Rough Notes Mexican Diet Begins At The Bottom Of A Water Filled Cave
The dangers of drinking bat shit!
Diver Caves Into Bat Infested Waters!
Mayan River Runs A Small Price to Pay for Cenote Diving
By Stephen Weir
This picture, taken in a freshwater Yucatan Cenote (cave) was snapped at the exact moment in time that I realized that in 48-hours I was going to be sick. Really, really sick. Montezuma Revenge. Aztec two-step. GI's. Dysentery. And, let's now forget: flux, loose stools, runs, tourista, trots, and the one I coined after I got back from sink hole diving in Akumal, Mexico, the Mayan Riviera Runs.
Not dissing Mexico's Mayan Rivera water system, the cleanliness of their eating establishments or the quality of the ice cubes. This was something self-inflicted and it could have happened in any "fresh" water cave in the world. Blame it on the sanitary habits of flying animals or Cenote diving being just too amazing for my own good.
The east coast of Mexico’s Yucatan State is a flat, dry land void of rivers, lakes or much vegetation. What little green you see is at the well watered golf courses of the many hotels that hug the coastline. The bleached sand beaches and tranquil turquoise sea is breath-taking, but for divers, the real unique beauty of the region is to be found under the rocky porous limestone scrubland – on the other side of the road from the mega resorts.
.
This picture was taken at the exact moment in time that I realized that in 24 hours or so I was going to be really sick. Montezuma Revenge. Aztec two-step. GI's. Dysentery. And, let's now forget: flux, loose stools, runs, tourista, trots, and the one I coined after I got back from cave diving in Akumal, Mexico, the Mayan Riviera Runs.
Oh No. I am not casting dispersions on Mexico's water system, the cleanliness of their eating establishments or quality of the ice cubes. This was something I did to myself, and it could have happened in any "fresh" water cave in the world.
Dive log
Dive #1, Thursday June 17th
8.45 am. Akumal Dive Shop. Dive Site called: Condor in spanish
Dive Buddy Jim Kozmik
u/w viz 70 ft. no current. 82 degrees F. 3000 lbs in 1,200 out bottom time 48 minutes 3 minute stop total 51-minutes
depth 71 feet
Surface 84 degrees, blue skies, mild chop outside of reef
Following breakfast at the Hotel Akumal we walked south to the Akumal Dive Shop. Full Service shop not to be mixed up with the Akumal Dive Centre which is part of the hotel property.
Picked up rental gear. Good quality. Almuminum tanks, new wet suits, and weights. Flippers were slip ons (ouch)
After much talking and discussion we broke into two groups, photographers and non-photogs. Five in our group. Mike from northern diver magazine, the two Scuba Chicks.
Owner of the shop, an older guy, short, grey beard, told us the shop had been there for 25-years and he had been there for 18. Our dive guide had been there just as long. Great shop, clean, lockers with our names on it, big tiled shower area. Tv monitor with soccer game, everyone decked out in mexican soccer shirts because today the big game with France (they won!).
Told that the reef is very close to shore offering close diving, 10-minutes away. Moored sites. Three levels, shallow, medium and deep. Shallow only good when seas aren’t too high. Suitable for snorkelling. Deep is good for speciality diving.
Loaded our gear into a boat pulled up off the beach. Clean, twin engines. 4-stroke. Lotsa room. Getting to the reef was a little difficult because of the hordes of snorkellers who were in the water lookiing at turtles feeding on the grass in about 6ft of water
We got the dive site and mercifully it didn’t take long. Jim was shooting film with his Nikonsis. Egads.
Hit the water. Backroll. Not regimented. Jim and I ended up at a shallow patch reef. 45 ft. rather shitty actually. Not much growing there. Small patches of reef. The sand areas between the patches littered with the bleached remains of broken coral.
Headed West, out to the deeper sections of the reef. Improved. The patch reefs became much larger. Towers of coral, big stands of half dead stag horn (or is it elk). After about 25 –minutes we came upon three large u/w islands of coral in the sand. 20ft off the bottom. Canyons in between were fun to check out. The coral healthy. Top of the islands were home to schools of fish. Marguettes, snappers, the odd black durgon. In some of the overhangs very small groupers were being cleaned.
Method was to swim to the top of the hillock and get pictures of the fish. Once they swam off we moved to the next island and took pictures of fish till they left. By the time we had moved onto hill #3 the fish had returned to hill #1, so we could take them.
Not very exciting. Biggest we saw was a lobster. But, reef at the terminus in good shape. Not many colours, surprised, but maybe it was the “stuff “ suspended in the water.
We all took a 3-minute stop at 15 to 20 ft. getting out little bit of work, hand the weight belts, take off BC and then climb up an aluminum ladder. No problems but in swells it would be fun. Jim climbed up over the transom.
Came back to shore to get new tanks and have a surface interval.
DIVE #2
Akumal Dive Shop
11.30 am
Dive Site: Turtles ?
Depth 55 ft. 56 minutes – 4- minute stop – total 60 minutes
Dive Buddy Jim Kozmik
Bottom, reef, and sand canyons
Slight current. 3,000 lbs in 1,000 lbs out
Reef 5-minutes southwest of dive shop.
Mission was to find and photograph turtles. 99% sure I can do it, said the dive guide.
Dropped down to the reef at 40-50 ft. Started touring, looking for turtles. Didn’t see much. Nice little reefs. Lot of dead coral though. The stands of Stag horn or Elkhorn have dead. Not many fish. Deeper we got, the better it got.
Came upon sand flats, at about 45 minutes. Mike, the air hog had gone back to the boat by then. The scuba chicks were mostly filming themselves waving and doing backflips.
There was a mortcyle under water. That got the photogs busy. Left the scubachicks there. So it was us, the dive guide and pr person jeanette rigter. Dutch. Speaks spanish, english, dutch, german and french. u/w very good diver.
Came up two turltes. Feeding on grass, 50 ft down. Jim took 25 pictures, one a cover shot of turtle.
Jim got a great shot with jeanette and the turtle nose-to-nose.
Dive #3
Group dive. Went with the sun going down. Really fast sunset. Everyone dressed, and into water. Warm. 84 degrees. No turbulance. Viz about 80 feet. Scuba Girls off doing their thing (waving and spinning in the water). So not too much banging around. Did see an octopus. Group came with their lightws and could see it was being stalked by a small eel.
(DIVE #3 Night Dive)
40 ft – 50FT MAX
Group dive, no chop. 5-minutes from dive shop Axumal Dive Centre
3000 lbs in, 1,500 lbs
The bottom is a series of hillocks. Small fish. Corals. For the most part corals non-descript but there are stands of cauliflower coral and brain coral. Saw one brain coral that looked like a heart.
Small fish on the hillocks, but, it was in the sand between the hillocks that we saw the octopii. Spotted 3 before the dive ended. Lobster and a shuffle crab.
Very pleaseant, one of the better night dives. Getting back in the boat the same old same old. Take off your weight belt, hand up your tank and flippers and hope the boat has not drifted away. Primitive ladder. Wood. But good enough to hold mike 6ft 10 and 32lbs of lead.
Back into shore 8.30. fell backwards out of the boat, hit my back. Ouch. Carried gear in, cleaned up and rushed to a nearby restaurant. Good food. Off property. Under the stars.
Bottom time 50 minutes
Dive #4
First Cave. Gotta check the tapes to find the name. went 4 of us to a group. Jim, me, cynthia and the Scuba News person. Cynthia freaked out first minute in, so , she was taken back to the surface. Nice just 3 of us with the guide. Got down to 45 feet. 75 degrees. Passageways for the most part filled with fresh water. Took a drink. Will I die? But when it deeps below the seaplane the water turns saltly. Becomes a mix of cold and warm water. Can’t see well. Like swimming through a blurry photograph. Lights of Mario the guide helped us along the way . Thin green line lead the way. No stalagtites for the most part. Did get into some large ball room sized rooms and up along the top there are ledges complete with small stalatgites and stalagwhatever. Best was the openings to the jungle. Sunlight filtered green. From the bottom you see light blue in the midground and background all green. Your lights and your suits are reflected back at you from the surface of the water. Walls all white. Feeling not of enclosure but of freedom
Mario our tour guide is Italian, lives in Mexico simply to dive the caves. He takes groups like ours to help pay for his addiction. Rules (not that we followed him) was to go single file through the cave. Four of us to a guide. We had only 3 because Cynthia (?) bailed at the start. Jim and I wandered around and he was okay with that. Young. Thin. Perfect in the water, he was an A-1 model for Jim. Rule # 2, let him know when we were at 750lbs. 45 – minute time limit. None of us got to 750 lbs. never happened. And we stayed almost an hour. Not too cold. When we hit salt water it got warmer. Could have stayed there forever.
Dive #5
Little Brother Cenote
4 divers ( Jim, myself, the old lady and someone else)
3,000 lbs in 1,500 lbs out
1-hr bottom time
Viz 100 feet (except 20 feet when hitting the salt zone)
75 degrees Fa in fresh water, 77 degrees in Salt Water.
Viz – same as above.
Cave Rules apply, sorta. 1/3 in, 1/3 back and then out.
We actually made 2-dives so that by the time the second dive began we were close enough to the exit to not worry about the time factor.
Big Boy a smaller cave in terms of length but in places it was big tall and wide. Enough so that the dives were run almost like a disney ride. You enter the big chamber at the top, a depth of 20 ft or so at the top we swam around the top edge of the cave swimming down to another level at 30 ft. Every now and then we would run into divers heading lower or across the top to exit. Really unaware most of the time that there were a lot of people in the cave.
We weren’t alone.
Got to about 45ft. Did see a wall of stalgatives. Pretty beat up.
Did get to an area on the way out of the cave where we could surface. We did. We talked for a few minutes. Then we started down to a big area of the curve where we could see the big blue opening. Where we could see the blue sky and the green canopy. It was the entrance. We made our way up to the surface and ended our stay … an hour underwater. 9lbs.
Friday.
Saturday
Snorkel in centos. Slippery getting in. no snorkel or goggles or fins. We slid into the water. Grassy rocks. Lotsa kids. Two opening to a cenotre. Cave divers can go inside and travel to across the road.
We spent half an hour in the water.
Sunday morning
Up at dawn. Snorkelling ( without a snorkel) out front of our hotel. Observed and filmed a turtle eating the grass. Large turtle. 6 ft down. Not worried about me at all. Had two large remoras on her back. When she came off the bottom for air, the remoras would dislodge and wait for the turtle to sink
7.30 to 8 then had breakfast and left for the airport at 9.45.
Mario XX, is a cave diver who travels the world looking for unexplored caves. For the past 8-years he has been exploring the 700 miles of fresh water cave system that parallel Mexico's western coast below the city of Cancun. Long. Twisting. Twisting. Well Preserved. Mario figures he has 600 miles to go before me moves on.
To pay for his passion the 30-something diver guides certified divers through Cenotes for Akumal Beach Divers, several times a week. The multi-lingual diver speaks Italian, Spanish, English, French and Arabic. Arabic? "I used to work on live - aboards out of Hurgata (Red Sea)" - he shrugs.
" Explain about the Cenote ".
The XX Cenote is a privately owned park that has two diveable caves. Certified open water divers are allowed into the cenotes in groups of four, and each group must be lead by a certified cave diver in full cave diving gear.
The XX Cenote is just one of more than 50 Cenote parks that line the main highway which runs from Cancun due south to XXX. At any given spot along the highway one can see water filled openings into the cave system. The diving is good. Really really good. As a result there are more dive shops in Cancun, nearby Ca ya del Carmen, Akumal, Tulum and all points in between, then there are in Canada. The dive industry rivals what existed, pre-BP in south Florida.
At XX there is parking lot and picnic area that has been cut into the tropical forest. Divers use the concrete picnic tables to get into full scuba gear. Dressed, flippers in hands, the group walks down a staircase cut into the rock. Groups will usually make two dives, the first in the large XXXX, and the second XXX ( The Little Brother) in the more enclosed. the Cave diving air consumption rule of 3sis enforced in Little Brother. When the first diver uses 1/3 of his/her air supply,the group returns to the starting point (using another 1/3 to get back) leaving a full 1/3 of a tank of compressed air in reserve.
XXX has a large lip. Here, there is room for many divers to simultaneously slip out of their flip flops and stagger around as they put on their flippers without anyone falling in. Because of the punishing heat of the forest, most groups tend to jump into the 72 degree water as quickly as possible, inflating their BCs and listening to their briefings.
" Quote about the cave "
Talk about the dive. 45 minutes? Hit 40 feet. Talk about the mixing of the water. 100 ft viz if you don't stir it up. the signs saying death.
Back to the parking lot. smaller cave. in we went.
"Quote". The disney ride way of exploring the cave. not aware of the others in there until you come around a corner too quickly and you see the lights of the group ahead as the explore 10 ft down below ya.
Stalgatites and XXXX. And BIG theatre cavern. Air pockets. Hole in the rough. It is noon. Light streams in. Can only see in summer. Directly overhead.
Mario, let us poke around. Photos of the walls. Photos of him. Photos of each other.
Dive had been an hour. Second dive was close. Had been a rush, first cave. so much so that in the rush to get back in the cave, I didn't rehydrate.
Into our second hour, down 45 feet, trying to find my way up and out of a layer of steamy hot salt water, I had some leakage through my regulator. Mouth salty. hot. dry. Hitting the cool freshwater I did what any Canadian Great Lakes diver would do. Without thinking, I removed my reg, took a big drink, swallowed, and put my reg back in.
As I started to swim up through a rocklined chute, I thought about what I had done. Lost in thought, I didn't notice that photographer and TV dive show producer Jim Kozmik aiming his camera at me. That is when this picture was taken.
Surfacing inside an air-pocket, Kozmik told me not to worry. Mario opined that probably could get back to Canada (36-hours) before it hit.
The next day. all was okay. Becuase I spent two hours underwater, I didn't want to dive again before my flight home (there are health concerns around diving less than 24-hours before flying.
Explored an area of the forest, near the town of Tulum, where waters from the cenote system come to the surface and pool in very shallow lakes, adjacent to the Carribbean Sea. The abundance of freshwater in what should be desert land, fueled the Mayan culture XX years ago. Towns and temples were built near the Cenotes. A series of canals were cut into the mangrove swamps, so that boats could reach the sea
The Government has stepped in and created a large park - the XX Biosphere, which is operated, for the most part, bythe last remaining Mayan peoples.
Operate the nature trails and ferry tourists out to see the fresh water lakes and the canals. Wild cats, wander through the bush, buzzards hunch in low hanging trees and aligators are said to lurk in the shallow water of this ancient system.
the lakes are clean and shallow. Here and there you can see dark spots on the bottom of the lake. Driving boat close, look down and see that these spots are really cenote tubes pushing cool water into the lake. These Cenotes outlets are part of the same cave system I was diving the day before.
Turn our life jackets into floating diapers, drift the canals. Mangroves, the cleanser and natural hurricane break, line path. Our boat has gone on before us. $200 for six. as we get near the sea the water begans to darken and become brackish. Saltwater and freshwater mix. the mangroves flourish. So, do alligators.
Back on land. Off to a nearby cenote for a quick swim. Village there to refresh. If we had scuba gear and dive papers we could enter the cave swim underground to another cenote across the road and down a piece.
Off to Tulum Beach. Last refuge for hippies and divers. Lots of boutique hotels, 10-rooms, no carbon footprints here (some have no electricity, you get a candle when you check in) and good shore diving.
Reefs shore. you can watch the outgoing tide break on the coral heads that all but break the surface.
Lined.
Akumal. an hours drive from Cancun Airport. Air Canada director. 4 hours. And then I started my Mexican cave diving diet. ( I am okay now, and oh so thin!)
Put in about travellers to Mexico
Put in about gear
Put in about cost
Put in about snorkelling
Put in a sidebar about GI
Put in how the cenote gave life and water to Mayan culture, you can explore the canals the Mayans cut through shallow lakes filled by the Cenotes. Swimmers like to drift along these mangrove lined canals (look out for the alligators and don't drink the water).
Put in about reef diving too.
Diver Caves Into Bat Infested Waters!
Mayan River Runs A Small Price to Pay for Cenote Diving
By Stephen Weir
This picture, taken in a freshwater Yucatan Cenote (cave) was snapped at the exact moment in time that I realized that in 48-hours I was going to be sick. Really, really sick. Montezuma Revenge. Aztec two-step. GI's. Dysentery. And, let's now forget: flux, loose stools, runs, tourista, trots, and the one I coined after I got back from sink hole diving in Akumal, Mexico, the Mayan Riviera Runs.
Not dissing Mexico's Mayan Rivera water system, the cleanliness of their eating establishments or the quality of the ice cubes. This was something self-inflicted and it could have happened in any "fresh" water cave in the world. Blame it on the sanitary habits of flying animals or Cenote diving being just too amazing for my own good.
The east coast of Mexico’s Yucatan State is a flat, dry land void of rivers, lakes or much vegetation. What little green you see is at the well watered golf courses of the many hotels that hug the coastline. The bleached sand beaches and tranquil turquoise sea is breath-taking, but for divers, the real unique beauty of the region is to be found under the rocky porous limestone scrubland – on the other side of the road from the mega resorts.
.
This picture was taken at the exact moment in time that I realized that in 24 hours or so I was going to be really sick. Montezuma Revenge. Aztec two-step. GI's. Dysentery. And, let's now forget: flux, loose stools, runs, tourista, trots, and the one I coined after I got back from cave diving in Akumal, Mexico, the Mayan Riviera Runs.
Oh No. I am not casting dispersions on Mexico's water system, the cleanliness of their eating establishments or quality of the ice cubes. This was something I did to myself, and it could have happened in any "fresh" water cave in the world.
Dive log
Dive #1, Thursday June 17th
8.45 am. Akumal Dive Shop. Dive Site called: Condor in spanish
Dive Buddy Jim Kozmik
u/w viz 70 ft. no current. 82 degrees F. 3000 lbs in 1,200 out bottom time 48 minutes 3 minute stop total 51-minutes
depth 71 feet
Surface 84 degrees, blue skies, mild chop outside of reef
Following breakfast at the Hotel Akumal we walked south to the Akumal Dive Shop. Full Service shop not to be mixed up with the Akumal Dive Centre which is part of the hotel property.
Picked up rental gear. Good quality. Almuminum tanks, new wet suits, and weights. Flippers were slip ons (ouch)
After much talking and discussion we broke into two groups, photographers and non-photogs. Five in our group. Mike from northern diver magazine, the two Scuba Chicks.
Owner of the shop, an older guy, short, grey beard, told us the shop had been there for 25-years and he had been there for 18. Our dive guide had been there just as long. Great shop, clean, lockers with our names on it, big tiled shower area. Tv monitor with soccer game, everyone decked out in mexican soccer shirts because today the big game with France (they won!).
Told that the reef is very close to shore offering close diving, 10-minutes away. Moored sites. Three levels, shallow, medium and deep. Shallow only good when seas aren’t too high. Suitable for snorkelling. Deep is good for speciality diving.
Loaded our gear into a boat pulled up off the beach. Clean, twin engines. 4-stroke. Lotsa room. Getting to the reef was a little difficult because of the hordes of snorkellers who were in the water lookiing at turtles feeding on the grass in about 6ft of water
We got the dive site and mercifully it didn’t take long. Jim was shooting film with his Nikonsis. Egads.
Hit the water. Backroll. Not regimented. Jim and I ended up at a shallow patch reef. 45 ft. rather shitty actually. Not much growing there. Small patches of reef. The sand areas between the patches littered with the bleached remains of broken coral.
Headed West, out to the deeper sections of the reef. Improved. The patch reefs became much larger. Towers of coral, big stands of half dead stag horn (or is it elk). After about 25 –minutes we came upon three large u/w islands of coral in the sand. 20ft off the bottom. Canyons in between were fun to check out. The coral healthy. Top of the islands were home to schools of fish. Marguettes, snappers, the odd black durgon. In some of the overhangs very small groupers were being cleaned.
Method was to swim to the top of the hillock and get pictures of the fish. Once they swam off we moved to the next island and took pictures of fish till they left. By the time we had moved onto hill #3 the fish had returned to hill #1, so we could take them.
Not very exciting. Biggest we saw was a lobster. But, reef at the terminus in good shape. Not many colours, surprised, but maybe it was the “stuff “ suspended in the water.
We all took a 3-minute stop at 15 to 20 ft. getting out little bit of work, hand the weight belts, take off BC and then climb up an aluminum ladder. No problems but in swells it would be fun. Jim climbed up over the transom.
Came back to shore to get new tanks and have a surface interval.
DIVE #2
Akumal Dive Shop
11.30 am
Dive Site: Turtles ?
Depth 55 ft. 56 minutes – 4- minute stop – total 60 minutes
Dive Buddy Jim Kozmik
Bottom, reef, and sand canyons
Slight current. 3,000 lbs in 1,000 lbs out
Reef 5-minutes southwest of dive shop.
Mission was to find and photograph turtles. 99% sure I can do it, said the dive guide.
Dropped down to the reef at 40-50 ft. Started touring, looking for turtles. Didn’t see much. Nice little reefs. Lot of dead coral though. The stands of Stag horn or Elkhorn have dead. Not many fish. Deeper we got, the better it got.
Came upon sand flats, at about 45 minutes. Mike, the air hog had gone back to the boat by then. The scuba chicks were mostly filming themselves waving and doing backflips.
There was a mortcyle under water. That got the photogs busy. Left the scubachicks there. So it was us, the dive guide and pr person jeanette rigter. Dutch. Speaks spanish, english, dutch, german and french. u/w very good diver.
Came up two turltes. Feeding on grass, 50 ft down. Jim took 25 pictures, one a cover shot of turtle.
Jim got a great shot with jeanette and the turtle nose-to-nose.
Dive #3
Group dive. Went with the sun going down. Really fast sunset. Everyone dressed, and into water. Warm. 84 degrees. No turbulance. Viz about 80 feet. Scuba Girls off doing their thing (waving and spinning in the water). So not too much banging around. Did see an octopus. Group came with their lightws and could see it was being stalked by a small eel.
(DIVE #3 Night Dive)
40 ft – 50FT MAX
Group dive, no chop. 5-minutes from dive shop Axumal Dive Centre
3000 lbs in, 1,500 lbs
The bottom is a series of hillocks. Small fish. Corals. For the most part corals non-descript but there are stands of cauliflower coral and brain coral. Saw one brain coral that looked like a heart.
Small fish on the hillocks, but, it was in the sand between the hillocks that we saw the octopii. Spotted 3 before the dive ended. Lobster and a shuffle crab.
Very pleaseant, one of the better night dives. Getting back in the boat the same old same old. Take off your weight belt, hand up your tank and flippers and hope the boat has not drifted away. Primitive ladder. Wood. But good enough to hold mike 6ft 10 and 32lbs of lead.
Back into shore 8.30. fell backwards out of the boat, hit my back. Ouch. Carried gear in, cleaned up and rushed to a nearby restaurant. Good food. Off property. Under the stars.
Bottom time 50 minutes
Dive #4
First Cave. Gotta check the tapes to find the name. went 4 of us to a group. Jim, me, cynthia and the Scuba News person. Cynthia freaked out first minute in, so , she was taken back to the surface. Nice just 3 of us with the guide. Got down to 45 feet. 75 degrees. Passageways for the most part filled with fresh water. Took a drink. Will I die? But when it deeps below the seaplane the water turns saltly. Becomes a mix of cold and warm water. Can’t see well. Like swimming through a blurry photograph. Lights of Mario the guide helped us along the way . Thin green line lead the way. No stalagtites for the most part. Did get into some large ball room sized rooms and up along the top there are ledges complete with small stalatgites and stalagwhatever. Best was the openings to the jungle. Sunlight filtered green. From the bottom you see light blue in the midground and background all green. Your lights and your suits are reflected back at you from the surface of the water. Walls all white. Feeling not of enclosure but of freedom
Mario our tour guide is Italian, lives in Mexico simply to dive the caves. He takes groups like ours to help pay for his addiction. Rules (not that we followed him) was to go single file through the cave. Four of us to a guide. We had only 3 because Cynthia (?) bailed at the start. Jim and I wandered around and he was okay with that. Young. Thin. Perfect in the water, he was an A-1 model for Jim. Rule # 2, let him know when we were at 750lbs. 45 – minute time limit. None of us got to 750 lbs. never happened. And we stayed almost an hour. Not too cold. When we hit salt water it got warmer. Could have stayed there forever.
Dive #5
Little Brother Cenote
4 divers ( Jim, myself, the old lady and someone else)
3,000 lbs in 1,500 lbs out
1-hr bottom time
Viz 100 feet (except 20 feet when hitting the salt zone)
75 degrees Fa in fresh water, 77 degrees in Salt Water.
Viz – same as above.
Cave Rules apply, sorta. 1/3 in, 1/3 back and then out.
We actually made 2-dives so that by the time the second dive began we were close enough to the exit to not worry about the time factor.
Big Boy a smaller cave in terms of length but in places it was big tall and wide. Enough so that the dives were run almost like a disney ride. You enter the big chamber at the top, a depth of 20 ft or so at the top we swam around the top edge of the cave swimming down to another level at 30 ft. Every now and then we would run into divers heading lower or across the top to exit. Really unaware most of the time that there were a lot of people in the cave.
We weren’t alone.
Got to about 45ft. Did see a wall of stalgatives. Pretty beat up.
Did get to an area on the way out of the cave where we could surface. We did. We talked for a few minutes. Then we started down to a big area of the curve where we could see the big blue opening. Where we could see the blue sky and the green canopy. It was the entrance. We made our way up to the surface and ended our stay … an hour underwater. 9lbs.
Friday.
Saturday
Snorkel in centos. Slippery getting in. no snorkel or goggles or fins. We slid into the water. Grassy rocks. Lotsa kids. Two opening to a cenotre. Cave divers can go inside and travel to across the road.
We spent half an hour in the water.
Sunday morning
Up at dawn. Snorkelling ( without a snorkel) out front of our hotel. Observed and filmed a turtle eating the grass. Large turtle. 6 ft down. Not worried about me at all. Had two large remoras on her back. When she came off the bottom for air, the remoras would dislodge and wait for the turtle to sink
7.30 to 8 then had breakfast and left for the airport at 9.45.
Mario XX, is a cave diver who travels the world looking for unexplored caves. For the past 8-years he has been exploring the 700 miles of fresh water cave system that parallel Mexico's western coast below the city of Cancun. Long. Twisting. Twisting. Well Preserved. Mario figures he has 600 miles to go before me moves on.
To pay for his passion the 30-something diver guides certified divers through Cenotes for Akumal Beach Divers, several times a week. The multi-lingual diver speaks Italian, Spanish, English, French and Arabic. Arabic? "I used to work on live - aboards out of Hurgata (Red Sea)" - he shrugs.
" Explain about the Cenote ".
The XX Cenote is a privately owned park that has two diveable caves. Certified open water divers are allowed into the cenotes in groups of four, and each group must be lead by a certified cave diver in full cave diving gear.
The XX Cenote is just one of more than 50 Cenote parks that line the main highway which runs from Cancun due south to XXX. At any given spot along the highway one can see water filled openings into the cave system. The diving is good. Really really good. As a result there are more dive shops in Cancun, nearby Ca ya del Carmen, Akumal, Tulum and all points in between, then there are in Canada. The dive industry rivals what existed, pre-BP in south Florida.
At XX there is parking lot and picnic area that has been cut into the tropical forest. Divers use the concrete picnic tables to get into full scuba gear. Dressed, flippers in hands, the group walks down a staircase cut into the rock. Groups will usually make two dives, the first in the large XXXX, and the second XXX ( The Little Brother) in the more enclosed. the Cave diving air consumption rule of 3sis enforced in Little Brother. When the first diver uses 1/3 of his/her air supply,the group returns to the starting point (using another 1/3 to get back) leaving a full 1/3 of a tank of compressed air in reserve.
XXX has a large lip. Here, there is room for many divers to simultaneously slip out of their flip flops and stagger around as they put on their flippers without anyone falling in. Because of the punishing heat of the forest, most groups tend to jump into the 72 degree water as quickly as possible, inflating their BCs and listening to their briefings.
" Quote about the cave "
Talk about the dive. 45 minutes? Hit 40 feet. Talk about the mixing of the water. 100 ft viz if you don't stir it up. the signs saying death.
Back to the parking lot. smaller cave. in we went.
"Quote". The disney ride way of exploring the cave. not aware of the others in there until you come around a corner too quickly and you see the lights of the group ahead as the explore 10 ft down below ya.
Stalgatites and XXXX. And BIG theatre cavern. Air pockets. Hole in the rough. It is noon. Light streams in. Can only see in summer. Directly overhead.
Mario, let us poke around. Photos of the walls. Photos of him. Photos of each other.
Dive had been an hour. Second dive was close. Had been a rush, first cave. so much so that in the rush to get back in the cave, I didn't rehydrate.
Into our second hour, down 45 feet, trying to find my way up and out of a layer of steamy hot salt water, I had some leakage through my regulator. Mouth salty. hot. dry. Hitting the cool freshwater I did what any Canadian Great Lakes diver would do. Without thinking, I removed my reg, took a big drink, swallowed, and put my reg back in.
As I started to swim up through a rocklined chute, I thought about what I had done. Lost in thought, I didn't notice that photographer and TV dive show producer Jim Kozmik aiming his camera at me. That is when this picture was taken.
Surfacing inside an air-pocket, Kozmik told me not to worry. Mario opined that probably could get back to Canada (36-hours) before it hit.
The next day. all was okay. Becuase I spent two hours underwater, I didn't want to dive again before my flight home (there are health concerns around diving less than 24-hours before flying.
Explored an area of the forest, near the town of Tulum, where waters from the cenote system come to the surface and pool in very shallow lakes, adjacent to the Carribbean Sea. The abundance of freshwater in what should be desert land, fueled the Mayan culture XX years ago. Towns and temples were built near the Cenotes. A series of canals were cut into the mangrove swamps, so that boats could reach the sea
The Government has stepped in and created a large park - the XX Biosphere, which is operated, for the most part, bythe last remaining Mayan peoples.
Operate the nature trails and ferry tourists out to see the fresh water lakes and the canals. Wild cats, wander through the bush, buzzards hunch in low hanging trees and aligators are said to lurk in the shallow water of this ancient system.
the lakes are clean and shallow. Here and there you can see dark spots on the bottom of the lake. Driving boat close, look down and see that these spots are really cenote tubes pushing cool water into the lake. These Cenotes outlets are part of the same cave system I was diving the day before.
Turn our life jackets into floating diapers, drift the canals. Mangroves, the cleanser and natural hurricane break, line path. Our boat has gone on before us. $200 for six. as we get near the sea the water begans to darken and become brackish. Saltwater and freshwater mix. the mangroves flourish. So, do alligators.
Back on land. Off to a nearby cenote for a quick swim. Village there to refresh. If we had scuba gear and dive papers we could enter the cave swim underground to another cenote across the road and down a piece.
Off to Tulum Beach. Last refuge for hippies and divers. Lots of boutique hotels, 10-rooms, no carbon footprints here (some have no electricity, you get a candle when you check in) and good shore diving.
Reefs shore. you can watch the outgoing tide break on the coral heads that all but break the surface.
Lined.
Akumal. an hours drive from Cancun Airport. Air Canada director. 4 hours. And then I started my Mexican cave diving diet. ( I am okay now, and oh so thin!)
Put in about travellers to Mexico
Put in about gear
Put in about cost
Put in about snorkelling
Put in a sidebar about GI
Put in how the cenote gave life and water to Mayan culture, you can explore the canals the Mayans cut through shallow lakes filled by the Cenotes. Swimmers like to drift along these mangrove lined canals (look out for the alligators and don't drink the water).
Put in about reef diving too.
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