Review: Belize Cave Tubing with Cave-Tubing.com

Last May Crystal and I went on a Caribbean cruise - one of our stops on the cruise was Belize City, Belize. Long before our cruise departed I spent some time researching good excursions to do at each destination, and for our day in Belize we decided to trust our time to the guys at Cave-Tubing.com. Many people are hesitant to trust any non-cruise-ship excursion dealers, but I read only praise for their professionalism and tubing experience from other cruisers, so we decided to book with them.

We arrived in Belize early in the morning, and had to take a smaller boat to the shore. I received email directions from Cave-Tubing.com before the cruise, and we had a relatively easy time finding our way to the meeting place, where we were taken to a bus. The only difficult part about finding our way to the bus was avoiding all of the other cave tubing outfits waiting at the dock, trying to persuade us to join them instead of our reservation. Because the river we would be tubing on was about 45 minutes away I was prepared for some site-seeing out of the windows, but it turned out that our tour leader, Richard, would keep us entertained most of the trip. He was a funny guy, and he included a bit of tour-guide style commentary about the passing surroundings as we went, as well as information about our upcoming tubing adventure. It was enjoyable to hear him talk during our ride, even though he did talk the entire time. We were served a sample of local cashew wine, and given our headlamps and life vests, while we put on sunscreen.

The bus parked in a rest area, and we were given about 10 minutes to use the facilities and get our tubes from the staff before we started hiking through the rain forest. The hiking path was well worn, and it took us about 30 minutes to reach the point where we entered the river. The rain forest was fun and interesting to walk through, but humid and hot, especially when hiking with a tube over our shoulders. It took about 15 minutes to get everyone in our group into the river - and we hooked our feet and arms to create 5-7 person tubing chains. Each group had a staff member in charge of their navigation through the river and caves. Our individual chain of seven people had Crystal and I on the back, five newly met friends in front, and was being led by Jimmy.

Jimmy was a very energetic, happy, and funny leader. We ended up tubing through two caves, with a stretch of open water between the caves, and a larger stretch of water after the second cave. Both caves were quite long, so long that there were points that we were in complete darkness, so the headlamps and high powered flashlights came in very handy. The caves were really cool to tube through. As our guides reminded us multiple times, we were much better off than the cruise-ship excursion tubers who were given a tube, pointed at the river, and left on their own to navigate their way. Our Cave-Tubing.com guides on the other hand knew the river, and the caves, better than anyone - and they had all the proper knowledge and equipment to make our tubing experience fun. Many of the individual tubers that we passed on our way looked confused, concerned, or were stuck (in places the river was very shallow), and I was glad that we were in good hands. In the really shallow areas our guides shouted , “butts up!” and we would lift our butts up to avoid rocks. Also, if it was needed, our Cave-Tubing.com guys pulled us along to maintain a pretty constant speed, and we never had problems getting stuck. We had the leisure to not worry about actually navigating, and instead we were free to site-see, enjoy the river, and take pictures - we even spotted a few howler monkeys in the trees overhanging the river.

After we reached the end of the tubing area we headed back to the bus. On the way back the group voted to stop for lunch at a local restaurant in the country for an addition $5 per person - we were given a Coke, and a traditional Belizean meal. One of the best features of the Cave-Tubing.com experience was, they didn’t collect any money from us until after the tubing. This gave us the confidence that we weren’t going to be ripped off, and if we weren’t satisfied, Richard ensured us, he wouldn’t force us to pay. The entire excursion, including lunch, cost $50 per person, but we felt the service was definitely good enough for a $20 tip on top of the $100. We also purchased a Cave-Tubing.com t-shirt for $10 after getting dropped off at the docks again. We were returned to Belize City with plenty of time to get back to our ship, as promised.

I would definitely recommend this cave tubing experience to anyone who will be visiting Belize City in the future - not only was it cheaper than the cruise-ship tubing excursion, it was better executed, professionally led, and great fun.

Belize Cave Tubing with Cave-Tubing.com: 5/5

Have you ever been to Belize? What did you do there? Have you ever been river tubing?

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