Yucatan Peninsula, 7-21 September. Part II - Cenotes

Samula cenote at Dzitnup

The Yucatan peninsula is riddled with cenotes which vary from sink holes like the ones at Dzibilchaltun and Chichen Itza to ones which look more like flooded caves. Of the cenotes at the ruins, the Dzibilichaltun cenote is a better illustration of what a cenote is as the Chichen Itza ones are deep and obscured by vegetation). We didn't swim in the Dzibilchaltun cenote as the water was quite murky but we did stick our feet in only to be met by hordes of fish descending and eating us. Well not exactly, but for me one fish was quite fond of sucking at my toes, while when Andrew stuck his feet in, they got really excited and quite a few of them started sucking on his feet. I have no idea what they were after but my toenails were very clean afterwards.

Fish feeding quite happily on Andrew

Cenote at Dzibilchaltun (above and below)

We hired a car in the Tulum area (for 20 euro a day/400 pesos why wouldn't you?) and used it to visit a couple of these – the Gran Cenote and Dos Ojos (two eyes). Dos Ojos is part of a large water system with two main water bodies, the two eyes. One is a large semi crescent pool of water, the other is smaller, flooded cave. Most people do a snorkel tour there where you go around with flashlights and look at the caves. We decided not to bother – we had our own snorkel gear and reckoned we'd see enough in the caves we could get at that way. And it was certainly interesting swimming along ut feeling like we were flying over a cave and looking at the stalactites and occasional stalagmites and one column, severed in the middle. There were a few fish, particularly in the smaller Ojo but the main attraction was cave features.

Dos Ojos cenote

Gran Cenote, the first one we visited to snorkel, was a combination of cave, lots of bats and fish and ... turtles! We spent the afternoon there, swimming between the different sections of water and enjoying looking at fish and using the underwater camera for photography. To begin with, there were quite a lot of people there, but they all disappeared around 4. We were back in the water then, Andrew found a big fish [perhaps 25 cm], I went looking for it and just as I found it, I see a turtle up ahead of me. I hadn't expected that, but in the end we saw three different turtles swimming around and one of the workers there told me there are lots of turtles in the entire water system (like Dos Ojos, Gran Cenote is connected in a massive system of caves and underwater lakes and rivers).

Fish at Gran Cenote. Unfortunately we didn't have the camera when the turtles appeared

We saw a few other cenotes around Valladolid – Cenote Zaci in the town itself and the more interesting ones at Dzitnup – underground caverns with a small hole in the roof (Samula had a tree growing through the hole) and nice cool water for swimming in around all the cave stuff. In places the water is very deep – just as well because someone fell through the hole in the roof of X-keken cenote but rose out of the water in one piece.

One of the Chichen Itza cenotes