San Ignacio

The hilltop Maya site of Cahal Pech (daily 6am–6pm; Bz$12), twenty minutes’ walk west of San Ignacio along the road to Benque Viejo, is well worth a visit. There’s a good chance you’ll have the forested ruins all to yourself, and although the structures are not particularly tall, the maze of restored corridors, stairways, plazas and temples is enchanting. Cahal Pech was the royal acropolis-palace of an elite Maya family during the Classic period, and there’s evidence of monumental construction from at least as early as 400 BC, though most of the remaining structures date from the eighth century AD. The visitors’ centre and museum has a scale model of the site, excellent displays and a variety of artefacts. Entering the site itself, you arrive at Plaza B, where your gaze is drawn to Structure 1, the Audiencia, the highest building at Cahal Pech. From the top, the ruins of Xunantunich are clearly visible to the southwest. Behind Structure 1, in Plaza A, is a restored three-storey temple, as well as other sacred buildings.

Actun Tunichil Muknal (tours around US$85, including lunch, entry fee and transport from San Ignacio; you must be accompanied by a licensed guide to enter), in Roaring Creek valley, gets its name (“Cave of the Stone Sepulchre”) for the astonishingly well preserved skeletons, fourteen in total, of Maya human sacrifices found here. As the cave has historically been inaccessible to looters, little has been touched since the Maya stopped using it over a millennium ago, and the artefacts are spellbinding. Perhaps the most dramatic sight is the skeleton of a young woman lying below a rock wall – and nearby the stone axe that may have killed her. The cave is certainly worth the high price of a tour; note, though, that you’ll need to be pretty fit and able to swim to do the trip; for much of the time you’re wading knee- or even chest-deep in water.

Barton Creek Cave (tours around US$60, including Bz$20 entry fee; you must be accompanied by a licensed guide to enter) is also accessible only by river, though this time by canoe. Framed by jungle, the cave’s entrance is at the far side of a pool, and inside the river is navigable for about 1600m before ending in a gallery blocked by a huge rockfall. If it’s been raining, a subterranean waterfall cascades over the rocks – a truly unforgettable sight. The clear, slow-moving river fills most of the cave width, though the roof soars 100m above you in places. Several Maya burial sites and pottery vessels line the banks, the most awe-inspiring indicated by a skull set in a natural rock bridge used by the Maya to reach the sacred site.

Steep limestone cliffs and forested hills edge the lower Macal River, whose main tributaries rise in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve and the Chiquibul Forest. In the upper reaches the water is sometimes suitable for whitewater kayaking, though you’ll need a guide for this. A guided canoe trip, however, is by far the best way to visit one of the river’s top sights, the Rainforest Medicine Trail (daily 8am–5pm), in the grounds of The Lodge at Chaa Creek, 5km upriver from San Ignacio. The medical knowledge of the Maya was extensive, and the trail, dedicated to a Maya bush doctor (curandero), is fascinating: among the plants here you’ll see the negrito tree, whose bark was once sold in Europe for its weight in gold as a cure for dysentery. The Chaa Creek Natural History Centre, next to the Medicine Trail (daily 8am–5pm), offers a marvellous introduction to Cayo’s history, geography and wildlife. A combined ticket for both the above is Bz$20. At du Plooy’s resort, a few kilometres upstream from Chaa Creek, the ambitious Belize Botanic Gardens (daily 7am–5pm; Bz$20; t 824-3101, w www.belizebotanic.org) aim to conserve many of Belize’s native plant species in small areas representative of their habitats.

Rushing down from the Guatemalan border, the Mopan River offers some attractive and not too serious white-water rapids. Though there’s less accommodation along the Mopan branch of the Belize River than there is along the Macal, what’s available is more within reach of the budget traveller, and staff can arrange river trips as well as excursions throughout Cayo.