That was truly an amazing experience. Diving a cenote in Tulum. On waking this morning I was debating cancelling out of the dive, after watching videos on youtube the night before showed challenges that I was definitely not trained for. The book I am reading gave a couple of examples of people who had died cave diving, and I had no intention of being one of them. So bright and early I went back to the dive shop and had a great discussion as to the differences between a cave and cavern diving, and decided to go on. Essentially in a cavern dive you are never out of sight of natutral light, which makes a quick ascent possible even though you have a rock formation overhead.
The Mot Mot Dive Shop has a bakery cafe attached, and we rallyed there for breakfast, then sized up right after. After signing the waivers, we were off in the jungle bus for a twenty minute drive to the park, which is located on land owned by 160 Myan families. Have to admit, looked pretty sharp in the wetsuit they gave me.
The cenote is a series of underground caverns and caves created by settlement of limestone. The one for our Dive is called Cenote Dos Ojos. The water in it is crystal clear and contains a wide variety of fish, though not much else from a wildlife perspective. The real draw is the crystal clear water, visibility and the wonderful array of stalagtites and stalagmites and general rock formations.The caverns are relatively shallow in dive speak, ranging from 15 to 30 ft, and you follow a set path up and down, left and right in a circuitous route from start to back again. The top picture above is the entrance to Dos ojos Cenote. There is a yellow guide rope that runs the full length of the routes, to make it easy to follow and find an escape in the event of an emergency.
Being mildly claustrophobic, I was concerned over maintaing my cool when in cramped spots, but to my surprise, I never worried a moment from when I entered the water until we exited from the first dive. Dive one was about fourty five minutes at depths as deep as 20 ft, but for the most was shallower than that. This was the most open route, and had the most light as we stayed close to exit points all the way around. I was happy to see the entrance again as my throat was parched from the compressed air. We quickly exited, set up the tank for the next dive, and headed back to the van for a twenty minute lunch of banannas, cookies and spring water.
Oh, I forgot to mention. We lined up in a row on the dive, with the dive master up front, then in order of least experience to most. While the couple that dived with me, visiting here from Wales, had many more years diving experience than me, Ahmed asked me to go last as I just finished my training and they hadn´t dived for a year. If truth be known, I think he asked me as the husband was a little jittery, and I seemed calm and was the only one who put his own gear together.
The second dive was to the batcave, which it is called for just the reason you would think. It is a nesting spot for bats. The dive is shorter, deeper amd more undulating, but we would surface mid dive and take a look. This route was also darker, and had more cramped spots to wiggle through, but in fact with the bat cave in the middle, we were closer to an exit if needed. Again all went perfrctly, I did better with my buoyancy control and came out with 1200 psi left in the tank. My air management is getting better.
I have a DVD with some movies and a number of pictures to remind me of the dive. The pics here are me, and hopefully the video I am loading makes it on. If you see it below, it did. If not, Ill do it from a faster connection another time.
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