The sun rises over the Caribbean.

Two battle-weary fishing canoes rest under a palm by the Gulf of Honduras, in the small town of Punta Gorda at the southern tip of Belize.

The outspread top branches of the ceiba tree, sacred to the Maya.  For them, these limbs symbolized the heavens overhead.

The gated entrance to Chechem Ha, near Benque Viejo del Carmen, about 10 miles from San Jose Succotz in the Cayo District of Western Belize.

Cave guide and archeologist Gonzalo Pleitez at the entrance to Chechem Ha.

by Nate McMahon

About 10 meters under the Belizean jungle, in an ancient Mayan cave, I hung by my arms from a broken ladder. My feet dangled in space and shards of pottery glinted on the ledge above my head. My guide grabbed my ankles frantically and I wondered: Was the cave about to claim another sacrifice?

I'd left my home near Portland, Oregon, on a cold, wet day in February, with the pavement reflecting headlights in the early-morning gloom. Seven hours later I stepped off the airplane on the edge of the Caribbean, just outside Belize City. Warm, moist air enveloped me like a benediction.

The acute change made my escape from traffic and ringing phones more emphatic. But acute change brings apprehension, and my airline seatmate was no help. Middle-aged and fit, with frosted hair, she was en route from the slopes of Colorado to her condo on Ambergris Caye (pronounced key), Belize's tourist-rich diving mecca. She had a wealth of stories about inland violence and petty thievery. As I explored the country, however, I came to realize that Belizeans are kind and sociable. The only time I felt uncomfortable was when I found out corn tortillas went well with 'quash'--that is, with coatimundi, a member of the raccoon family.

Belize is a melting pot about the size of New Hampshire (nine thousand square miles), on the Yucatan Peninsula. It's bordered by Mexico to the north, Guatemala to the west and south, and the Caribbean to the east. The day-to-day language is Creole (an English patois), but nearly everyone speaks standard English and conversational Spanish, and often a smattering of Kekchi or Mopan Mayan. About a quarter of a million people live there.

Mayans dominated present-day Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and southern Mexico starting in about 250 A.D. Arriving in the 16th century, the Spanish didn't infiltrate Belize as thickly as some areas of the New World, but natives who lived there had another problem: British buccaneers. The Baymen, as the British in Belize were called, used the 240-mile reef-sheltered Belize coast as a place to rest and hide. The Spanish still claimed the land until the Baymen won the rights to Belize at the battle of St. George's Caye in 1798.

Relations were rocky between Brits and Belizeans and eventually the colonial system crumbled. By 1964 Belize was allowed to govern itself, and in 1973 the name Belize replaced British Honduras. In 1981 Belize finally achieved independence.

Most of the residents are mestizo, a generally Spanish-speaking mix of Mayan and European. Until recently, Creoles (like in Jamaica, mon) were the largest group, but refugees from Guatemala and an exodus of Creoles to the U.S. shifted the balance. One of the most distinctive groups is the Garifuna, its people descended from fiercely independent Carib Indians and Africans exiled or escaped from eastern Caribbean colonies in the 18th Century. Other visible cultures include Latino, European, Asian and native Mayan.

The moment I left the airport I grabbed a cab for Belize City. What crime and pollution there is in Belize is most prevalent in Belize City, which used to be the capital and is still the largest city. I planned-perhaps unfairly-to use it as a bus stop and nothing more. My cab dropped me off at one of Belize's ubiquitous bus companies, and within 20 minutes I was headed toward San Ignacio, the largest city in Belize's western Cayo District. Bus travel is one of the best deals in Belize, and the buses are a great way to connect with the land and its people. They run regularly and reliably through every corner of the country. The two-hour, 70-mile trip from Belize City to San Ignacio cost $5 BZ ($2.50 US). It also was uncomfortable, crowded and left me covered with a fine coating of dust, like a floured chicken leg.

I arrived in San Ignacio after dark. It's a busy town of steep hillsides near the Macal River. San Ignacio is a kind of Dodge City in the jungle, minus the gunfights. The streets are narrow, often unpaved. Two and three-story buildings flank the main drag, pieced together with wood and stucco, balconies drooping, porches sagging.

It didn't take me long to find the best bar in Cayo - Eva's. Eva's looks like a sleepy Southern diner. Screen doors and windows are always open, checkered tablecloths cover the tables; beer mugs are thick with condensation. The bar is a conduit to area guides, and offers local food, drinks, a computer hooked to the Internet, and a raft of information about activities in Cayo.

I ordered a tasty black molé stew, made with half a chicken and a boiled egg. The dish came with half a dozen fresh corn tortillas. Within an hour I'd made friends with Bob the bartender, a tattooed veteran of British service, and a smattering of locals and tourists. A bonus at Eva's - and, joyfully, at every bar in Belize - is the excellent local brew. Called Belikin, it's available in lager or stout. The bottles feature a Mayan temple; if you drink a lot of Belikin, you really do see Mayan temples.

Gonzalo, a hip half-Mayan, half-Latino, half-drunk guide, was one of my new friends. He worked as an archeologist and guide at Chechem Ha cave, about 15 miles south of San Ignacio. The cave winds for miles under a thickly forested hillside. For more than 1,000 years the Maya left pots of corn and other offerings inside caves, which they believed were sacred entrances into the underworld, Xibalba (zhi-bal-BA). Other offerings were more sanguine.

The Mayans believed the gods gave them a responsibility to keep the world in order, and a tool for doing so. Bloodletting - both from willing donors and sacrificial victims - was an integral part of Mayan life. Blood was offered to keep the Mayan world balanced. The Mayan Tree of Life, the ceiba, symbolizes this balance. The ceiba has a straight trunk with smooth gray bark. Its branches are confined to the uppermost reaches of the tree, where they stretch out to receive the sun's rays. The wide-reaching branches of the ceiba symbolize the heavens overhead. Its quick-growing trunk is the middle world, where humans live. Its deep roots symbolize the underworld. Every evening when the sun sinks, it disappears into Xibalba. There, Jaguar escorts it from west to east through the nine layers of the underworld, so it can rise safely in the morning.

To get to Chechem Ha, I rented a small, battered mountain bike and embarked on an 11-mile ride. My bike came nowhere close to fitting my 6-foot, 5-inch frame, and the seat was loose. The hot sun sapped my strength. The dirt road I traveled headed up and never down, a Newtonian violation I considered unacceptable.

The only thing to dull my pain was the raving beauty of the surroundings. Groups of butterflies, sparkling in the sun, flitted around like jeweled tiaras. Piercing flowers sprang boldly from the jungle, challenging the patterned greenery for superiority. Parrots squawked overhead like tuneless trumpets. The ride would have been pleasant if not for the quivering pain in my quadriceps and the chafing between my legs.

I found the turn-off to Chechem Ha and dodged cows along a double track until I reached the Morales farm. William Morales discovered the cave about 10 years ago on his parents' farm, and the government gave the family the right to run the site. They've built a small restaurant and some cabañas around a cheerfully rippling stream under the jungle hardwoods. About 100 yards from the restaurant the stream plunges over a bank into a beautiful, 50-foot waterfall.

Gonzalo met me at the restaurant. After we said hello, he led me past a tame spider monkey and into the bush. He guided me about a mile and a half through the secondary jungle, among cohune palms and tangled underbrush, to the entrance of the cave. A square hole about as high as my waist peeked out from a hillside, secured with a locked metal grate to keep out looters.

Gonzalo unlocked the gate with a flourish and we crawled through, flashlights at the ready. The cave opened up until we could stand comfortably, and we immediately spotted ochre potshards at our feet. The cave twists and winds, doubling back, climbing and falling. Parts of the cave can only be accessed with ropes, and ladders made of sawn-off tree limbs lead to hidden ledges.

On the ledges, in corners, under overhangs, among fat white cave spiders and beneath clusters of bats are the riches of the cave: more than 1,000 years of pots, many fully formed and intact, some with dust from the original corn offerings still inside. In the cave's central chamber, a small stele and altar were built. This indicates sacrifice, according to Gonzalo, and means Mayan nobles visited the cave.

The cave also contains painted plates with tripod legs, designed to catch blood during rituals. One pot was painted with the figure of a man, arms outspread, head suspended above his torso. Gonzalo said the floating head symbolized a sacrifice.

Which brings us back to my predicament. As I was climbing down from a pot ledge on one of two side-by-side wooden ladders, about ten feet off the ground, two rungs broke under my feet. I was left hanging in midair from an unbroken rung. I dangled for only a few seconds before my feet found purchase on the ladder. Gonzalo assisted, and when I dismounted said, "I was going to tell you -- the ladder you came down is for smaller people. The one next to it is for bigger people.

"I've never seen anyone break a ladder before," he added.

When we were again on speaking terms, Gonzalo talked of the wonder and possibility inherent in the cave. He and his fellow archeologists haven't been inside very long, and treasures still hide in the cave's crevices. Every year the rainy season shuts the cave down, delaying further exploration. When the archeologists are done on the surface they plan to excavate, which could reveal more layers of relics. It will take many years of discoveries before the cave is understood.

This is true for many of the country's ancient sites. Environmental conditions and lack of funding slow exploration. While this frustrates those trying to expose the region's history, for visitors it means there is always something new to discover in Belize.