Day 2 - Horses and Bats

We started the day with breakfast at Cahal Pech (with some awesome watermelon juice!) before heading out to our horse back riding trip through the jungle. Since it was the off-season, it was just us two, a guide (William again) and four other guests for the whole day; we actually didn't see any other tourists at the sites, which was great.

Cahal Pech's owner, Danny, also owns a farm/jungle preserve with a stable of horses. At the stables (I think it was called Carmelita's Farm), we looked at an angry turkey, a bunch of dogs and chickens, and a howler monkey named Delilah that is kept on a leash. It was a little sad seeing the monkey with a collar but there was plenty of line on the leash and she didn't seem to mind. We each got our horses and went on a 1.5 hour ride on a path through the jungle. Tom's horse was a new mother, and the baby horse tagged along and kept bumping against the mother (and Tom). it was very cute. My horse kept wheezing and was slow, which made me feel like a fat ogre until our guide told me she was pregnant; I then felt bad for repeatedly kicking her in the stomach to make her go faster. Our timing was great, since it started to rain when we got back to the stables.

After lunching at Cahal Pech, we went on to Barton Creek for some cave canoing. This was one of my [Tina's] favorite parts. We had industrial sized flashlights on our canoes and paddled into the dark cave, where there were bats zooming around. Barton Creek Cave used to be a Mayan worship site, and there were still pottery fragments and a human child's skull (!) left preserved in the cave. Since the water level was high at this time of the season, at some parts of the cave the ceiling was just a couple feet above our heads. For a while we had to lay on our backs and push ourselves along the ceiling to fit; and yes, the bats were still hanging around! Eerie but cool.