COULD THIS BE THE BEST DIVE EVER?
Remember that famous scene from Trainspotting? The one in which Ewan McGregor dives into the worst toilette in Scotland only to be transported to an aquatic paradise? This is what diving a Cenote is.
I have been diving for 30 years and have more than 300 scuba diving in my logbook, but diving the Chak-Mool and Kukulcan Cenotes in Yucatan, Mexico, is like nothing I’ve ever done. It’s so radical, so different and so delirious it almost unreal. But it is real, and it’s better than drugs.
This is why:
Cenote diving?
But first, what is a Cenote, and how do you dive one?
A cenote is a natural pit, or sinkhole, created from the collapse of limestone cave that exposes the groundwater underneath. Based inland, but not far from the ocean shores, Cenote has a top layer of fresh water that alters into heavier sea water as you go deeper. The two, by the way, don’t mix. Cenotes are a unique feature of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and can only be found there. The first thing you need to do, then, is to purchase a ticket to Cancun, Mexico. The second thing you’d need is some proper and continuous diving experience. Cenotes are not kind to inexperienced newbies and are certainly not the place to rub off some rust after years with no air-tanks.
Once you got the above two covered, contact a local diving shop (I contacted Bahia Divers which were really good) and prepare some cash. The Riviera Maya, where most Cenotes are located at, isn’t cheap.
Now, let’s compare drugs to Cenote Diving
1. Fly through thin-air, just like your favorite superhero
Wanted to fly like Superman? Drugs may promise. But Cenotes deliver.
The term “Deep Blue” is often associated with ocean scuba diving. None of that nonsense here. Because the water is fresh, placid and crystal clear, you can’t actually “see” water at all. You are left diving weightless through a completely transparent fluid. The cave’s vast walls and jungle above (remember, Cenotes are INLAND) complete the sensation. Erase that dealer number from your contacts. This is priceless!
2. Be transported into two alien worlds, not just one
They say hallucinating drugs transport you into a different universe. Diving a Cenote transport you into two. The upper one is the unreal floating universe I described above. But there’s another one. Because the Yucatan Peninsula’s bedrock is as hollow as Swiss cheese, underneath the layer of fresh crystal-clear water there lies a much heavier, and more opaque salty one that sips in directly from the Caribbean Sea. The two do not mix. Diving into the salty water layer is – as weird as it sounds – like diving into water. But you’re already in them! The two layers could even flow in different directions creating an underground salty water river, underwater! Going inside reveals different fish and other water creatures (like, duh), rising above it is like flying out of the water – and into the water, again. Beats Acid. You can wash those orange pills down the drain later.
3. The water’s boiling, but feel so cold…
Talking about those two water layers that don’t mix, well, they do, very slightly. A thin convection layer is where the two bodies of water intertwine in a blurred circular liquid motion looks remarkably similar to a clear water kettle about to boil. Go above the convection layer – and you clear. Go below it, clear again. Inside it, boiling cold. Go figure.
Save your dollars on that joint, there’s better stuff down underwater in Mexico.
4. Spill air down the ceiling.
Alice in Wonderland? Dali’s melting watches? Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Amateurs!
Exhaling bubbles in a sinkhole better all of them. Just take the regulator out turn your head and flashlight towards the ceiling, and exhale. Now, watch the rising air hit the ceiling and being violently splattered in all directions – just like a jug full of water spilled down on a marble floor. Kinda make you wonder whose up and whose down. Speaking of air, that’s not even the least of it.
5. Air that looks like mercury.
Like that T-1000 in Terminator 2, the air bubbles that accumulate on the Cenote ceiling reflect the image around them exactly like Mercury. Hell, they look and feel like one. What kind of a drug is this!?
6. Diving with dinosaurs
Ok. That’s a bit of a stretch. But how about diving with fossilized corrals and marine creatures from the time of the dinosaurs? Kukulcan has them in abundance. I won’t go into the whole scientific explanation, it’s really long and boring. I’ll just note that these 65 million-year-old big and intact fossils of corals, snails, clams, and fish can only be found in the still and dark caverns of the Cenotes.
But there are live dinosaurs too. How about looking up the belly of a 3 meter long Python swimming/floating against a backdrop of a jungle canopy? Or a massive water turtle calmly navigating its way through the transparent liquid? Or schools of tropical fresh-water fish?
Yep, they’re all part of the package.
And that’s not all.
Swimming between sunken stalagmites, catching a breath in closed air pockets lined with tree roots, searching for hidden airshaft by the light beam it projects through the calm, stationary water are all part of this fantastic dive.
And hey, unlike drugs, it’s legal too.
Did I mention that diving a cenote is one of the best dives ever?