6 Best Sights in Mountain Pine Ridge, The Cayo District

This wet cave, now a part of the Barton Creek Archeological Reserve in a remote area off the Mountain Pine Ridge Road, offers a canoeing adventure in Xibalba (the Mayan underworld). You'll float through about a mile of a long underground chamber—the cave is nearly 5 miles (8 km) long and parts have never been completely explored. You'll see Mayan ceramics along with ancient calcified skeletal remains and skulls. You can go on a tour from San Ignacio or from your lodge. PACZ Tours, for example, offers a six-hour tour, including lunch and admission to the cave, for BZ$170 plus tax per person, and Chaa Creek offers a half-day tour for one- to four persons for BZ$310 plus BZ$50 per person for park admission and equipment plus tax. You can also drive to the cave yourself, rent a boat and gear, and hire a guide near the cave. Getting to the cave is an adventure in itself, requiring a long drive on rough roads. Parts of the road and the cave itself may be inaccessible after hard rains. Be careful in the cave; it's best to tour with a reputable tour company with an experienced tour guide and reliable, well-maintained equipment such as float vests.

Named after the famed Guatemala-born herbal healer who died in 1996 at the age of 106, Elijio Panti National Park (Noj K'a'ax Meen Elijio Panti National Park) is part of Belize's extensive national parks system. It spans about 13,000 to 16,000 acres (the exact area is undetermined) around the villages of San Antonio, Cristo Rey, and El Progresso and along the Macal River. In the park are Sakt'aj waterfalls and two dry caves known as Offering and Cormorant. The hope is that with no hunting in this park, more birds and wildlife will return to western Belize. Development of the park has been slowed by differing perspectives among those in San Antonio Village, including Maria Garcia (a relative of Elijio Panti) of the Itzamna Society, various departments of the government of Belize, and other parties. Even today, there is no one official website for the park. Currently you must be accompanied by a licensed tour guide to enter the park. For information on the park and how to visit it, check with tour guides in San Ignacio or San Antonio.

The largest and the best of Belize's butterfly farms open to the public, Green Hills has about 30 native species in a huge flight area on display at any given time. Jan Meerman, who has published a book on Belize's butterflies and moths, runs the place with Dutch partner Tineke Boomsma and other staff, who speak a variety of English, Spanish, Dutch, Yucatec Mayan, and Creole. On the 100-acre grounds there are also many flowers, including passion flowers, bromeliads, heliconias, and orchids. Birding is good here as well, with more than 300 species sighted in the area. Bring lunch and eat it in the Green Hills picnic area.

This reserve is a highlight of any journey to Belize and an adventure to explore, although the scenery may remind you more of the piney woods of the far southern Appalachians than of tropical jungle. The Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve is in the high country of Belize—low mountains and rolling hills are covered in part by vast pine forests and crisscrossed with old logging roads. Waterfalls and streams abound, and there are accessible caves, such as Rio Frio. The higher elevations, up to near 3,400 feet, provide cooler temperatures and outstanding views. The best way to see this area, which covers more than 106,000 acres, is on a mountain bike, a horse, or your own feet. It's also not a bad ride in an SUV, which you'll need to get you through the Pine Ridge to the Chiquibul wilderness and the magnificent ruins of Caracol. Aside from the Honduras pines, 80% of which were damaged in recent years by the southern pine beetle but are now recovering, you'll see lilac-color mimosa, Saint-John's-wort, and occasionally a garish red flower appropriately known as hotlips. Look for the craboo, a wild tree whose berries are used in a brandy-like liqueur believed to have aphrodisiac properties (the fruit ripens June through August). Birds love this fruit, so any craboo is a good place to spot orioles and woodpeckers. You may not see them, but the Pine Ridge is home to many of Belize's large mammals, including tapirs, cougars, jaguars, and ocelots, and in the streams are a few Morelet's crocodiles.

These caves are only a few miles by car down a steep track, but ecologically speaking, they are in a different world. In the course of a few hundred yards, you drop from pine savanna to tropical forest. Few other places in Belize illustrate its extraordinary geological diversity as clearly as this startling transition. A river runs right through the center of the main cave—actually it's more of a tunnel, open at both ends—and, over the centuries, has carved the rock into fantastic shapes. Swallows fill the place, and at night ocelots and margays pad silently across the cold floor in search of slumbering prey. Seen from the dark interior, the light-filled world outside seems more intense and beautiful than ever. About a mile (2 km) away are the Cuevas Gemelas (Twin Caves), best seen with a guide. Due to occasional bandit activity in the area, at times a Belize Defence Forces escort is required to visit the Rio Frio Caves—if driving on your own, ask at your hotel or at the Douglas Da Silva forestry station, where private vehicles meet up with a Defence Force escort.

Inside the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, Thousand Foot Falls actually drops nearly 1,600 feet, making it the highest waterfall in Central America. A thin plume of spray plummets over the edge of a rock face into a seemingly bottomless gorge below. The catch is that the viewing area, where there is a shelter with some benches and a public restroom, is some distance from the falls. Many visitors find the narrow falls unimpressive from this vantage point. To climb closer requires a major commitment: a steep climb down and up the side of the mountain is several hours.