Tulum

We reached Tulum, our first stop in Mexico, after spending a bit of quality time in a few smoking hot Belize bus stops. The plan was to check out some ruins, rest on the beach, and if we felt like it\ had the cash\ didn´t shit ourselves and chicken out, maybe do some cavern dives.

We managed to meet up with Chook and Kristy again outside one of the well established strret meet taco stands that run all the way along Tulum´s main street, and decided that the next day we should hire bikes and browse the local sites.

It turned out that no one in town had any bikes left to rent, not to say that we were shattered as we managed to hitch a ride in brand new mercedes 4wd, and arrived at the beach club in style. The beach was pretty much out of a post card, with the only slight imperfection being the ominous storm clouds that rumbled our way. Strange having black sky all around, but somehow remaining in the only patch of blue sky on the coast.

After the beach we decided to have a look at one of the 8 cenotes in the area. A cenote is an opening to an underground water system. The Yucatan Peninsula holds the worlds largest underground river system, with something like 120km of connected underground waterways. We had heard from various travellers along the way that diving these cenotes is the best diving that many of them had ever done. We decided to go and have a snorkel and have a look at one. The one we chose was called Cristal cenote, and was pretty average, however we all saw the black abyss of an opening that the divers went down, and knowing that we were probably going to go diving the following day, wished we hadn´t seen what we were in for.

So after weighing up the fact that we were combining both diving and caving (both dodgy sports on their own), Richo, Ebs, Cook and Kristy set off on two cenote dives. Our crazy divemaster from Prague ensured us that their was no reason to fear death, as what we were doing was not technically cave diving but cavern diving. The distinction being that in cavern diving, a person can dive with only an open water diving license, and at any one time can be no more than 60 m from an air pocket or opening. In addition to still be classified as cavern diving all tunnel should be able to accomodate two divers diving side by side.

Although it sounded a little crazy, and for the first few minutes diving into the first cave (Grand cenote) it was a little crazy, the sights we saw were breathtaking beautiful and really peaceful. The visibility was seriously 2oom, we were told, because with no sediment in the water there was nothing to impede the views. The best way to describe it is that we were in a pitch black cave with limestone stalictites, mites and fossilised coral, but instead of walking around the various caverns were floating through them. We had torches so we could see.

The second dive was called theTtemple of Doom (comforting name) and was reached by a short dash through the jungle with all our dive gear on to find the 7m diameter cenote opening, that we accessed by jumping into from a 3m rock platform (still with all our diving gear on). ON this dive our master took us through a maze of tunnels, again with incredible formations. However in this cenote there was both saltwater and freshwater, with the colder less dense freshwater sitting on the saltwater. This creates what is called a halocline, which is basically what happens with oil and vinegar. From either layer it is difficult to see into the other, and upon passing through it visibility gets impeded making what you see look like an oil painting. The first time we passed through one was a little unnerving as we were relying on our vision so much, and realy really didn´t want to lose sight of the diver in front and get lost.

Both Richo and Ebs thought it was the single best activity we had done and Ebs who says she is a fairly anxious diver, couldn´t believe how peaceful and comfortable the dive was. Kristy and Chook were in the same frame of mind. We have no photographic evidence of these dives, but you can have a look at the cenotes on the internet if you want to see what we are on about.