Post #104641 by spy-tiki on Tue, Jul 27, 2004 11:47 PM

I vote for Tikal as well. As far as the diving goes there is a thing called a "Blue Hole" down there. Only one in the western Hemisphere I think. It's like a little atoll whose roof has caved in. It's sort of a thing to check off your dive list. You go to 150 feet for about 4 minutes, see some stalag(tites, mites...which ones are on the top?) and head back up. We had a drunk captaining the ship who almost got us killed on the way back, but that's half the adventure. There are also areas to dive with fairly friendly sharks and tons of fish to see.

I stayed at a little jungle camp (I'll look up the name and post later) that was pretty cool. You had to be careful on the way to the out house at night because the snakes are pretty poisonous. They call them two-steppers. Two steps and you're dead. They did a tour where you paddle an inner tube up a river and into a cave quite a ways and then float back out. The (Aztecs,Incas?) called their underworld Chibalba. That's where souls went. There's a tree with big roots and I think the roots were supposed to be the way to get there. the priests would go into the caves and get stoned and have visions. (These "facts" are only as reliable as my memory so grains of salt may be necessary)

I also stayed at a pretty fancy jungle lodge (Dutch name...I'll look it up) and as our summer is the off season the rates were pretty good. There weren't many people there either. Oh Yeah, Francis Ford Coppola has a place down there. (star wars trivia)

I'll dig up some pics and post them in a day or two.