HELP! Hubby nervous about cave tubing...

[Lforlisa]

he is afraid that he will somehow get "stuck" in a cave, and it will "cave" in. Does anyone have pictures of the caves? I tried to explain to him that they are not small caves, and showed him the pics from the cavetubing site, he's not convinced! Thanks!!

[driftwood]

. . . through which an entire (although not enormous) river passes. If your husband could get stuck in them he is larger than Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox put together. I have a few pictures which might prove reassuring to him, which I will gladly send you if you write me at dreynolds@aol.com; but the caverns are so large they have swallowed the two flashes in many pictures, so I will send you only the good pictures!

 

Cordially,

 

Doug "one point infraction already" Reynolds

[clackey]

he is afraid that he will somehow get "stuck" in a cave, and it will "cave" in. Does anyone have pictures of the caves? I tried to explain to him that they are not small caves, and showed him the pics from the cavetubing site, he's not convinced! Thanks!!

I did see one person get stuck in the caves. A rather large, ok, huge, woman got stranded in shallow water when her butt dragged on the bottom. She panicked, sceemed bloody murder and thrashed around like a worm in hot ashes. All she had to do was stand up in ankle deep water but she couldn't get off of her tube. I know that I'm wrong when I laugh about it but I can't help myself.:o

 

Honestly, unless there is a highwater situation, you could drive a tank through these caves.

[EBallgrl]

The caves are very open, there are no small openings that you must squeeze through. That wont be a problem for ANYONE. But as the last poster stated, you can become grounded if you are a heavy person and the water is too shallow. The man connected to the end of my group was CONSTANTLY getting grounded and the tour guides had to keep coming back and pushing him until he was free. (Boy did they work HARD!) I think only once near the end did he just get up and walk next to us so that we could start moving again. Needless to say we were the last chain of people to make it through the caves out of what seemed like 100's of people jammed in there! Because of this we were rushed and BARELY had time to change afterwards to make it on the bus in dry clothes. :eek:

[zoethesailor]

As others have posted the caves are large and no one could ever get stuck.

I have to admit before I went on this excursion I too was nervous, but, I put my fears to the side and went, and I am glad I did. All my fears were unfounded. Some of my concerns: walk was easy, no problem with bad knees, the head lamps you are issued worked great, no strange animals, and the water was shallow and moved slow. It was fun, relaxing, and something not to be missed. They also have plenty of personel to help you all through the river.

Besides, how often in your life time do you get to go cave tubing?

I hope you go and have a great time!

[Yo Ade]

I too had reservations about tube caving! My fear was being in an enclosed area and having an anxiety attack. Let me tell you - going on It's A Small World in Disney World was more enclosed. It was amazing, magnificant and very open. I never once felt clastrophobic. Do not miss this opportunity. Also do not missing jumping off one of the cliffs into the river (before you each the caves). That too was awesome!

[LHP]

I have to say that your husband may be more comfortable on an independent tour like Yhony's cave-tubing.com than the ship excursion.

 

With Yhony's group, everyone is hooked together in a line and even if the water is shallow...you don't do any work..the guides pull you through.

 

However, with the ship excursion ...everyone floats independently on their own. During dry periods, this can mean a lot of work. During the raining season, some people go through to quickly and bump against the walls.

 

Yhony's first tour leaves at 9:15AM and returns to the dock at 2:30pm.

The ship leaves about 4PM.

[Ga Gal 08]

I will also vouch for Yhonny. My husband and I did this last week with him.

 

His buses are air conditioned, and he really knows the caves.

 

The ceilings are very high, and only in a couple of places is the channel narrow, but not that narrow.

 

In addition to our head lamps, we also had a large spotlight with our group. Our group was much much much smaller than with the ship's tour.

 

At the end, you go back to a nice little place with clean bathrooms, $3 Belikin beer, soft drink, snacks, and $2 tamales that are wonderful. If you don't like that, Yhonny will take you to another restaurant, but that wasn't a problem.

 

We got back to the tender point at 2:30-- a full hour before the deadline.

 

No worries!

[ENGINEER]

Yhonny is the way to go. We went with (the Buts up gang) the last time we were in Belize. It was the second time cave tubing and it was a blast. The first time we went we did the ships package. We were on our own and worked our buts off. This last time with Yhonny was easy and they took us further down the river. We were hooked together and the guides did the work. The best part was that the price was almost half of the ships price. The people who used the ships tour complained about the lack of air conditioned buses and how much work they did. Our bus had a flat on the way back from the caves. They radioed and had us on another bus (still air conditioned) in about five minutes. We beat the cruise ship bus back to the dock by fifteen minutes. Great memory. You wont be sorry you took trip.

 

engineer

[alfngf]

I'll be posting pics soon in my review on the Carnival site and I have some cave pictures. Definitely nothing to worry about.