Down and under again

The Yucatan peninsula is famous amongst divers not only because of the world's second largest corral reef that runs along its Caribbean coast, but also because of cenotes - sinkholes filled with fresh water that are great for snorkeling and cave or cavern diving.

We haven't tried diving since Thailand and weren't too sure we were up to it as we are just beginners. But it was just too tempting! Luckily our dive guide Ahmed was super patient with us, put up with all our questions and helped us to remember the basics we'd learnt. One does forget a lot in 4 months... We were nervous but anxious to try it, and man was it worth it! Our first dive was at Gran Cenote, close to Tulum, and it was just amazing. The visibility was beyond perfect, and although there is hardly any life in the sinkholes, the rock formations and the beams of sunlight passing through the openings were just magical. Too bad we don't have any pictures!

Two neopren suits to protect us from cold waters of the cavern

Our second dive was at cenote Calavera ('Skull'). Its English name is Temple of Doom so we weren't too sure what we'd find. The scariest part was already at the beginning - to start the dive we had to jump 3 metres into the cenote. 3m isn't much but I always hated jumping into the water from high places, so it took Ahmed some effort to convince me to jump. But after that it only got better and better. This cavern is smaller and darker than Gran Cenote but it has something very special. There are both salt and fresh water in Calavera and the transition zone between them is called halocline. When you swim through it, the vision becomes blurry, as if all of a sudden you were diving without contact lenses (D's description). And when you dive just a little deeper you see perfectly again as you are in saltwater, or you can swim up to fresh water and the visibility goes back to normal as well. Creepy at first but awesome when you get used to it.

Ahmed: You have to jump

D: That doesn't sound right....

It was a great experience and it made us want to dive more before going home, so we are looking into more diving sites along the way now... We would dive again and again in cenotes but our budget isn't unlimited and there was still one more thing we wanted to do here - see the sea turtles.

This time we went with Ricardo from a different dive shop, in a jeep that was shaking like crazy on the road and the floor was burning up my feet. Ricardo himself is quite a character looking like a bum and acting like an alcoholic but he turned out to be a fun, knowledgeable guide who told us a lots about local and national politics, Maya culture and beer.

Funny guy

We first drove to Akumal, about 20km from Tulum, to the Akumal Marine Reserve. This is where the sea turtles come to feed on a special type of seaweed so close to the beach that sometimes you can spot them from the shore. We put on our snorkeling gear and followed Ricardo and in less than ten seconds we were staring at a manta ray!

Impressive

And soon after we started to see the first turtles. They are way bigger then I imagined and so gracious munching on the sea grass. And when all of sudden they start swimming up towards you, it's scary as hell until you realize that they are going up to take a breath before diving to the sea bottom again. This was the first time we saw living corral but honestly, the only thing we really wanted to see were the turtles, we couldn't stop taking pictures and videos and staring in awe...

They might look small on the picture

But they're not!

 

Catch a breath and go down again

But it was time to go as Ricardo was taking us to another cenote, this time not for diving but for snorkeling. Dos Ojos cenote is supposed to be the biggest in this region for snorkelers and it indeed impressed us. We could finally take some pictures although they don't reflect entirely how beautiful the cenotes are.

Entrance to Dos Ojos cenote

Perfect visibility

The beauty almost made me forget how much I got stung around cenotes and in Tulum, the mosquitoes here are fierce and they seem to love my blood. But the prize for the most painful and annoying sting goes to a yellow tábano, a huge horsefly that got me near Akumal and made my leg swallow for several days after. We are on our way to the colonial town of Valladolid and I'm still waiting for the bruise to go away!

Son of a b....