We set off from San Ignacio (where we are staying) to Mountain Pine Ridge (National Reserve Park); which is about an hour and half drive, most of it on dirt roads which were extremely bumpy.

We made our way up to the 1000 ft falls (which are actually 1600 ft) and it was ever so hot (over 100F). The car was a state by the time we got to the falls it was far from its original white colour; covered in red dust from the roads (and to think the rental lady wanted to give us a brand new lime green car). Tony spotted a hummingbird feeding on the flowers in a tree and it was a pretty little bird; spent lots of time trying to take photos of it.

We made our way to the next stop which was Big Rock Falls and we found the start of the trail but after 20 minutes of walking in the heat and through undergrowth we couldn’t find so we went back to our car (we were ever so thankful for air conditioning).

Next on our trek was to the Rio Frio Cave, it was very big and impressive. You can enter the cave via some stone steps and can head all the way in to the cave. It gets pretty dark in the cave but your eyes adjust fairly quickly and there is also a cave opening either end (so it’s really a bloody great big tunnel)

As we left the cave, we got a flat tyre and Li was scared (and quite unhelpful) as we were in the midst of the jungle and there was a lot of rustling in the bushes next to the car. After a long hot sweaty session changing the tyre, we both were covered in red dust and looked a state.

Last stop was the Rio pools which were large rock formations with pools of water interlinked. Tony decided to cool off and clean up by swimming in the pools.

We made our way back again on the bumpy dirt terrain; it got more interesting driving in the dark. By the time we got back to our hotel, we were hungry as we missed out on lunch and tired. We decided to have dinner straight away and Tony had a fantastic T-Bone steak.