Cenote Dives 1 & 2 of 8 Cenote dives. Dos Ojos is the best known Cenote and is actually 2 Cenotes joined by a cavern so it’s 2 dives, 1 in each direction. It’s one of my 3 favorite dives as it has lots of decorations, great rooms and beams of light too. One side even has an enclosed bat cave.
In January 2019, I was lucky enough to return to the Yucatan Peninsula to dive 8 of my favorite Cenotes. Cenotes are underground caves or caverns where a part of the top has fallen in forming what looks like a sinkhole but is often linked by the caves to other cenotes. The caves were originally above ground when they formed and so some are incredibly decorated with stalactites, stalagmites, columns and all the beautiful speleothems (a structure formed in a cave by the deposition of minerals from water) you’d expect to find in a cave. But these caves or caverns are flooded and you can float up and get just inches from all the wonderful decorations. It’s an awesome experience. Think Carlsbad Caverns with giant rooms, great decorations but without the miles of walking, crowds of people or railings to keep you back from admiring the decorations.
Other Caverns are incredibly beautiful, actually breathtaking, because of the way light plays through openings above that are completely surrounded by jungle so they add a green ting and awesome moving beams of light that change as clouds and sun change the experience. It’s never exactly the same twice. And it’s a wonder to behold. Some Cenotes have both decorations and light beams others one or the other. Diving Cenotes is great.
Still other caverns have cool haloclines. A halocline is an area that you swim though in a cave where salt water meets fresh water. They don’t mix very much and so it causes a distortion. It’s still totally clear, but it’s like looking through somebody’s really strong glasses. It’s hard to see. It doesn’t photograph well, but it’s cool to swim through. Sometimes you can see the actual line where they meet and that’s cool too.
You’ll notice that most of my videos have a green tint. Yes the Cenotes are slightly on the green side, but I liked the color so I did enhance the color and sharpness. I used a super wide-angle lens on this trip that was so wide, even my new BigBlue, 160 degree, 15,000 lumen video light couldn’t fully cover the view. I used it anyway because it reproduced the feeling of the dives as I saw them. In the past I used a 24mm lens and it was wonderful for the detail of the decorations, but you didn’t get the feeling of drifting down into the tunnels, between rocks and so much more you experience in the caverns. Next time I’ll use 2 lights to widen the view.
Cenotes I Dived This Trip:
Dives 1 & 2. Dos Ojos.
Dive 3. Ponderosa
Dive 4. Dreamgate Cenote.
Dive 5. Calavera (Temple of Doom)
Dive 6. TAJMA HA (TAJMAHAL)
Dive 7 Carwash (AKTUN HA)
Dive 8. Hell's Bells (Cenote Zapote)