Diving in a cenote

Kukulkan cenote

(I'm the one with black yellow wetsuit)

Chak Mool cenote 

Wow wow wow.... 

This time it's so difficult to describe it, that I let the pictures preceding my words! 

This morning I had couple of dives in two cenotes: Kukulkan and Chak Mool. As I already told you, I was quite scared because the diving conditions were completely different from what I was use to. Till now I dived only in salty open water. This means diving in a very wide space, with lot of light, corals and fishes. Diving in a cenote is a cavern dive (not to be confused with cave dive) , this means that you enter in the underwater cave where sometimes the sun light is so weak that you need to use a torch and you need to swim in narrow spaces, surrounded by stalagmites and stalactites. But this is not the part that scared me more : I've never been claustrophobic, so I wasn't worry about little spaces. I was more concerned about diving under a rock ceiling : if something happens and you need to go out, you can't just swim to the surface, but you need before to go out from the cave. 

But all my worries disappeared as soon as I wore my equipment and I entered into the water. We checked immediately our buoyancy. Diving in sweet water is different from diving in salty water and you need much less weights. Then our dive master gave us the signal to release the air from our BCD and to descent. 

The sunlight entered into the water with its strong rays. You could really see the lines that rays draw into the water. Near the opening of the cenote, the luminosity was very high and everything was coloured by an intense blue. On the bottom the rocks that thousands years ago formed the ceiling of this cave are still visible. On top of this rocks, there are many branches, that created an underwater imaginary island with many trees on top. 

After this amazing view, we started swimming deeper inside the cave. Luminosity became very low and we needed the torch light. Even from far away, we could see the the torch lights of other divers. 

Then something happened : visibility became very low and everything became blurred. We entered in that area at about 12m deep where sweet water mixes with salty water. Cenotes are caves of limestone : this means that water  can penetrate inside. When the Spanish came in Yucatan in the 1500 they thought that this was a very dry land, because they couldn't find any river or lakes. What they didn't know, is that all the sweet water was just there, under their feet. 

Cenotes are located near the sea, so at certain depth is possible to find water coming from the sea. Sweet water and salty water have different density and so they remain in two different layers. In the area where this two waters meet, we have a phenomenon called halocline. Everything is blurred and your buoyancy change. Then suddenly everything becomes clear again. This means that you entered in the layer of salty water or you went up to the layer of sweet water. Another effect is very strange : everything looks near and looking up it seems to be very close to the surface, even if you are 12m deep. We entered more into the cave, till when we found a signal of stop : only cave divers (with a opportune training) could go further. We followed our guide to discover other parts of the cave, where we saw stalactites and stalagmites. I looked up to the ceiling and I noticed something strange. It took me a while to recognise in those "mirrors" , air bubbles. Some of our air bubbles don't find immediately a way out and they remain for a while attached to the ceiling. Where the ceiling is not completely horizontal, the bubbles just move all together like in a dance to find their way out. 

We swam in a defined circuit and toward the end, we arrived near the entrance. We were still deep in the water, in a very dark area, when we saw the light coming from the entrance. It was such a spectacle. Light was strong and was entering almost vertical and our perception of the space changed. Suddenly everything looked like two dimensional. It looked to me like looking at an aquarium. The contrast between the darkness around you and the light at the entrance had a great impact on me. It was incredible!!! 

When we ascend to the surface, our guide asked us if we liked it. We didn't have words to describe how much! 

We rested for few minutes and we got ready for our second dive in Chak Mool . Even if the two cenotes were very close (50m from each other), they looked completely different. The first thing I noticed was the colour of the water. In Kukulkan was blue while in Chak Mool it was green. In this cenote the aperture was much more little than the other one, so we entered almost immediately into the darkness. We swam for a while, looking around at the beautiful stalagmites and stalactites, till when we arrived in an air bubble and we ascend to the surface. We were still inside the cave, with only a few cm aperture. From the outside world, some roots made their way till the fresh water of the cenote. This area is also inhabited by big spiders. After few minutes, we descended again to explore another part of the cenote. When we went back to the entrance, again we had another illusion effect. From our underwater position, we could see the trees outside the aperture of the cenote. But because of the optical effect of the water, they looked like in horizontal position and not vertical. 

The vision you have when you enter into the water and you face the cave, and the one you have when you start to go out facing the aperture are completely different, even if you are in the same exactly position. 

We ascended to the surface and again we were without words... 

This is one of the most spectacular adventure I had during this trip. Nothing that I saw was near to anything I've ever saw in my life. All this optical illusions were completely a surprise for me... Beautiful! Amazing beautiful!