Yucatan Peninsula Cenotes

🇲🇽 Yucatan Peninsula Cenotes
Cenotes, this word comes from the Mayan word dzonot or ts’onot, literally meaning “cave with water”, they are natural pit or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrocks that exposes groundwater.

Most Extensive Underwater Cave Systems In The World
Mexico has the most extensive underwater cave systems in the world, located along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has the longest underwater cave, under Tulum in Quintana Roo, it extends for more than 368km at an average depth of 21 meters (69 feet) and a maximum depth of 120 meters (394 feet). There are at least 6,000 cenotes in Yucatan Peninsula.

It is a world class place for cavern and cave divers to explore the caves here, for its famous spectacular formations and amazing clarity of water. You would probably experience the best cenotes or cave diving here. It is a once in a lifetime experience, you may experience ocean dive with a lot of swim through before, but this is totally different experience from ocean diving, this is much more than just a swim through.

Cavern Dive vs Cave Dive
Diving in cavern is different from diving in caves, diving in cavern is diving with overhead environment, exploring the outer caverns while remaining within sight of the entrances and within the zone where you see natural light. Also, you would never be more than 39 meters (128 feet) from the entrance and no deeper than 21 meters (68 feet) from surface. Cave diving is going beyond the above mentioned and requires extensive training.

You can explore cenotes with an open water certificate, but you must be accompanied by a certified cavern guide for safety reasons. Caverns could be narrow or wide, depends on the dive sites, so you sort of need a certain level of buoyancy control for exploring cenotes.

How To Dive Cenotes?
Most of the cenotes or cavern dives located around Tulum and Playa de Carmen. You would find it convenient staying at either of these two places.

A wide choice of cenotes can be accessed within a 60 minute drive. You would able to find many choices of dive shops in both places, some dive shops do pick up from both places.

✈️ From Cancun airport to Tulum
By Car - around 1 hours 45 minutes
By ADO bus - around 2 hours and 15 minutes
✈️ From Cancun airport to Playa del Carmen
By Car - around 45 minutes
By ADO bus - around 1 hours 15 minutes

When To Dive?
You can dive cenotes all year around. Water temperature in cenotes is between 24 to 26°C (75 to 77°F). It feel much cooler than sea water temperature, normally dive shop will provide 5mm wetsuite to dive in cenotes.

You would want to pick a sunny day to do it if you can, you can still do it in a rainy or cloudy day, but with a sunny, you would see wonderful natural sunlight and sunbeam at the entrance, it is an amazing experience.

My Dive Experience & Highlight

Personally, I love ocean diving as I love to see different sea life. I am not a particular fan of caves or like to explore in dark places, diving in cenotes was still a very special and amazing experience for me, it was a totally different experience from ocean diving. I would say this is something you should experience at least once a lifetime even you are not fan of caves or an explorer type of person.

The charm of cenotes
With the crystal clean water here, you can see the stunning formation in the caves clearly. They are full of different shapes of stalactites hanging from the cave ceiling and stalagmites are extending upward from the cave floor. You do not need to go very deep inside to see them, sometimes you can already see the formations at or from the entrance.

The formations are of a wide range in size, some are huge and tall, these formation grew very slow, they took years and years to form. It is amazing to see something took thousands of years to form and formed 40 millions years ago right in front of you. In some rocks, you can even see fossils track of life existing there millions of years ago.

Apart from the stunning formations, the experience of going through halocline and sulphur clouds were super unreal, I never experienced anything like that before.

A halocline is where fresh water meet salt water, like a layer of blurry water, when you are in it, you can still see the shape and colour of things but everything gets blurry. Even if the object is just right in front of you! You will also experience temperature change with 1 to 2°C. The experience is super cool.

Another amazing experience was encountering the sulphur cloud. When you see sulphur cloud in the water, the feeling is like you are in space. Sulphur cloud is a layer of hydrogen sulphide which is formed by the bacterial decomposition of organic material that fallen into the cenotes. You would see some broken tree branches in or above the sulphur cloud, the whole scenery is astonishing. You would not able to see anything when you go through the sulphur cloud, you feel like you're in a cloud of smoke and you can feel slight different taste from breathing the regulator because of the sulphur.

On a sunny day, you would see stunning sun light or sun beam from the entrance when you exit the dive. This super unreal experience can not really be described in words, you will need to experience it yourself.

Different cenotes has different landscape and characteristic, you may not experience all in one dive. If you know what you want to see, tell your dive guide, they will pick the best cenote based on your dive experience.

My favourite cenote dive site - Cenote El Pit
Cenote El Pit is my favourite dive site among three other cenotes I did. Descending into a oval-sharped sinkhole to 32 meters (104 feet), we dove slowly upward in circle pattern to enjoy every single bit.

In the deeper part there was a layer of sulphur cloud, it looked like a layer of cloud that you would see from an airplane. Unlike cenote Angelita which has a really thick layer, the sulphur cloud here was in multiple thinner layers. Then we swam through the halocline. It was an amazing visual experience for entering and exiting the halocline. I tried to play around with my hand in the halocline, it felt like the pieces of blur moved around.

When we kept ascending, there was a wonderful formation of stalactites at a ledge. Then, my dive ended with an awesome sunbeam came from the entrance and went down to 20 plus meters (65 feet plus).

Personally, I think the Pit is great "all-rounder". You may not see as much as stalagmites and stalactites compared to other cenotes, but I just love the overall experience here.

My dive guide in the sunbeam, feel like in the space.

Other cenote experience
Other than cenote El Pit, I dove in cenote Angelita, Dos Ojos (barbie line) and Car Wash. They are all very amazing with different characteristic.

Diving in Angelita was pretty similar experience to diving in the Pit except having a chance to go through the sulphur cloud into the darkness with only torch lights. Even though it was a really short time with 3-4 minutes because of the depth I got to say the scenery of the sulphur cloud with all the broken tree was astonishing in Angelita and makes it worth the dive. However, you would not see much stalagmites and stalactites.

Diving in Dos Ojos (barbie line) and Car Wash are more similar, we dove further into the cavern space, swam through in the cavern, up and down. Both sites had amazing stalagmite and stalactites formations. If you want to see more formations, go to this type of dive site.
Besides, I would also want to highlight something in cenote Cash Wash; it has a lily garden right at the entrance, some of the lilies there are 2 meters (6.5 feet) tall which is pretty awesome. Also, there are different types of fresh water fishes when you jumped into the water in there where you normally do not see much sea animals in cenote.

Million years old fossil sight in Doj Ojos

Is it worth to go or try cenotes diving?
Totally, like I said it is a very special dive experience that you may not experience in other places. You may even get addicted to it after trying it. 😁

Other Useful Information

Dive Shop Used 👇

Karst Diving - Mariano (Instagram: karstdiving)🥇

Dive Gear Shop 👇

If you have urgent need of dive gear or parts, there is a Dive Rite in Playa del Carmen. In Tulum, there is a small shop called No Diving Limits, they provide most of the basis dive gear and they also sell technical gear for cave diving, like whole side-mount setup etc.

Budget Transportation 👇

If you are looking for budget transportation to get around in Tulum and Playa del Carmen (not taxi), you should look for something called Colectivo, it is like a minivan transportation that are commonly used by locals. They would have written destination/ name of the places at the front windshield of the car, it could be just a area name, a street or some big shop name. Costs within the city normally cost 10MXN per person (adult).

It is very difficult to look for any information about colectivos online. I am not so sure if there is a schedule or they just go when it is full or after waiting for certain time. In the day time, they run quite frequent but you may need to wait a bit longer in night time.

Here is my experience of using Colectivo: It is normal to feel confused taking it for the first time. It was a bit difficult for me to find where to take it, but most of the city has a few places where all colectivo's start and end in a centralised spot. Sort of like a bus station but it is on the street, then you catch it along the routes.

I found it most difficult was which route should I take. I started googling all the names on the windshields in Google Maps to know the general direction, then I confirmed with driver. You can try to confirm with the driver directly. If you speak Spanish, it could be easier, but if you do not, it would be super difficult.

Then pay attention to the map when the colectivo is getting close to your destination and ask for the driver to stop, you would at least need to know how to say "here" in Spanish as most of the drivers can not communicate well in English. After the first time, everything is easier.

Colectivo also do intercity routes (eg. from Tulum to Playa del Carmen), it costs more but it is cheaper than the ADO bus.

Colectivo Information in Playa del Carmen 👇

I mainly used colectivo in Playa del Carmen, not much in Tulum, so I can only share the information I know.
There are two main spots in town to get colectivo within Playa del Carmen.
1. 25 Avenida Nte & Av Benito Juarez (approximate location below)

2. 35 Avenida Nte & Av Benito Juarez (approximate location below)

There is a main station for intercity colectivo located at C.3 Sur and 50 Avenida Nte., you will find a lot of collectvio under the highway bridge which can take you to different cities and small towns. The approximate location shown below.

Accommodation 👇

There are plenty of choices of accommodation in both cities.
If Cozumel is part of your dive journey, it is more convenient to stay in Playa del Carmen where the ferry goes to/from Cozumel.

Food Choices For Vegan 👇

Both Tulum and Playa del Carmen are super vegan friendly cities, you can find plenty of vegan or vegan friendly choices of cafes and restaurants.

Playa del Carmen recommendation:
- Comet 984 50's diner (fully vegan - Burger place, they do vegan meat and cheese.)
- Kaxapa Factory (vegan options)
- Po Thai (vegan options)
- Vegan Galato in Aldo's

Food delivery company:
Playa Now / Playita Express (Both accept WhatsApp orders and can communicate in English, pay upon delivery)
My experience of using them is pretty good. Delivery times are reasonable and food is still hot and fresh most of the time. The only hard thing is providing Mexican address. It is a bit tricky (particularly if you stay in Airbnb), my suggestion is providing them pictures of exterior of your house or building or send them live location.

Tulum recommendation:
- Suculenta Tamaleria (fully vegan)
- Burrito Amor (vegan options)
- Asian Bodega Foodtruck (vegan options)
Food delivery company: Tomato.mx (online order platform)

Above information based on dive trip in May 2021.