Xunantunich + Cave Tubing

Cross the Mopan River the old-fashioned way, on a hand-cranked ferry, and the ancient city of Xunantunich rises before you out of the Cayo jungle. You climb El Castillo, one of the tallest structures in all of Belize, until the whole Maya heartland unfolds at your feet, a rolling green sea stretching to the Guatemalan border. Up here, beside carved stucco friezes of gods and rulers, your guide brings the plazas and ball courts back to life with the stories of the people who built them more than a thousand years ago.

In the afternoon you trade the high ground for the deep dark. You ease into an inner tube and the river pulls you gently into a cavern of dripping stone, where headlamps sweep over stalactites and the temperature drops to a delicious cool. The ancient Maya believed these caves were the threshold of Xibalba, the underworld, and as you drift through the silent chambers it is easy to feel why they came here to leave offerings to their gods.

It is a day that spans two Maya worlds, the soaring sunlit city above and the sacred river below, bookended by an easy ride to and from the Placencia peninsula. You will come home with a camera full of jungle and stone, and a real sense of how deeply this land is woven with its history.