The cenote I will never forget

(from our Mexico road trip, November 2015)

Julio heard about a village called Cuzama somewhere in between the Uxmal ruins and Merida that has three cenotes and the locals will take you on a tour of these cenotes for a small fee. And it gets better... They take you to all these cenotes on a little wagon pulled by a mule.

 Everything about it sounded amazing: 1) we love cenotes, 2) we would be supporting locals instead of the huge tourist traps that are popping up all over the area (Xcaret, Xel Ha, etc), 3) it would be an adventure and something quite different than anything we had done before.

To get there from the Uxmal ruins we had to take some small pot hole filled back roads. We arrived and were presently surprised that the whole experience would cost cost only 200 pesos for the two of us (like $7 bucks each).  We were pumped... until... we got to the first one.

It was a hole in the ground with a rickety ladder going down. "The cenote is where!?" "We have to do what to get where?!" So after saying "I'm not doin it, I'm not going down there," a few times, I did it and followed Julio down... We climbed down into what seemed like a bottomless pit because the water was reflecting all the rock formations and at first glance it looked like a pit followed by another pit. It was probably only about 30-40 feet down backwards into what seemed like a well shaft to get to a little rock platform.

 The water was so dark and creepy and it looked bottomless... Again I didn't want to go in and after a few minutes watching Julio swimming around and two Germans climb down the ladder and jump in with no hesitation at all... I decided to lower myself in as slowly as one can lower oneself into a bottomless water hole. (I say bottomless, but the rustic sign posted outside says the water is about 24 meters deep.) Julio had a field day with his goggles making little expeditions under to see what fish were there and what the rock formations were like under there. I ducked my head under two or three times to see the view and that was enough adventure for me.


 I also remember our guide was the only guide that went down with us probably there isn't that much room for all the guides plus visitors to be down there, but also I think because he saw how nervous I was! After we got out we took our picture by the sign that said the name of the cenote and its depth.

Cenote Dlapakal, Depth of 24 meters

The next two cenotes were much easier to get into, had lot of light and not a bottomless pittish. The last one especially was unique with swallows coming in and doing laps above while small fish did laps around our legs. I will never forget this adventure!