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| The day's excursion begins in the town of San Ignacio. |
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Arriving at the trailhead. The four wheel drive vehicles proved necessary to fight the heavy mud to get here. |
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Occasionally our guides would stop to point out features of the jungle... including medicinal plants. |
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| A rubber tree. |
Nasty spines! |
Those little green blurs are bits of leaf being carried along by leaf-cutter ants. |
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We eventually reached the staging grounds outside the cave. This cave system is essentially an active archeological site. It's closed to the general public, but this company has a permit to run guided tours. |
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| The entrance to the Mayan underworld... |
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| Our passage into the cave begins with a short swim. |
We follow the river for some time, negotiating rock falls, and wading through the water. |
Eventually, we stop to start a climb up into a branch of the cave system. (This is a view from above.) |
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| We take off our shoes, and then we come upon the first artifacts... |
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All of these are the original Mayan artifacts. Everything has been left undisturbed. |
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...as well as the remains of three human skeletons. |
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