Caves Branch River Feb 24

An entry in Rocky's Mayan Whitewater guidebook on the Caves Branch River was my initial motivation for wanting to visit Belize. Though light on whitewater with barely riffles (and light on photos to give me a sense of what to expect), it offered a rare opportunity to spend a day floating down a river underground punctuated briefly by skylights, which sounded exactly like my sort of activity. Other than the guidebook entry and a single Alpacka blog post where some guys somehow managed to string together a three-day trip in the cave system, I could find no further information other than tubing down the last cave that clearly was a very popular tourist activity for cruise ship passengers. I brought my packraft to Belize without knowing really what to expect or whether I could figure out the logistics. Once in-country it became fairly clear that landowner and shuttle logistics were going to be complicated enough that it was going to be worth hiring a guide. Luckily our group's local caving guide Marcos was able to put me in touch with someone that could guide and I convinced Amanda, Carl, and Don to join me. 

We met at the Blue Hole Visitor Center and after some shuffling logistics of spraying our car with pesticide and getting a gate key we drove through an ancient looking orange grove, the trees barely able to produce fruit with all the moss and epiphytes covering them. We crossed the Caves Branch River a couple times on approach and then parked at the jungle's edge to offload kayaks. A short 400 ft long jungle track took us to a pool surrounded by dense rainforest. While I inflated my boat Amanda managed to spot some sort of giant python working its way out of the water. Almost immediately we had to carry boats about 15 ft over boulders to the submergence entrance to the first cave. 

The first cave extended over a half-mile with great formations, interesting passage shapes, and lazily moving blue waters. There were a couple minor skylight entrances up off to our left partway through, otherwise it was solid darkness other than our lights. At one point we had to maneuver boats over a pinch formed by two large boulders, otherwise everything was completely boatable despite fairly low flows.  

First cave resurgence (and below)

All too soon we reached the end of the first cave, a particularly picturesque entrance we stopped at for a brief snack before continuing on. We floated for only above 250 ft above ground before entering the second cave, this one the longest in the system at over a mile. We paddled downstream underground to a confluence and then paddled upstream to see the true submergence of the Caves Branch River. We got a particularly nice view of the jungle and limestone cliffs from here. The submergence passage was a neat pancake shape with about 4 ft of headspace for its 30 ft width. This longest cave had a river right side entrance, and then a river left skylight before we reached the tall resurgence entrance signaling the end of the second cave. 

Caves Branch Creek submergence

Second cave resurgence

Once again we were briefly back on the surface world and sat down to have lunch on a cobble bank. I could not resist a brief swim in the pleasant waters. As we ate, Jose explained that the submergence of the third cave sumps a short distance underground and so we would have to take a 0.3 mi jungle portage trail to enter a side entrance downstream. We walked to check out the submergence anyway, another nice spot with pretty blue-green waters.

Third cave submergence (sumps)

The jungle track was easy enough for me to carry my packraft and the others were allowed to drag their boats which was about as easy. The side entrance to the third cave had particularly excellent golden light filtering between jungle, boulders, and waters. We paddled upstream a good distance to a very convincing sump wall, then turned and headed downstream. The guide encouraged the others to paddle in pitch black darkness; I was more reluctant as ramming into a sharp limestone wall in my packraft would not be as consequence free as a plastic sit-on-top kayak. 

Side entrance to the third cave

The third cave continued very linearly for 0.2 miles to arrive at a very short skylight section separating it from the fourth cave. A stairway down here was the first hint of humans we had seen. There was some more excellent light filtering through the waters near these entrances.

Window between third and fourth caves

The end of the fourth cave signaled the start of the tourist hordes with dozens of people lined up at the submergence entrance to go on a guided tube through the fifth and final cave. I was particularly thankful for everything we managed to see without seeing another person up to this point. The tourists had to sit in large inflatable tubes daisy-chained together and pulled by a guide. It looked a bit silly, like wearing GoPros on Disneyland's It's a Small World ride. This fifth cave carried on for about 0.5 miles with an interesting waterfall and cave entrance entering halfway down on the left. 

Fifth cave submergence

Fifth cave resurgence

Once out the last cave we had a 0.5 mile paddle around more tubing tourists to reach our takeout. A short stroll brought us to the shops and vendors as we waited for the guide to sort out the kayaks. Thanks to Amanda, Carl, and Don for joining in the adventure. In all we paddled about 2.5 miles underground through 5 cave systems with about a mile above ground to link them. Now with the knowledge of hindsight I could see that we visited the whole system and the blog account I saw of people making a three-day trip out of it was rather ridiculous. It was a neat trip and I really loved the long stretches of packrafting through a cave system. I am sufficiently motivated to try to find other similar trips that might be possible elsewhere in the world!