Our first day of inland Belize adventure took us tubing through caves at Caves Branch which was fun for the portion of the trip where my ass wasn't being dragged across rocks.
On the second day, we began by visiting the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich. You can see GirlChild approaching in her kickin' sun gear. The kids raced to the top (and I do mean the VERY TOP) on tilty, un-hand-railed steps, some of which had been plastered back together after an earthquake.
We somehow left the ruins (not dead) for a leisurely canoe trip into Barton's Creek Cave. On the way to our canoe, we found a friendly spider monkey - who took a shine to GirlChild's headband. GirlChild lost.
Here you can see the friendly canoes. Bear in mind that we're about to enter a DARK cave. GirlChild has already screamed her way through dark caves on an inner tube so I'm concerned.
Luis comes back with what looks like a small car battery and thunks it into the watery bottom of the canoe, hands us a huge spot light and then says we'll need to attach it to the battery when we get into the cave.
Alice: Ummm..isn't that dangerous?! (Holy ACDelco, I'm going to be electrocuted!)
Luis: It's only 12 volts.
Alice: Omigod, I'm going to die. (I have no concept of what kind of impact a 'volt' has on a body.)
Luis get Babycakes, BoyChild and their own killer battery settled into another canoe and gives them the keys. Babycakes isn't really an outdoorsy type of guy so I was kinda curious as to how his canoe/spotlight handling would be. Turns out he and BoyChild survived.
At least Luis was in charge of the gals and I was pretty sure he could save us if GirlChild decided to drop the spotlight into the water.
In order to get into the cave, you have to sort of hump your canoe between the cave wall and a rock that sits right in your way. It's not really a fast process, I'm sitting in the front, and I notice a fist-sized spider on the cave wall about 5 inches from my personal space.
I'm silently freaking out because the last thing I want to do is alert GirlChild to the fact that this Godzilla Spider is hanging around and start her screaming before we even hit the cave.
I move my body right as far as I can. Luis yells something lame about tipping the canoe. And I finally manage to splash enough water around the spider so that he disappears.
Luis gets us over the rock and into the actual cave, we hook up the Battery-Of-Death and experience an absolutely gorgeous cave ... right up until GirlChild says, "Mom...there's a spider on your back."
And the first thing that comes to mind is the tunnel scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I wonder if it's that evil spider from the front of the cave. And now I don't care if I tip the canoe as I start flapping my arms randomly around my shoulders since I can't even really reach my back. At some point, GirlChild says the spider is gone. I can only guess that he fell into the water in the bottom of the canoe and eletrocuted himself.
