Yesterday was a good day. I've been a bit out of touch with my roots. I came into photography due to a love of adventure and travel. Most of friends in the past have been refined artists of stupid human tricks. Both finely tuned athletes or just fun loving adventure seekers that defy death on a regular basis. Anyway, blah, blah, blah....
I've had the luck of good friends willing to do crazy things so I can get pretty pictures. I got away from that and drifted down the highway of architectural photography. It's my bread and butter you know. I take pretty pictures of hotels and resorts. It's fun most all the time and a pretty good life. However, it's all I've been doing lately. Well..... yesterday I went caving again. Yahoooo!
Ken Dart took us through Actun Chapat on one of his remote properties. Ken and I had been shooting emails back and forth for over a year now trying to arrange a time where we both could do this shoot. Us being my buddy Shawn (another photographer) and myself. This was NOT a trip for my girlfriend. Shawn was willing though. We met Ken at his office just east of the Guatemalan border by about a couple of miles, loaded our crap into his rather rugged and imposing Land Rover and we were off!
The three of us drove down a dirt road that rapidly degenerated into crappy road and then into a deeply rutted, nasty overgrown, sinous, jeep trail winding through deep jungle. It's one of those deals where the wife or girlfriend will kill you if she has to walk because of your dumb ass idea. Nice. I'm home now. After an hour of kidney rattling driving by Ken and some good conversation, we wound up at clearing on his personal 300 acre property deep inside the bush. This clearing is a future campsite for
visitors and tourists in the future. Apparently, it's currently used as base camp and staging area for the archeologists stuyding the caves on his property. Gear on and off we went. The hike to the cave was about 45 minutes along some beautful rock shelters, cliffs, and ravines. It had a few ups and downs but overall was pretty easy.
Once we got to the cave, we really started to move faster. It was getting late and we did have a late start that day. According to Ken we covered about 4-5 hours of leisurely caving in about 40 minutes. We just did a straight shot to the skylight where we wanted to get an immersive panorama. I'd note that the route to this area is not too bad but there is some scrambling and not for the weak. Anyone in decent shape wouldn't have problems though.
Since it was late I only got one panorama of the area. It is interesting and I'd like to spend some time there really thinking things through and finding the best angles but not this time. I got what I could get in the time I had to work with. The cave has what Ken says is "the largest corpus of artificial constructions in western Belize, perhaps the country". I'm not sure what this means. There are many altars through the cave. We were interested in one in particular. Next time, I'll give the time this cave deserves to really explore it and enjoy it.
This is a one in a lifetime activity for those who want a true caving experience in remote jungle with an experienced tour operator. It's an adventure you won't soon forget. Contact Ken Dart at Belizean Sun Tours Call him at 501-665-2808. Email him at
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. By the way, (501) is the the country code. There is no area code here. Tell him that Ben sent you.
Regards,
Ben
