Mayan Cenotes

[deep thought]

Just returned from Cenote diving in Mexico, south of Cancun and dived the following cenote’s: Chickin Ha, Car Wash, Chan Hol, White River and Pet Cemetery.  The trip was an invitation to join a couple ccr buddies and stay with cave diving legend Steve Gerrard at Puerto Aventuras.

Originally I had planned a week in N. Florida to dive the systems around Laureville, but the opportunity to dive in the cenotes is one that I have yearned to do since snorkeling in the cenotes some 25 years earlier.  In the late 70’s I joined a group from the Argonautes and visited several of the newly emerging cenotes that land owners were allowing tourist to enter and dive for a few Centavos.  Today the rate is about 250 Pesos, but the sites are now fully developed with roads bulldozed into the jungle, cleared paths, tables and well crafted stairs leading down into the cenotes.

We arrived in Cancun where we rented a van and headed south about an hour and half to Puerto Aventuras which is only one of the giant resorts built for the primarily American tourist who flock to the beaches south of Cancun.  Steve Gerrard is one of the most highly respected cave instructors, holding the distinction of certifying the more cavern and cave divers than any other instructor, and has logged well over 5000 cave dives in U.S., Mex., Belize and Brazil.  The P.A. resort is a compound for tourist, which safely provides a consistent environment with restaurants, gift shops as well as dolphin snorkeling in the harbor, as well as catamaran snorkeling/drinking trips… I was actually quite shocked at the development south of Cancun with the four lane highways, and Costco to McDonalds developments in every formerly small town.  Yes if you want a Whopper, Big Mac, or printer ribbon for your HP printer you can find one at Office Depot Playa Del Carmen!  When we were not bar-b-que’ng steaks with Steve, and drinking Superiors…we hit the local restaurant.  I was ready for some home style Mayan cooking, but settled for TexMex restaurants that served some very nice Fajitas and some awesome pizzas and lasagnas??

Having two experienced guides, all the cylinders and gas station locally, we headed off into the first cenote Chickin Ha to do a tune up dive and get used to buoyancy with the ccr’s.  It was Bob and Ken’s first trip in the ten plus years of diving these caves to bring their rebreathers, and my first trip to the Mayan caves.  I was immediately impressed with the incredible visibility that is so clear that all you can describe is swimming through air!  The next thing that hit me was the amazing array of stalagtite and stalagmite formations…literally everywhere!!  The freshwater and saltwater layers were a bit odd to get used to and being second or third to swim into the system meant that you were swimming in a slurry of mixed water density that can cause a lot of visual disturbance.  The closer you are to the coast, the more you encounter caves with salt water and fresh water layers, as well as the salt water caves are much brighter being bleached by the chemicals.

Aside from simply enjoying the cave systems, I was interested in practicing some cave photography with my newer Canon 7D with the dual purpose of taking some cave photos, as well as improve my lighting techniques in dark water.  You can’t get much darker than a few thousand feet underground into a cave system, which is darker by any stretch of the imagination to a Great Lakes shipwreck…except when you do some wreck penetrations such as the Doty.  The challenges of cave photography are numerous, but the immediate challenge was to provide enough background light to fill the immense cavernous rooms filled with flowing mineral deposits.  These caves remind me of the recent Discovery movie by Wes Skiles with all of the incredibly delicate soda straw formations, and visions of the incredible shots that Wes pulled off were in my mind….only in my mind as I struggled against mounting odds of getting one shot to turn out.  Some of the dilemmas that I encountered were the brilliant white mineral formations that were burned out with close proximity, yet faded into darkens with the vast depth of the caverns.  It was with some coaching from my cave buddies who had posed for several of Steve’s published cave photos, that I learned that you must have several strobes positioned at key points in the background to show depth.  So, without the resource of extra strobes, I worked with the lighting I had and focused on close up shots of divers.  These caves are so immense, and the formations are so vast that without the additional strobes, the pictures can be beautiful but lack true perspective.  Aside from the mineral formations, there are remains of ancient humans and animals, as well as pottery that was left in the caves tens of thousands of years ago when the systems were dry caves.

To contrast these caves to the ones in N. Florida is unfair on many levels as they are both great experiences, and analogous to saying which dessert is best; if you ate strawberry shortcake every day you would yearn for chocolate cake, and I would hate to think that a person could get tired of looking at all of the beautiful cave decorations that the Mayan caves have…but it is likely.  In short summary, Florida caves are typically high flowing water in the 60 – 90’ depth range without any mineral formations, and Cenote cave systems are typically 20 – 40’ depth range, little or no flow and highly decorated.  There are of course exceptions to the depths of either systems, but they are based on completely different geological formation from being dry for thousands of years verse thousands of years of dissolved solution wet caves.  The water temps in the Mayan caves is relatively warm, but when you consider that they are relatively shallow and your immersion time can be literally hours, then it is no surprise to see divers wearing both dry suits and or full 7 mm suits with hoods.  I was comfortable in a 5 mm suit, sans hood, and the guy commented how the rebreathers were noticeably warmer than OC.

These cenotes can be visited by snorkeling as well scuba divers with the assistance of a qualified guide, and there are several dive shops in the region that provide tours and guides to many of these systems.  I would highly encourage you to consider taking a day or two from a reef diving trip around Cozumel or Cancun to visit these cenotes.  To learn more about the cenotes, I would suggest getting a copy of Steve Gerrards book “the Cenotes of the Riverera Maya”.

Good Diving

Ron

[eric poggemann]

Sounds amazing... nice read, thanks Ron.

[jasondbaker]

Nice report Ron.  I visited the cenotes about 10 years ago and absolutely loved the experience.  Next time I'm down at the Yucatan I won't even bother doing ocean dives.

[Gary]

I agree with you Ron that comparing Florida and Mexico caves is like comparing Oranges and Pineapples, but man them are some beeeeeautiful pineapples!!!!