Our friend Aaron is responsible for a lot of things at the US Embassy, one of those things being entertainment of the embassy workers. I've mentioned to Aaron in the past about my desire to meet Dr. Jaime Awe, the Director of Archaeology for Belize who happens to have written a few of the books on ancient Maya that I have read since moving down to Belize. Aaron organized a trip to the ATM cave for which Dr. Awe would be the tour guide. Although we aren't embassy personnel, Aaron received approval for Kevin and I to tag along.
We arrived at the site around 9am and had a 45 minute hike with three river crossings to the cave entrance. There were some other tour groups starting to gather at the cave entrance but since we were with Dr. Awe, we were given special privilege to pass them all and to dive right on in. I guess that will happen when you are with the guy who discovered the cave, led all the exploration and documentation, and trained every tour guide who has access to the site.
To enter the cave, you actually have to swim in 10 ft deep water for 10 yards or so and then crawl up some rocks to get on to 'dry' land. Over an hour of our time in the cave was spent either walking or swimming in the water. Because we were with Dr. Awe, we were also able to go to parts of the cave that are off limits to all other people.
So the cave itself was really neat but the most awesome part was the sheer number of Mayan artifacts - pottery, skeletons, metates - that littered the cave. We saw 7 different skeletons and 100s of pottery vessels, all of which are in the original spots that they were in when the Mayan left everything as a sacrifice.
Dr. Awe mentioned that after he found the cave, he defied all logic and decided to open the cave up to tourism under his extreme supervision. He also made the decision not to remove any of the artifacts that were in the cave as he thought it was selfish for him to be the only person who has ever seen the artifacts in their natural positions.
This trip wasn't for the faint-hearted. Bodies had to contort to get through some of the passageways and we literally crawled through a tunnel that was just a smidge larger than I am. Dr. Awe refuses to backtrack when leaving the cave so we had an amazing experience right up to the end of the journey.
As for meeting Dr. Awe, it was everything I had hoped it would be. I developed a little 'crush' on him while reading his books and reading about him. He is a charismatic guy who is very laid back and easy to learn from. This 'crush' continues and I only hope we get the opportunity to explore more Mayan sites with him - or serve him pizza (side note: at one point Kevin was in a tiny chamber by himself and made some comment about me paying Dr. Awe to shut Kevin into the chamber and leave him there. Dr. Awe ran out an asked if he could at least have pizza for life if he did it. Very tempting.)
AWESOME Day.
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