the hulking bald man replied, pointing a finger at Squiggles' forehead, "in here."

Squiggles gave a nervous laugh. "I mean, not really... I mean, most of the time I hardly think at all. Y'know?"

The man grinned and leaned back, letting his palms sink into the beach sand.

"Not thinking at all?" he murmured. "Must be nice."

"I don't know, I guess. I mean, I don't really think about what I'm thinking, y'know?"

"Then," replied the round man, "how can you be so sure that you're not thinking?"

Squiggles gave pause. "I'd just know. Wouldn't I? I mean, I'm speaking these thoughts."

The orange-robed man barked a laugh. "There are a great many people who speak without thinking, my boy."

"I guess so."

The man reached out a fleshy hand and rested it atop the brown scraggles of Squiggles' hair. "Behold."

Squiggles was suddenly bombarded by such an overwhelming array of inconnected irrelevance that the world in front of him lost its shape. The lake was assailed by thoughts of the evening's dinner, anxieties over the weird smile he gave the girl when she held open the door for him, musings about his an infinitesimally small place in the universe, memories about his old dog that died when he was twelve...

Squiggles gave a great cough as if he was expelling lake water from his lungs. The cacophony of thoughts ceased.

"What was that?" he gasped.

"That, my friend, was your mind. Those are the thoughts that you carry with you everywhere, every day. You just don't pay attention."

Squiggles was massaging his temples, gazing across the lake through squinted eyes.

"So... where are they now?"

The bald man pointed at the water. Squiggles had ceased waving his feet and the water had become crystal clear. He could now see all the way to the lake bottom, where the sand had settled.

"They are still there, like the sand that has fallen back to its place at the bottom of this lake. You have been looking through muddy waters this whole time, friend.  Now that the glass is polished, it is your duty to keep the windows clean."

The man smiled, and Squiggles saw for the first time the lines around his eyes. This man had lived a lot of years, smiled a lot of smiles. He waved and turned away, leaving footprints on the wet beach as he walked.

Squiggles looked down at the clear water and began, again, to stir the sand with his feet.