Weighed downwards alongside dive gear together with tanks, nosotros lumber downwards a stone oil concrete stairway inwards the jungle towards a shallow cave inwards the limestone rock.
We’re sweltering inwards full-body wetsuits. Humidity hugs us similar a soggy blanket together with mosquitoes buzz our heads together with hands, the exclusively peel unprotected yesteryear neoprene. We’re starting to wonder whether our preconceived, together with possibly slightly romanticised, persuasion of cenote diving powerfulness last a few degrees off.
At the base of operations of the stairs, a minor natural puddle greets us nether the rocky overhang. The H2O is crystal clear together with teeming alongside petty dark catfish.
It’s beautiful, but it doesn’t facial expression similar a house to larn scuba diving.
We’re at the Tajma Ha cenote, halfway betwixt the beachside towns of Playa del Carmen together with Tulum, on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The Yucatán is famous for its impressive Mayan ruins, white sand beaches, together with its cenotes – natural, water-filled sinkholes that honeycomb the flat, limestone peninsula.
It’s too renowned equally the site of i of the planet’s most catastrophic events: an asteroid affect 65 i 1000 1000 years agone that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today, cenotes cluster along the ancient cloak-and-dagger rim of the 180-kilometre-wide Chicxulub crater, together with tin last constitute across much of the Yucatán peninsula.
At Tajma Ha, our take away Sarah, a certified cave diver, grabs concord of a rope together with climbs downwards into the translucent pool, waving for us to follow. Beneath the surface, nosotros get together at a minor pinkish arrow on the cenote floor. It points towards the dorsum of the pool, where a cavern business disappears betwixt the rocks.
We’ve been briefed on what to await over the adjacent forty-five minutes of diving, but equally nosotros boot after Sarah, we’re nevertheless unconvinced there’s fifty-fifty an larn out to our petty pond. Then nosotros top through a minor fissure, together with everything changes.
Beyond the crevasse, nosotros slow drift into the darkness of what feels similar a large opened upwardly space. Sarah waves her torch, revealing the curved walls together with depression ceiling of a broad limestone passageway ahead of us.
To our right, a torch beam catches a startling skull-and-crossbones, a alert sign to divers non to top into the vast dark aught beyond.
It’s the get-go of many breath-catching moments equally nosotros laid out on i of the most extraordinary dives we’ve always made, a journeying through the watery realm beneath the Yucatán jungle.
Our stride is deadening together with relaxed, similar the dark catfish that occasionally cruise yesteryear but inches from our masks. Now together with then, Sarah circles her lite around trounce fossils embedded inwards the chalky limestone, remnants of a prehistoric reef.
Ancient stalagmites ascent from the flooring together with grab inwards our torch beams, patch stalactites traveling steal the depression ceilings. In the dim lite together with narrow passages, we’re hyper aware of our surroundings, together with our buoyancy control.
The H2O is similar glass. There’s really petty electrical current and, different the ocean, it’s completely silent. The stillness is broken exclusively yesteryear the audio of our slow, mechanical breathing.
At times, it feels similar we’re floating through the air inwards a sort of alternate, noiseless, torch-lit universe. It’s surreal together with intense. Which is fitting. We are, after all, diving through the gateway to Xibalba, the underworld of the ancient Mayans.
Cenotes were in i trial believed to last the domicile places of the Mayan pelting god, Chaac. Artefacts constitute inwards some cenotes, similar golden objects, jewellery, fifty-fifty human bones, advise the agricultural Mayans made ritual sacrifice to their vital rain-maker deity.
Even the discussion ‘cenote’ comes from a Mayan word, dzonot, important a natural well.
At Tajma Ha, a shimmering glow appears through the darkness, transforming into an iridescent drape of lite equally nosotros approach Sugarbowl, our next, linked cenote. We surface briefly into the circular cavern, opened upwardly to the heaven through a hole inwards the ceiling. Bats flit higher upwardly our heads together with the calls of Motmot birds echo around the chamber.
Further on, nosotros descend to a deeper purpose of the tunnel network. Sarah casts her torch onto a halocline, the boundary betwixt the fresh rainwater of the cenote system, together with the dense, heavier tabular array salt H2O that has seeped inwards from the coastal fringe of the peninsula.
From above, the halocline shimmers similar sunlight reflecting off a lake, exclusively this lake is under the water. Dropping into it, the globe blurs together with swirls around us, dream-like together with slightly disorienting.
We’re familiar alongside this hazy, psychedelic halocline termination though, having cutting our cenote diving teeth before inwards the 24-hour interval at Jardine del Eden.
One of the Yucatán’s most pop cenotes, Jardine del Eden is vast, beautiful together with opened upwardly to the sky. On this day, the get-go sunny 24-hour interval inwards a week, nosotros arrived to a carpark jammed alongside excited families, together with scuba diving students gearing upwardly for their puddle training.
We hitting the H2O quickly, swimming yesteryear teeming fish together with green, algae-covered rocks before descending into a tranquil cloak-and-dagger passage connecting alongside the nearby Coral cenote.
Finning through the small tunnel, nosotros were all of a precipitous treated to a spectacular lite exhibit equally the sun’s refracted rays pierced the H2O of the cenote ahead. It was similar stumbling across a submerged stage, illuminated yesteryear a 1000 beams of light.
As our eyes adjusted, to a greater extent than details were revealed, similar clustering tree roots together with fish darting betwixt rocks, but our eyes were constantly drawn dorsum to the dazzling beams. Later, equally nosotros made our means dorsum to Jardine del Eden, nosotros emerged to a sea of legs dangling inwards the H2O above, together with surfaced to the shrieks together with splashes of dozens of day-trippers.
The cenote diving at Jardine del Eden was deadening together with relaxed, alongside an like shooting fish in a barrel betoken of entry, together with a less-challenging underwater environment: the perfect introduction to this singular scuba diving experience.
Back at Tajma Ha, the dive is proving to a greater extent than demanding, alongside enough of narrow swim-throughs, together with constant equalising equally our depth shifts upwardly together with downwards through the passageways together with caverns. It’s tricky together with exciting, but we’re grateful for the primer we’ve had at Jardine del Eden.
As nosotros close the destination of our Tajma Ha dive, nosotros suspension for some other surface, this fourth dimension inwards a partially-filled cavern alongside 3 minor holes inwards the ceiling.
On brilliant days similar this one, the Sun lasers through the openings to shape 3 intense shafts of dazzling bluish lite inwards the H2O below, giving the room its name: Points of Light. It’s a scene immediately out of the Star Trek transporter room. One we’ll demand to sear into our memories. Moments before arriving, our photographic telly camera battery gives out.
Surfacing through the beams, nosotros float for a few precious moments inwards the cavern, taking inwards the ambience. The exclusively legs dangling hither are our own. H5N1 few minutes later, nosotros swim through a crevasse into the shallow puddle where nosotros started. We’re buzzing alongside adrenaline equally nosotros haul out of the water, already talking close hereafter cenote diving opportunities.
As nosotros plough to climb the stairs, nosotros both get got i concluding facial expression at the minor puddle of H2O nether the limestone overhang. It actually doesn’t facial expression similar a house to larn scuba diving.
But it’s i of the most magical scuba dives we’ve always done.
Things To Know About Cenote Diving In Mexico
Cenote diving on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula is like shooting fish in a barrel to organise, alongside dozens of operators running trips out of Tulum, Playa del Carmen together with Cancun.
Trips ordinarily include 2 cenote dives, together with in that location are a enough of cenotes to select from. They gain inwards complexity from like shooting fish in a barrel dives for beginners through to dives requiring Cave Diver certification.
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