Today I was once again woken up naturally earlier than I needed to be, so I finished packing my luggage and decided to go watch the sunrise on the beach. I got there and got to enjoy a beautiful sunrise whilst the beach was being cleaned of algae.
I then went back to the hostel and took my luggage down to the storage room and checked out, waiting for my diving tour guide to come and meet me for our day’s adventure diving.
After collecting the equipment we were going to need for today, we just made one more stop to collect the oxygen tanks, before arriving about an hour later at the park where the Cenotes were located. There we drove for a bit before arriving at our first cenote and dive site called the Pit. There we did our briefing and walked around to look at the Cenote before we geared up and headed down a wooden ladder to the edge of the water.
After jumping into the water, we dove to a lower section of the pit at around 28 meters crossing through a layer of freshwater, then seawater on the way (the pit’s bottom is at 140 meters). As we reached the bottom depth we encountered a hazy fog layer that was covering the bottom of the pit, through which some dead tree branches would come out. It I also there that we encountered a blind swamp eel, which as my guide told me afterwards is a very rare find, and is an ancient Mayan symbol. The ancient Mayans believed that the eels are the babies to a much larger eel that guards the cenotes, measuring up to 100 meters. Following this find, we explored the rest of the Cenote going through some darker sections, away from the sun’s light shining through the Cenote down into the cavern, which emits a blueish green dancing light down into the cavern.
After some spirals around the outside of the Cenote, we reached the surface about 30 mins after having entered the pit, and lugged our equipment back up the ladder to the truck for our next cenote, called Dos Ojos.
At the Dos Ojos cenote, after our briefing we went down to the cavern, which was much less deep but longer, we entered along with some other divers and followed a line into the depth of the cavern, encountering some dark passageways full of stalactites and columns, and occasionally going next to an opening in the ceiling which would cast light down into the water. The water was crystal clear allowing you to see very far into the cavern (or at least as far as the light would shine) but unfortunately, my mask kept getting fogged up so I had to keep clearing it to be able to experience it! At the end of the line we were following (very carefully in order to not get lost in the cavern system) we encountered the reason why this line is called the Barbie line, and it was because at the end is a barbie doll being eaten by a crocodile toy. From there we turned back around and followed the line back out to where we had originally entered from.
After all this diving we drove back to Playa de Carmen and stopped on the way to eat some food, my guide Javier, which was awesome during the tour offered to bring me to a more local taco place than the place we were meant to go, so he bough me to this parking lot with a few Taco stands, where we ordered some delicious tacos that we ate standing up next to the stand as you are meant to do i am told by the locals.
From there we headed back to the hostel to pick up my luggage and bring it to my new hotel, but not before I managed to forget my debit card in the atm, and thankfully managed to get back to the atm in time to get my card, which had been found by someone.
At the new hotel, I encountered a few other Gadventures travellers on my tour whilst we waited for our rooms to be ready, which took forever, and when we did get the key I accidentally stumbled upon a random guy sitting on his bed in his room, as they had given me the wrong room key.
At 6 we all went downstairs and met up with the rest of the group for our tour briefing, where we had an introduction to the tour we would be doing and what the covid restrictions we would have to respect would be. After this, we headed off as a group on a 20 mins walk to a local restaurant where I tried 2 different dishes.
Finally after a long busy day we headed back to the hotel where i got some much needed sleep.