Belize's adventure capital — ATM cave, Caracol Maya ruins, and jungle lodge base camp
San Ignacio is a small town on the Macal River in western Belize, and the base of operations for the most rewarding adventures in the country. Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave — a 3-hour underground swim-and-wade through a Maya ceremonial cavern filled with skeletal remains and ceramic offerings — is a singular experience. Caracol, the largest Maya site in Belize with a 43-metre pyramid, sits 90 minutes into the jungle. The Belize Botanic Gardens, Mountain Pine Ridge forest reserve with its Hidden Valley falls, and the Barton Creek Cave (canoe tour) fill out an itinerary that makes San Ignaci…
Western Belize was the agricultural heartland of the Classic Maya — Caracol, Xunantunich, and El Pilar were major city-states in a dense network of settlements connected by causeways (sacbés). Caracol actually defeated Tikal in 562 CE and dominated the southern Maya lowlands for over a century. The ATM cave was used by the Maya for sacred rituals including human sacrifice from roughly 700–900 CE, in the drought-crisis final decades of the Classic collapse; the skeleton known as the Crystal Maiden (calcified by cave minerals over 1,000 years) is the most famous artefact. San Ignacio town (also…