My independent tours in Belize ... or yes, I'm the Jonah ....

I'm running up a rather storied history with cave tubing in Belize, so I thought I'd share my experiences ... fun stuff, let me tell you. My first cave tubing story is from March of 2005, with my second occuring September 2006.
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March 2005 - The excitement



First of all, I was on the Carnival Glory, which is of course a very large ship. Given the number of people who want to actually go to shore and the fact that this is a tender port, debarkation is definately a waiting game. I was told by the shore excursion desk that I would be allowed out on a tender with an early group (instead of waiting for a tender ticket). I showed up to the meeting place an hour and a half before we were to meet ashore for the tour and ended up waiting for over an hour in the Amber Palace until there was a smaller tour going ashore that left room for "independents." Now, I guess I could have rushed line at Deck 0 and tried my luck at getting on a tender, but I really hate line jumpers. Anyway ....

Once ashore, we (a friend and I) headed to Marvin's booth to pay for our tour. First of all, evidently the telephone lines were down we found out, meaning that we had to pay with cash instead of credit as I had planned. Considering we still owed Marvin about $100, this pretty much cleared out our pockets (were trying to travel "light" moneywise).

Next, there was a large number of people who booked with Wet 'n Wild this day ... 6 off of the Glory and over 20 (I think) off of RCI. My friend and I ended up in a small van, driven by Tom, that was packed with about 13 people. The rest of the group was loaded onto a bus.

During the ~1 hour drive to the tubing site, Tom gave out a lot of interesting information about Belize, Belize City, and the Mayans. He set up his tour as an exploration of the religion of the Mayans, which added a bit of a mythological bent to the tubing itself.

We finally arrive and wait for the rest of the group that was loaded into a bus. Evidently the bus lost a transmission on the way, so the large group was split up again into two different busses who passed the broken bus on the way (this is second hand info about the other bus, just FYI). Anyway Tom went ahead and took four of us off onto the tour since the first part of the large group that arrived wanted to wait for the rest of the members of their party.

About the tubing itself ... Tom really seemed to his way around the cave and kept up his Mayan religion theme for the entirety of the tubing and was determined to show us the nine dark lords of the underworld represented within the caves. Like I said, interesting. At one point in our hike to the river, we took a different branch and ended up ahead of some of the larger groups ahead of us. We then backpaddled a little bit once in the river to go into the cave that we had cut around. In this cave, we actually got out of our tube, and Tom took us up into one of the caves where he showed us some various crystals and ledges where he said that people had found remnants of the Mayan civilization, such as pottery.

The river was definately not what I would call fast. There were usually two combinations of current and depth... shallow and quick or deeper and very slow. Now I'll admit that I'm a large man, which means that when the river got shallow, I was really scraping my butt on the rocks, even when I was trying to pull it out of the water as advised. When the river was deep, I found myself constantly having to paddle to keep up the pace of the tour ... which was very tiring. Even with all the paddling, our small group was constantly being passes by very large groups who seemed to be trying to move through the caves as quickly as possible. Many a time, Tom had the four of us over along one wall showing us rock formations while the big groups scurried past. Now, since there were so many people in the caves, I was nervous about losing our small group, and I ended up with a pretty nice neck strain by the end of the day from constantly trying to look around. The caves and this part of the experience was great.

Now ... the fun begins.

Even though our small group left ahead of the big group, they caught up to us at the end of the river. As we got out, I talked to Tom and told him that the last tender to our ship left at 3:15 Belize time (4:15 ship time), or in about two and half hours. This point had been confused earlier as the RCI ship's last tender left at 4:15 Belize time. Tom's eyes widened a bit, and he said that they'd get cracking to get us back to the port on time.

We went to the huts and changed, and by the time all 13 people in my van were ready to go, the bus for the large group had already left. Tom collected everyone, then proceded to race down the tubing "road" which might be the most uneven stretch of ground I have ever seen. We stopped at Amigos, but since we were running behind, all six people going to the Glory would be returning in Tom's van (we had been split up all day ... only my friend and I were Glory passengers in Tom's van before). Now, the other 4 had already gotten to Amigos and eaten by the time we arrive (not sure how that happened), so we waited around for about 10 minutes for our food to be packaged to go. By this time, I'm constantly looking at my watch and working myself up to saying "Forget the food. Let's go." I'm tired from tubing, however, and feel extremely dehydrated, so allow myself to not say anything and just stand next to the bar sucking on the liter of water that came with my soon-to-be-ready lunch. Food in hand, we jump into Tom's van and take off with about an hour and a half before the last tender.

My friend and I are eating in Tom's van while we hear the other Glory passengers talking. This is where we heard about the transmission on their first bus. Anyway, on the route we see a broken down bus on the side of the road, so Tom pulls over to let the driver make a call to her company. No problem. I understand.

We continue down the road, and about 5-10 minutes after passing the broken bus, we hear a pop, quickly followed by a lovely wubba wubba sound. The deeply spiritual Tom curses, and pulls off to the side of the road. We six passengers get out of the van and one (evidently some sort of mechanic) helps Tom get the jack set up ... about one hour until the last tender leaves. Things seem to be going smoothly until Tom has trouble getting one of the lugnuts off of the flat tire. More curses. He finally resorts to using his foot to try to lever the wrench and put enough pressure on the lugnut to get it off. TWANG! The stud breaks off of the tire (and I think takes off a part of the break) ... in other words, we are in some trouble. More cursing from Tom and silent curses from the rest of us. The other passengers mutter something about their luck with transportation that day, to which Tom replies "Ah, so you're the Jonahs."

So now we have less than an hour to get to the tender and we have no way to get there. We ask Tom if he should call someone, which he declines saying that "There's always another bus." Being in the mood that we were, we asked about the last bus, which Tom replied was followed by an empty 2nd bus, just in case.

After about five minutes along the side of the road, we spy a bus coming down the road and Tom flags it down. This is not a tour bus however. Instead it was evidently some sort of old school bus that was serving as Belizian public transportation from city to city. Tom begs a ride for us (not including him) and asks the driver to let us off at the first taxi stand. He then hands the oldest member of our group of six $5 American and $7 Belizian for the cab fare and tells us to tell the cab driver to take us to the tourist village. So we board the bus and find some seats amongst the passengers that were already aboard. I ended up sitting away from our main group due to the availability of empty seats and found myself in the presence of several individuals wearing camoflauge uniforms ... not exactly making me feel comfortable. I glance at my watch .... 30 minutes to go.

We are dropped off at the taxi stand at about 3:00 Belize time, so with 15 minutes to spare. The entire group of six ends up in an old station wagon with no extreme rear seats, meaning that the seating arrangements were less than comfortable with two passengers and the driver in front and four passengers crammed into the lone rear bench. The driver navigates the streets of Belize City with one hand on the wheel and one hand on a Snickers Bar, darting through narrow openings between pedestrians, cars, and merchants. I'm sitting almost on top of the driver and notice that his fuel light is on and that he's essentailly riding on fumes. Oh well, I think, and procede to keep that little tidbit to myself since we were already well away from the taxi stand. Thankfully we arrive at the tourism village with 5 minutes to spare, though the driver takes the opportunity to try to charge us $5 a person for the ride instead of $5 total. The gentleman with the money gave him $20 and told him to be happy with it. I flipped him a couple of more dollars to keep him from coming after us, and we went into the village itself.

OK ... happy ending. There was a very large line for a tender back to the Glory, meaning that we could have probably been 20-30 minutes later and still gotten a tender. The man who paid $20 out of pocket went to speak with Marvin and had that money refunded. I didn't want to bother with a few bucks ... I just wanted to get in line.

In summary, my thoughts are:

Good - The tubing itself. Definately more strenuous than I thought it would be, but a great experience.

Bad - Ground transportation. I don't know whether this is a semi-usual occurance or just a really bad day for Wet 'n Wild, but on the day I used them, the reliability of their vehicles was questionable to say the least.

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September 2006 - Giving it another shot


Working within our CC roll call, I set up a cave tubing expedition with cave-tubing.com. Now, my friends and family thought I was insane for booking another tubing trip (story here) , but I (mostly) had a blast last time and thought it would be fun to try again.

We didn’t have a set meeting time before leaving (my fault there), but at the CC gathering on the first day, we decided that it would be wise to meet in the Orpheus Lido at 8:15 and then head to a tender to make our 9:30 appointment with Yhonny. We ended up having a group of 15 people meet on the Lido, and then caught up with 4 others on the bus once ashore. We were also supposed to meet some people from the Valor, but unfortunately the Valor came in late, so Yhonny sent us out with about 12 others in a large bus with video monitors.

Our driver was Junny, and our head guide was Richard. The drive through Belize City was different than I remembered from over a year ago, as a new highway had been constructed to take bus traffic around the edge of the city instead of sending it through it. This didn’t help us much, however, as by the time we got underway, we hit 8:00 (Belize time) traffic and that slowed us up quite a bit. Throughout the wait and out on the open road, Richard offered interesting facts about Belize, and he also threw in a nice dose of entertainment, as well. The passengers managed to polish off a bottle of cashew wine, and by the time we made it to the park where the caves are, everyone was having a good time and was ready to go.

One thing to note here: there is about a 30 minute walk through the rain forest until you reach the caves. Water shoes are your best bet for footwear, as they are made to get wet. You must wear some type of shoes, and they tell you that you cannot wear flip flops or anything that doesn’t have an ankle strap. I bought my pair of water shoes at Walmart the last time I went tubing for around $5. You can also rent them on site for $3. Some of the women wore their Crocs and found them not quite suited for this activity.

Another thing to note: especially if it has rained, the trail can get a little slippery. Those water shoes may be decent footwear, but they may not be the best for traction. I know that I found myself in the mud on one occasion.

Oh yes … thirdly … the guys at cave-tubing.com try to keep a fast pace on the trails to go through extra caves and show you that they are a better value than the ship tours. This pace may be a little strenuous for some, but everyone in our group seemed to be able to keep up pretty well. Just be aware, you will be asked to hike at a decent rate with an inner tube slung over your shoulder. The guides will offer to carry the tubes for those having trouble, but there is definitely some physical exertion involved.

Once in the water, the entire group was put together in chains with the feet of the person behind you locked under your armpits. This made the tubing portion of the excursion very relaxing, as there was no real worries about steering, paddling, or getting lost. There are a few shallow parts of the river where the guides will call “Butts Up!”, but for the most part, you float, you relax, and you look at interesting rock formations.

Out of the water, we were given a few minutes to change or dry off, then we loaded back on the bus and headed to Cheers for a $5 lunch for those who wanted it. I skipped the food, but ordered a Belikin beer for $2. We stayed at the restaurant for probably around 20-30 minutes, then loaded back on the bus.

This, as Yogi Bera would say, was déjà vu all over again. After eating and heading off to Belize City, the bus broke down about 15 minutes later. We were told that it was a new bus, but that the radiator hose had somehow gone into the fan and been shredded. Whatever happened, the bus was kaput. We unloaded and waited for the backup, which had been sitting back at Cheers. Richard bought Coconut water at a nearby stand for those who wanted it, and we waited about 15 minutes for the backup to arrive. It was an old BlueBird school bus (once again, déjà vu), and we loaded on and headed for the port. We made it with about 15 minutes to spare before the published time for the last tender with many apologies by Richard for not having any shopping time.

Because we had a large group, our cost was $40/pp. The excursion through the ship was around $90/pp. Now, is it worth “risk” of missing the ship for that amount of money? That’s up for you to decide. Let me just say that cave-tubing.com had a back-up system that seemed to work quite well and they handled the matter very professionally.

In the end, many from the CC group came up to me and told me that they had a blast, so I think, hiccups and all, it was a good trip.

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So will I tube again? Maybe ... but I'll give the tour operator a warning about the bus.