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.
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