Best Caverns for Cenote Diving you Should Dive

Cenote diving is an amazing experience but should in general only be done by more experienced scuba divers.

A cenote is a dip or natural pit that's the result of a collapse in limestone bedrock. Because of the collapse, groundwater that lies beneath is exposed. Cenotes are often found along coastlines and on islands, especially in Yucatan in Mexico.

When you dive a cenote you're exploring the covered water, and you're essentially in a large pool that measures several meters in diameter. Because the water is filtered naturally, it's clear, making for great range of vision.

Cenote diving also related to as cavern diving is different than diving in open water. The most obvious logic is you will have an overhead environment, and you will not always be able to make a direct vertical ascend. Consenquently, other rules count for cavern diving then for Open water diving.

Things to recall for all cenote / cavern dives:

• To look around the cenotes you should at least be open water certified.
• Your dive guide should be a certified cavern guide and be full cave certified. Please do not vacillate to double check this before you sign up.
• Your dive guide must use full cave equipment when guiding you into the caverns.
• There should not be more than four divers in your group guided by one guide. The ratio is always 4:1
• You should not enter the cave zone, I replicate you should not ever enter the cave zone even if your guide asks you to do so
• Respect the rules of 3rds. When you have used 1/3 of your breathing gas, you should turn around to get back to your entry point
• Make sure you master your buoyancy, and you use proper finning routine, so you do not stir up residue which could lead to a silt out and disorientation.

That said, cavern / cenote diving is different any other experience you'll have in the world of scuba diving. If you want to check out some of the best cenotes on the planet, start with the list of 3 of the best cenotes to dive:

• Angelita
• Dos Ojos
• The PIt 

Cenote Angelita

This cenote is determined magical by those who have had the chance to inspect it. It's very large, dropping down 61 metres or 200 feet. You'll find incredible range of vision in the fresh water that's within the first 30 metres or 100 feet.

Before you reach the saltwater layer, you'll come upon a layer consisting of hydrogen sulphate that's often pictured as mystical in aspect because it looks like a dense, large cloud from above, yet it has a very strange colour from below.

How to get to Cenote Angelita?

Angelita lies about 17 km to the south of Tulum, Mexico. After walking for a short while through jungle terrain, you'll make your way to the large yet secret cenote known as Angelita.

Who should dive Angelita and who shouldn't dive it?

Advanced divers with a minimum of 20 logged dives should check out Angelita, as it is a deep dive offering a mystic experience. New certified open water divers should not enter Angelita. There are many other cenotes more proper for Open water divers.

Cenote Dos Ojos

Dos Ojos means "Two eyes" in Spanish. This cenote is one of the world's best underwater caves / caverns, as its home to the deepest cave crossing in all of Quintana Roo. Once in the super clear, warm water, you'll find this distinct cenote is beautifully adorned with stalagmites and stalactites. On clear sunny days, sunbeams shine into the water creating an awesome lights show which should not be forgotten. This is one of the many reasons why cenote diving is so much fun.

Location and how to get to Cenote Dos Ojos?

Dos Ojos lies about 17 km north of Tulum and south of Playa Del Carmen. A short walk, as well as a journey down some steps, will get you to the cenote. There are facilities around the cenote, like a small souvenir shop, a "secret" sun deck with nice chairs and wooden platforms / dive deck for easy entry into the cavern.

Who should dive and who shouldn't dive Cenote Dos Ojos?

There are two main cavern dives that most divers do when diving Dos Ojos. The first dive is often along the Barbie line. The "Barbie line dive is a formidable dive with no real strong swim throughs and a lot of open "space" giving the light ample chance to shine in and create magical views. If you ever dived the Barbie line, you'll understand the name. If not, we'll not spoil the amazement.

Cenote The Pit; Why should you dive it?

Located in the jungle, The Pit is an exceptional cenote that's part of Dos Ojos. It's roughly 119 metres, or 391 feet, deep, making it the deepest of all the cenotes in Quintana Roo.

At severe 30 metres or 100 feet, you'll notice the superb rays of the sun smashing with a cloud of hydrogen sulphate. You can continue past this cloud to the deeper parts of the cenote. But you should only do so when correctly trained.

How to get to cenote the Pit?

The Pit lies roughly 48 km to the south of Playa del Carmen, 12 km north of Tulum, 1 km to the south of Xel-Ha, and 10 km to the south of Akumal. To arrive to this cenote, you'll need to walk over a rocky trail for about 300 metres through the jungle. Then, to get to the water, you have to jump down another 6 metres. The pit is known as a challenging dive and can be hard to get too.

An under water river, cenote MUYAL HA

CENOTE  MUYAL-HÁ

video

The cenotes are a very characteristic natural deep wells of Mexico, resulting from the collapse of limestone layers, exposing groundwater beneath them. They are filled with water and connected to a marine cavern.

Located at only 15 min. from Playa del Carmen; well hidden into the jungle there is Muyal Há cenote, perhaps one of the most unusual formations of its own unusual kind.

With a similar structure like Angelita cenote; this one has the special characteristic of being a deep well; where the seawater has a high amount of hifrogen sulfide and more evident opacity, and fresh water above this. It has the same appearance as a river surface. There are even trees and fallen leaves, which makes this cenote even more surreal.

This dive is as simple as diving in fresh water with very good visibility, directly to the bottom, untill about 26 meters where you start to appreciate the density of salt water and a large white cloud of sulfuric acid suspended in layers around a rock "island" in the middle and towards the deepest part; which gives an appearance of a " water river", underwater. 

Other important points of view in Muyal Ha, are clusters of huge stalactites, air bubbles, decorating walls and little caves you can find some old bones residents.

Don`t miss this special dive, only with PHANTOM DIVERS!

Cenotes

CENOTES

A cenote [seˈnote]; plural: cenotes; from Yucatec Maya dzonot or ts'onot, "well" is a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Especially associated with the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes were sometimes used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings.

The term derives from a word used by the low-land Yucatec Maya — ts'onot — to refer to any location with accessible groundwater. Cenotes are common geological forms in low latitude regions, particularly on islands, coastlines, and platforms with young post-Paleozoic limestones that have little soil development.

Formation

Cenotes are formed by dissolution of rock and the resulting subsurface void, which may or may not be linked to an active cave system, and the subsequent structural collapse. Rock that falls into the water below is slowly removed by further dissolution, creating space for more collapse blocks. The rate of collapse increases during periods when the water table is below the ceiling of the void, since the rock ceiling is no longer buoyantly supported by the water in the void.

Cenotes may be fully collapsed creating an open water pool, or partially collapsed with some portion of a rock overhanging above the water. The stereotypical cenotes often resemble small circular ponds, measuring some tens of meters in diameter with sheer drops at the edges. Most cenotes, however, require some degree of stooping or crawling to access the water.

Penetration and extent

In the north and northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula, the cenotes generally overlie vertically extensive voids penetrating 50 to 100 m (160 to 330 ft) below the modern water table. However, very few of these cenotes appear to be connected with horizontally extensive underground river systems, with water flow through them being more likely dominated by aquifer matrix and fracture flows. In contrast, the cenotes along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula (within the state of Quintana Roo) often provide access to extensive underwater cave systems, such as Sistema Ox Bel Ha, Sistema Sac Actun/Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich and Sistema Dos Ojos.

Freshwater/seawater interface

The Yucatán Peninsula contains a vast coastal aquifer system, which is typically density-stratified.^[5] The infiltrating meteoric water (i.e., rainwater) floats on top of higher-density saline water intruding from the coastal margins. The whole aquifer is therefore an anchialine system (one that is land-locked but connected to an ocean). Where a cenote, or the flooded cave to which it is an opening, provides deep enough access into the aquifer, the interface between the fresh and saline water may be reached. The density interface between the fresh and saline waters is a halocline, which means a sharp change in salt concentration over a small change in depth. Mixing of the fresh and saline water results in a blurry swirling effect caused by refraction between the different densities of fresh and saline waters.

The depth of the halocline is a function of several factors: climate and specifically how much meteoric water recharges the aquifer, hydraulic conductivity of the host rock, distribution and connectivity of existing cave systems and how effective these are at draining water to the coast, and the distance from the coast. In general, the halocline is deeper further from the coast, and in the Yucatán Peninsula this depth is 10 to 20 m (33 to 66 ft) below the water table at the coast, and 50 to 100 m (160 to 330 ft) below the water table in the middle of the peninsula, with saline water underlying the whole of the peninsula.^[5]

Types

Radar topography reveals the 180 km (110 mi) ring of the crater; clustered around the crater's trough are numerous sinkholes, suggesting a prehistoric oceanic basin in the depression left by the impact (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech).

In 1936, a simple morphometry-based classification system for cenotes was presented.

• Cenotes-cántaro (Jug or pit cenotes) are those with a surface connection narrower than the diameter of the water body;
• Cenotes-cilíndricos (Cylinder cenotes) are those with strictly vertical walls;
• Cenotes-aguadas (Basin cenotes) are those with shallow water basins; and
• grutas (Cave cenotes) are those having a horizontal entrance with dry sections.

The classification scheme was based on morphometric observations above the water table, and therefore incompletely reflects the processes by which the cenotes formed and the inherent hydrogeochemical relationship with the underlying flooded cave networks, which were only discovered in the 1980s and onwards with the initiation of cave diving exploration.

Diving with Phantom Divers

I WANT TO DIVE! 

You have already spent several summers visiting the beaches of Mexico; and you have gotten to know many beautiful snorkel areas with turtles, whale sharks or maybe you just  spent some time looking for fish in the waves; then maybe its time to go to the next level ...     

Imagine that you could breathe underwater, swim for a long time with large schools of fish, turtles or even bull sharks; and have the opportunity to observe how the inhabitants of the Mexican Caribbean reefs live.    

Many people have the idea that scuba diving is very difficult and then just let pass by the opportunity; however is very easy and fun. With Phantom Divers you can try!
 How is a Discover Scuba Diver experience?
 Your diving instructor will spend time with you, to explain the basic principles of scuba diving and to give you a general idea of ​​your scuba gear.  Once you feel comfortable, your instructor will take you to a couple of reefs on Playa del Carmen, where you will be diving within 12 meters / 40 feet.

 Most Discover Scuba Diving experiences last two to three hours.  The exercises you learn during this experience can be use as a credit for the full PADI Open Water Diver certification.   

 Discover Scuba Diving experience is a great way to find out if scuba diving is for you. Contact us for an appointment and try scuba diving in the reefs of the Riviera Maya. Or start your diving lessons online now and finish your certification dives at our center.

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