Day 13 – Chukka – It’s Time to Play

We crested a hill in the jungle only to find an adventure station called Chukka at its bottom. This was the cave tubing mecca of Belize and this was the outfit that did it the best (so they said). Upon arrival we exited the bus and were ushered to a small building where we filled out the standard. Once we signed our first new born away, we went to get suited for caving apparel – hard hat, headlamp and life-vest.

Lastly, each of us grabbed a floating tube and made our way towards the river. It was a beautiful 20 minute walk through the jungle. Zee, one of the tour guides, pointed out various trees and plants along the way. On one occasion he picked what looked to be a nut off the ground and smashed it with a rock. He picked out a fibrous material and handed to both Anna and I. It was basically a miniature coconut, which tasted a little grainer than the normal coconut. Before long we were at the river. Some our party had not made it down with us and was a little behind, so while we waited we just played in the water.

Zee tied the tubes together for the journey down. It had rained a couple hours earlier and the water was flowing faster than normal. We were told the caves would be flooding soon, so they wanted to make sure we all stayed together and wouldn’t get carried away by the rapids. Wasn’t what the Schiffers wanted, but better safe than sorry. We heard that the Mayans sacrificed children for safe passage. We had two...no sacrifice today...but we still hoped for safe passage today.

Off we went into the darkness of the caverns. It was a thrilling ride as we rode the river through the caverns. At times we turned all the headlamps off to get the true effect of the real darkness. The sheer void of light left us totally blind we no recognition of anything even directly an inch or two away from our eyes. Amazing that Mayans would travel these caverns with the limited resources and technology that we have today. Stalagmite formations were all throughout the cavern along with the local bats which anchored themselves to the ceiling.

Soon we arrived at the cavern’s opening only to find out the tubing had ended. Thinking we would have to hike a ways, we found ourselves just 50 yards or so away from the main lodge. Everyone dried off a bit, changed and we went off to a covered area where we were feed a delicious lunch of rice, beans and chicken. Anna and I had a couple of Belikin and 30 minutes or so later we were back on the bus to heading back to Belize City. The ride took about a 1.25 hours to back before we got on the water taxi to San Pedro.

All of us were happy to get back to Portofinos. It was a long day with a lot of travel time. The rest of the evening was sprinkled with fishing, dinner and lounging. Needless to say, we all turned in early.