Exploring the Mysteries of the ATM Caves Belize: What’s The Belize ATM Cave Tour Experience Like?

Fancy yourself as the next Indiana Jones or Lara Croft? Then the Belize ATM Cave Tour will tick every adrenalin junkie’s bucket list! In a word, it’s epic!

Located in the middle of the thick jungle, near San Ignacio Town in west Belize the ATM Caves also known as Actun Tunichil Muknal Caves, are seen as the most sacred caves in the world and with good reason. 

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll realise two things really make me tick – ancient ruins and adventure sports. So combining the two on this ATM Caves Belize Tour feels like a match made in heaven.

You might be thinking of doing the Actun Tunichil Muknal tour, but are a bit apprehensive about what to expect. The ATM Caves Belize was one of the most memorable places I visited during my time in Central America. I 100% recommend doing the ATM cave tour – however, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Think you’ve got the guts? (you’ll certainly need them!). Read on to find out why.

What is the ATM Cave in Belize?

So what are the Belize ATM caves? Over 1000 years ago a large chunk of central America was ruled by the Mayans. High Priests would try to appease their Gods by making offerings to them; the ATM cave in Belize was used for these ceremonies. 

After the demise of the Mayan empire, the ATM caves remained undiscovered until 1989. Since then, archaeologists began extensive excavations on the site finding a whole myriad of artefacts and items used in their rituals.

Quite disturbingly, they also uncovered a large number of places where human sacrifices had been made. Many of them were young children, the most famous of them is known as the Crystal Maiden.

This article by National Geographic explains the ruins in more depth.

About the ATM Cave Belize

Before my trip to Belize, I’d never heard of this ancient Mayan site, my main goal was to scuba dive in the world’s largest sinkhole at the Great Blue Hole.

It was an absolute bonus to add to my Belize itinerary a second adventure sport, the ATM Cave Belize.

The first thing that sprung to my mind when I heard the phrase ‘ATM’ was cash machine; so no, this isn’t a trip to a cave to find the worlds-most-hard-to-reach-cashpoint!

In actual fact, the ATM Cave in Belize is short for Actun Tunichil Muknal. In the Mayan language, this translates to “Cave of the Stone Sepulchre”. 

And the location of the ATM Caves – in the middle of nowhere!

The ATM Caves Belize – Know Before You Go

If you’re thinking of doing an ATM Cave tour, or you’re reading this article because you’ve already booked it, there are a few useful things to know before you go. For starters, you can only visit the ATM Caves as part of a guided tour. This section talks about what to wear, as well as what to pack in your day bag for after the excursion.

The Best ATM Cave Tours

There are different tours you can choose from that do tours to the ATM caves in Belize. Here are some of the top-rated options for the best ATM cave tours Belize offers.

Closest Town To ATM Caves

You can book this tour from other places in Belize, although if you’re staying on the islands to either Caye Caulker or San Pedro, then I recommend arriving on mainland Belize the day before. You could stay the night in Belize City and do the ATM tour from there and also tie in some cave tubing before heading back to the islands.

The easiest place to visit the ATM caves from is in San Ignacio. You’ll also be able to visit Cahal Pech ruins from here. This is a relatively small Mayan site located close to the town of San Ignacio

ATM Cave Tour What To Wear

You might be wondering what to wear on the ATM Cave Tour. Here’s a list of things to bear in mind when you visit the ATM Cave Belize.

• Wear clothes that you don’t mind getting wet in – there is no option to not get wet.

• Your clothing stands a good chance of getting scuffed up on the rocks, so wear something that you’re not bothered about getting trashed.

• Try and wear something that covers at least your knees and shoulders to stop your skin from getting scuffed up too; some of the rock is sharp and you’ll be squeezing through some pretty tight gaps.

• Make sure whatever you are wearing is comfortable when it’s wet. You will be soaked for about 7 hours with no chance of drying out. Chaffing denim will not be your friend i.e. don’t even think about wearing denim. 

• As far as footwear goes, you’ll need something suitable for hiking and swimming in. They also need to be enclosed – so no flip-flops/thongs and comfortable to wear when they are wet. I went for my old pair of tennis shoes.

As a general rule, you don’t need to take anything into the cave with you, however, if there are essentials that you can’t go without (e.g. medication) then take them in a good quality waterproof bag.

In the past, I’ve used zip-lock bags, which are fine for keeping my stuff dry during a downpour or when you’re not submerged in water. Unfortunately, a zip-lock bag won’t cut it while you’re in the caves so if you need to take stuff, don’t scrimp here.

ATM Cave Tour Packing List

After a whole day hiking and grubbing about in the ATM caves, don’t forget to pack these essentials for the journey home.

You’ll be able to leave your stuff in the 4×4 and collect it at the end of the day. There are changing rooms on site. Also, don’t take anything valuable with you, leave it all back in the safety of your accommodation.

But don’t forget to take…

• A towel – A lightweight microfiber towel, is perfect for quickly drying off before getting changed back into your dry and clean clothes.
• A change of clothing – including dry shoes and if you’re susceptible to the cold like me, then a warm jumper for the journey home. Flip-flops/ thongs are fine for the journey back.
• A big plastic bag – your clothes are going to be wet and muddy, and most likely humming of sweat. Make sure you take a plastic bag big enough to contain the water and smell!

The Belize ATM Cave Tour – What to Expect On The Day

I’m not going to lie and rose tint this, some of the ATM Cave Tour is tough! 

But don’t be put off by that. Your tour guide will choose a route suitable for the ability of your group. Our guide obviously thought that the group I was in were all hardened explorers!

There is a selection of routes into the caves, some are more strenuous than others.

During my time in the ATM Caves, there was even a group of people in their late 60s/early 70s. As long as you have a moderate level of fitness, mobility and a sense of adventure you will be able to do the ATM Cave tour. 

If you are worried at all, make sure you check with your guide before going on the tour and tell them exactly what you are and aren’t willing and able to do.

I visited the ATM Cave Belize during the wettest time of the year. Because the caves are water-filled, the level of rain in the preceding days will have an impact on how tough it is – all the water levels both inside and outside of the cave when I did it were much higher than normal.

ATM Cave Tour Cost & Booking the ATM Cave Tour

To visit the ATM caves, you can only go with officially licenced and certified tour guides. The guides all go through extensive training both for the physical stuff and the history behind what you’re going to see. They work with local archaeologists to preserve the caves and artefacts.

Try to book the ATM Cave Belize tour as far in advance as possible, especially during peak season when spaces fill up quickly. There are only a limited number of guides, and they are limited to taking in a certain number of visitors per day – this is an attempt to preserve the delicate ecosystem within the cave. You can check out availability for the ATM Cave Tour by clicking here. 

Group size varies, the largest group is 8. I was in a group of 5. Prices vary depending on which vendor you book with or whether you go with a private guide or not.

The price includes a fully qualified guide, safety equipment, pick-up and drop-off at your hotel, transfers to the cave and lunch and of course a full day of epicness!

The ATM Cave in Belize is located in the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve in the west of the country. It’s about an hour from San Ignacio and whichever tour you book your transfer here will be included in the price. 

Creatures That Live In The ATM Caves

You might come across some little cave critters too, sometimes little crabs or fish in the water, and occasionally an Amblypygi (also known as tailless whip scorpions) – although harmless to humans, they can be huge and have a face that only their mother would love.

For some, these cave critters might be the stuff of nightmares. You’ll find these tailless whip scorpions all over Central America hiding in dark damp places. An adult one is about the size of a dinner plate, ugly as sin but harmless to humans

In short, the ATM cave tour is as close as most of us will get to be Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. To get to these awesome artefacts you have to cross three rivers, do some jungle trekking and enter a pitch-black cave then navigate (with the help of the guide) your way through the narrow crevasses, plunge pools, and slippery climbs all while going against the flow of the river!

Still interested in exploring the Belize ATM Caves? Awesome! Then keep reading for full (and gory) details of what happens on the day.

The ATM Cave in Belize – What’s The Experience Like?

The guide arrived early in the morning – I’m not a morning person, so 7 am for me feels crazy early – in his 4×4 at my accommodation in San Ignacio. I was the last of the group to be picked up. You will be told your pick-up time when you book the tour. After an hour-long and bumpy journey later, we arrived at the entrance to the archaeological park.

There are changing rooms, toilets and (cold) showers here. Our guide told us, ‘if you need a snack or a real toilet, now is the last chance’.

We get kitted up in a helmet with a waterproof headlamp on top. Apart from the clothes on our backs and shoes on our feet, this is all that goes on the ATM Cave tour. Leaving everything else behind we were now ready to start our ATM Cave Belize tour adventure.

And into the jungle, you go

Within about a 200m muddy walk we were at the first of three river crossings. Due to the Biblical-style rains, the region had suffered recently, the rivers were high at my time of visit.

High rivers meant they were a chocolate brown colour with a reasonably strong current, and that you couldn’t touch the floor; you have to swim. Thankfully there is a rope to hold on to so that you can pull yourself across. Just don’t let go!

Clambering out onto the muddy bank, our group continued through the jungle until we arrived at river crossing number 2. This one isn’t as wide or deep. Repeat the process one more time; jungle walk followed by a river crossing and you’re done.

Eventually, after more jungle trekking we came out to a bit of a clearing in the jungle which is also your last toilet stop before entering the caves. The word ‘toilet’ is used in its loosest sense.

Basically, it’s a pee behind a tree with your fellow teammates. I am going to add that girls and boys have different trees to go behind. 

the real subterranean adventure begins

The next bit really feels like it’s been taken straight from Tomb Raider. I half expected Lara Croft to come bounding out of the jungle. What we could see was a great big mouth of a cave entrance, covered with hanging vines and foliage with a river gushing out of it into a pool of deep clear water.

Our route was to continue into the great pitch-black hole in front of us. This is the entrance to the ATM cave and what would have been the way into the Mayan underworld.

Before entering we were given a short briefing. The essential rules are that you follow every instruction to the n-th degree that the guide gives you. Don’t go ahead of him, unless he’s told you to. Don’t even think about going ‘off-piste’ on your own personal excursion and if there’s a cordoned-off area, it’s for a reason so don’t cross it.

Briefing done, helmet lights on and one at a time we jump into the pool of water outside the cave swimming against the water current and into the mouth of the cave.

The next few hours were a constant mix of swimming, clambering over rocks and scrambling through ravines or down little waterfalls. It’s a full-body workout.

If you aren’t into little critters, take note here. This is where you’ll want to keep an eye out for some of the residents of the caves. The sinister-looking yet harmless tailless whip scorpions, which I mentioned earlier in this article.

Climbing inside the ATM Cave in Belize

After cottoning on that our group was fairly nimble, our guide decided to take us on the ‘fun’ route.

Imagine, a tall and very narrow crevasse, that goes on and on in the pitchback, with water being channelled down it pushing you back if you were to let go. Using every body part, to wedge ourselves in the crevasses against the force of the water, we each shuffled ourselves inch-by-inch, slowly along the ravine. A bit scuffed up, we eventually, made it to the end. It was exhausting!

This opened up into a climb up a great big calcification. At the top you’ll get to see freshwater dripping through the roof of the cave, creating new formations. 

Climbing overall is fairly easy in the ATM caves due to the calcification of the rock, it leaves it feeling like gritty cement, but white and sparkly, but because of the gritty texture even though they are wet, they aren’t slippery.

And finally, we make it to the Great Chamber

Eventually, after more traversing, we arrive at the pinnacle of our ATM Cave Belize Tour; the Great Chamber. The air in this part of the cave is smelly, still and stuffy.

The Great Chamber is at the top of a wet and more slippery rock formation. This one is much less grippy than anything we’d climbed so far, foot traffic has made it smooth. It’s a long way down with nothing much to break our fall (apart from our backs maybe!).

At the top of the formation, you’ll be greeted by a strange sight, dozens of pairs of abandoned shoes. This section of the ATM Cave Tour is done barefoot (or in socks). There are still thousands of ancient Mayan artifacts buried in the silt and sediment and removing shoes helps to reduce the impact of tourists tramping over it.

Carvings of sacred faces and creatures in the soft rock of the stalactites and stalagmites greet us. These were created by the Shamans and High Priests. In all honesty, the carvings themselves don’t look that impressive at first glance. However, when a light is shone on them and their shadows are cast against the back wall they become more imposing. A thousand years ago, this would have looked otherworldly. Clever stuff!

Looking around at the ground, you will see hundreds of ceramic jars – some look like they had only just been put down and others were calcified over and had almost become part of the rock.

If you’ve read any other articles on my travel blog about Myans, like the one on Tikal in Guatemala, you’ll have realised that the Mayan Empire was pretty savage. They were big into their sacrifices. Here’s where the stories our guide tells us start to get gory.

The first of the body remains they show us were from monkeys, these were a lesser offering. Along with the monkey bones, our guide goes on to point out a smaller collection of bones.

We were told these bones were from the Priests or Shamans themselves who would cut off their little fingers as a larger offering. Our guide gleefully points at a little row of bones, once belonging to someone as he tells us this.

We continue the tour of the Great Chamber with our guide, who doesn’t hold back in the description of each specimen we stop to look at. The more he talks and explains, it does make me thankful that I have a pretty much empty stomach at this point. Twinned with the stuffy air of the cave I do start to feel quite queasy! – yeah, I’m not good with gore.

Bones Soup anyone?

As if the stories of sacrifice and cutting off fingers inside the ATM Caves weren’t enough, we then get introduced to the term bone soup.

This is the ‘affectionate’ term that the archaeologists had given this area of the Great Chamber where they discovered a whole load of skulls and body parts belonging to numerous sacrifice victims, who were then dumped into one pit on top of each other.

These various sacrifices of prisoners were much larger offerings to the Gods than the previous priest’s pinkies that we’d seen.

Our guide seemed to be revelling in making us wince, as he goes on to tell us about the various forms of self-mutilation they practised; stories of how they cut off their foreskin, sharpened their teeth with files, scarred themselves and so on. All signs of how superior they were and with the hope of appeasing their Gods.

Is anyone feeling peaky yet?

‘The Crystal Maiden’

Feeling quite nauseous now, we head across a muddy clay flat, eventually finishing up at a ladder. In classic Belize style, it’s wooden and rickety, goes up and up, with no ounce of safety rail and a hard landing if you slip – I was quite accustomed to the lack of H&S now!

At the top there is a chamber with a pretty much complete skeleton; ‘The Crystal Maiden’. It’s not going to take a genius to figure out why she is called The Crystal Maiden. The calcification means that it literally sparkles in our torchlight.

Our guide told us that the Crystal Maiden was once thought to have been a female, hence the name, however, recent studies now say it was a male in his early to mid-twenties.

Male or female, who knows, but these remains are the apex of the absolute gore that went on in the ATM caves. S/he was most likely a prisoner from a rival tribe who was captured and tortured to death as the ultimate human sacrifice.

Our guide didn’t spare any detail in the description of the series of events that happened here. According to our guide, who seemed to be couldn’t resist these gore stories, the more you tortured someone, the more you would please your God. 

The Crystal Maiden was found in a spread-eagle position; most likely he was held down by other lesser priests while the Grand Priest performed the ritual. By looking at the injuries from the skeleton the archaeologists know that a club-like object was used first to dislocate the knee.

They then cut off one of the hands before breaking her/his back. You could clearly see the crushed vertebrate halfway up the spine of the skeleton.

He then added that it was common practice in the Mayan times for priests to remove the organs of the prisoners while they were alive.

Side note: My head right now is just rallied with flashbacks from the film Apocalypto – if you’ve not seen it and gore is your thing go watch it – if like me, you hate gore, I’d suggest giving the film a miss.

The reason why NO-ONE is allowed to take cameras in with them

Not too far from The Crystal Maiden, you will see the reason why no one is allowed to take a camera on the ATM Cave Tour. The infamous skull with a whopping great hole in it from the irresponsible visitor who dropped their camera on it.

This skeleton with the camera-shaped hole in its head is huddled down in a curled-up position. We were told it was of a younger person. Our guide with the gore fetish goes on to tell us that this sacrifice victim was bound with their arms around their back and then had their head chopped off. 

And back out to civilisation

We descend the rickety ladder and back across the mudflats, dodging the puddles of stagnant water, passing more skeletons and bone pits, sometimes with just tiny fragments of bone poking out of the ground.

It’s then I have that morbid thought cross my mind; how much skeleton fragment and bone dust do I have stuck on my feet? I try to push that thought straight out of my mind! Thankfully, we are getting back into the water to wash it all off.

The route back out of the cave is easier than the route in as you go with the flow of the river.

Our guide still has a couple of tricks up his sleeve just to keep us on our toes. We have to swim through a rock formation called fittingly called the ‘Throat Cutter’. This aptly named feature is a shard of rock that’s jutting out, at neck height.

The water here is fairly deep so you carefully and strategically have to swim through the gap, with no clearance for anything – good luck to anyone with a fat neck!

We finish off with a fun formation – a naturally formed rock slide tumbling down a slide-like channel into a little pool. Slowly a little glimmer of light in the distance shows that we are nearly out. Our ATM Cave Tour is almost over.

Retracing the jungle hike and back through the three rivers, we finally arrive back at the van. 

We had survived, apart from the odd scuff and bruise, unscathed. And it was frickin’ awesome.

Belize ATM Cave – FAQs

I’ve gone into detail about what to expect when you do the Belize ATM tour. This section has the answers to questions that frequently come up about doing this tour.

Are you ready to do the ATM Cave Tour?

I hope this article has answered all your questions about what to expect on the ATM Caves tour. This was a total immersive Indiana Jones/ Lara Croft experience and if you are in the country I would highly recommend doing an ATM Belize tour.

It’s the perfect excursion for anyone who loves an actual adventure, twinned with tons of storytelling, facts and archaeology. It’s exhilarating and exhausting and I’d do it all again in an instant.

If you enjoyed this travel guide, you might also like…

• Scuba Dive Belize Blue Hole; is it worth it?
• Best of Guatemala in 2 weeks 
• The Tikal Sunrise Tour, Guatemala

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