I cannot believe we did not really post on Caracol yet! By far the one of the best experiences of our trip to Belize!

Caracol is a Mya city located in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve. The trip inland takes you three hours to San Ignacio in the Cayo district and then down South about 25 miles passing through San Antonio, which equated to about 2 and a half hours (surprise!). The roads were so rough, you couldn’t go more than 15 miles per hour. Hence, a high clearance vehicle is required to get to Caracol.  Expect to sign in at the ranger station halfway from San Antonio to sign-in and receive a military escort to this ruin. The last escort out is 11:00 a.m. so make sure you are there before then. Otherwise you will need to go alone. Also, you can expect to cross over drawbridge. You have to stop and wait for the barricade to be raised and while waiting we were asked by the guard to make a donation for a sick family member. We are not sure if it was legit or not, but it almost seemed like a toll in a way. It’s hard to say no when you are sitting there waiting. There is no set limit for what is owed to get through this toll.

Take the “Mountain Pine Ridge Road” southward from Santa Elena, or Georgeville; both on the Western Highway in the Cayo District. The route is well marked.

The Caracol ruin consists of three plaza groups, surrounding a reservoirs, central acropolis, dozens of structures, and two ball courts. The largest structure of Caracol is the Caana pyramid, which reaches a height of almost 140 feet, and remains one of the tallest man-made buildings in Belize. It lies at the foothills of the Maya Mountains at an elevation of 1500 feet above sea level. At around AD 250, during the Classic Era, Caracol was an urban epicenter with a population of over 140,000, which is a greater population than modern-day Belize City. To support this many people, the city architects of Caracol built an immense agricultural field system and laid out numerous living and work structures in a radial pattern over 65 square miles. Caracol was considered to be one of the most powerful lowland Mayan cities because they were constantly engaged – and successful – in war. Over 200 burials have been excavated here. It has often been said that Caracol once conquered Tikal, but this has not truly been verified.

You can either go alone to these ruins or go with a local tour guide company- ranging around $85 USD per person. We opted to go alone and used the help Belize books and information panels to guide us. Little did we know, the military escorts will also get out of their car and escort you around the ruins on foot, making sure you see every nook and cranny of the ruin. Courtney though will argue that they only escorted us around on foot because they are not used to seeing pretty blonde girls in Belize. I think they were just bored and wanted some entertainment. The two military men were quite charming and gave us some good laughs.

Why do you need to be escorted by the military might you ask? We were told that a couple of years ago (2004) a few tourists at Caracol had been mugged and robbed by Hondurans while visiting the ruin. (which you can see into Honduras from the tallest ruin in Caracol, the Caana pyramid.) Since then, the Belize government and Tourism board have spent millions of dollars trying to upgrade the roads, facilities for visitors and the site itself. They are hoping to make Caracol the main point of interest for Belize’s Maya sites. They hope to keep travelers who are presently going on to Tikal in Guatemala in Belize, as well as to attract Guatemala visitors.

The ruins were breathtaking, the views astounding. The experience was unforgettable. The pictures- incredible. I got to hold a M-16 and felt safe and secure traveling to Caracol. We didn’t experience any robbers and in fact Caracol has not had any bandit incidents since then . The ruins themselves were sparsley populated with other visitors that day. I believe there were seven other tourists there that day, all of whom were with a tour guide. It was almost like we had the place to ourselves!

One unique thing to see is the gas station in San Antonio. See if you can find it there (and in our photos below!) Make sure you have plenty of gas before going to Caracol. Courtney and I had about a half tank and we were not aware it would take about 2 and a half hours each way, so we were freaking out and worried we would run out of gas. Luckily, we filled up in Antonio just in time.

The last photo in the gallery was the sunset when we were pulling up to Table Rock Jungle Lodge at the end of our trip.

I’ve been hard at work trying to edit the video from our trip. There is just so much, and I am only a novice video editor. Consequently, the wait is becoming much more than I’d imagined. That is unfortunate. I wanted to share the HD underwater video with everyone. It’ll happen. I just don’t know when.

In the meantime, I’ll share this: I’ve learned a few things about making movies and shooting video. It seems as though 90% of what you shoot is rubbish. It then becomes increasingly necessary to carefully cull through all of that rubbish in order to find the few fragments of entertaining content, piece those together in an interesting way and publish the end product with a few nifty bits and pieces of post production.

So far, I have managed to extract dozens of clips from the day and night dives. But I wasted so many good shots trying to use the zoom on the camera. Great shots like the crab and eel combo (a sushi delight) are almost completely ruined because of my poor video skills.

My friend Garrett, who lent me the camera suggested that I take all the video and scale it down to one minute clips. This, I thought, would be imjpossible given the volume of video I had. But now that I look back on it, two or three one-minute clips may be all I have once it is all said and done. Hopefully, the first will be ready for release at the end of this weekend.

Liz and I stopped off at Big Rock Falls after our visit of Caracol. With little gas and a lot of nerve, we deviated from the main road for just a couple of miles on our way back to San Antonio and then to Table Rock Jungle Lodge.

The deviation took us past Five Sisters Lodge and down a road we just didn’t know would lead to a destination. Once we got there, we had to guess at the trail as a few sort of led in almost the same direction. We headed out, video loaded and recorded every step of the way. This video shows a few highlights of the visit.

All of this was shot with the V.I.O. POV (except the stills) that I picked up from Backcountry.com I took copious amounts of video with this thing and if it weren’t for human error, I would have had some awesome footage of the trip to ATM. Grab your own…

Piggy Backing on Courtney’s Post: Zip Lining in Belize: Part 1 of 2: We headed to the zip-line area after the black out and we  were guided by a nice worker there to the area. Along the way, there was a large pavilion which at first I believed to be the zip-lining site, but this seems to be more of the “break” area for the zip-line workers there. We met Harrison and Kent. They were both really nice gentleman and extremely patient with us as Courtney attempted a couple of different ways to mount the camera on the helmet from the front. While Courtney worked on mounting the camera, Kent helped me gear up. Soon after, Harrison worked on Courtney and later allowed Courtney to use his personal helmet to try and mount the camera. After a few attempts and realizing he did not bring the zip ties, he mounted the camera with a few piece of duct tape and we continued on with our journey.

Harrison and Kent led us up a trail with a buncha stairs to our first launch site. They told us a few tricks to zip-line and then we were off! We soared from ramp to ramp above the Belize jungle. We soared, we laughed, we giggled, we squealed. It was an absolute blast and an incredible experience. I had been waiting years to do this. Since I was a little girl. It was everything I ever dreamed of. Although, I wish it lasted longer! It took us about 20-30 minutes to complete the course. But it was worth it!

Here are the photos. Look for video in the near future!

About the only downside to the trip to ATM was the tour group. Mayawalk is not a tour company I’d recommend to any potential tourists. I hate to say this, because their prices are cheaper than the competition, but the experience could have been far better with a better company. “Why,” might you ask? There were a number of shortcomings:
Liz was ill so she couldn’t go. They charged me a 50% cancelation fee, explaining that they’d already purchased a lunch for her, etc. The lunch, while tasty, cost $4US. I know this because I bought lunch from the same place they did the day before. No other sacrifices were made on their part. They definitely didn’t turn any potential guests away. I realize a cancelation fee is almost always applied, but this was unbelievable; especially because of their next ding.

To the guides credit, he did tell a great story, and I did thoroughly enjoy the experience, despite the constant grumblings of one of the other guests. He still shared some interesting stories and described how the Maya may have interpreted different features of the cave, such as the sacrifice victims and the rock formations. I really wish I’d been able to make the POV function for that trip. Sans video, it was still an excellent narration and I can’t for the life of me, remember all of the details.