Cenotes

Chris and Adrienne, swimming in a cenote at Cuzama.  

Cenotes, pronounced "se-noh-tay", are the caverns full of fresh water from the underground rivers.  The Yucatan peninsula is a porous limestone shelf with no visible rivers above ground.  There are over 6000 cenotes in the Yucatan and so far only about 2,400 have actually been registered and studied.  Cenotes were sacred to the Mayas because they represented the entrance to the underworld.

On the Cuzuma cenote horse cart rail line

My favourites in this area are the cenotes in Cuzuma.  The water is incredibly blue and clear and about 26 degrees celsius.  The water in the deepest ones is about 24 meters deep.  When you arrive in the town of Cuzuma, you immediately see dozens of horse carts and the beginning of a small railway.  The rail lines and carts were originally used to bring henequin out of the plantations and they have been maintained and added to a bit, for this tourist attraction.

Each horse cart holds up to four people and for 250 MXP, your driver/guide takes you back into the jungle and stops at each of three cenotes.  This tour will take you anywhere from 1 to 3 hours depending upon how long you want to stay at each cenote.  Stairs or ladders have been constructed to help you climb down the open holes in the ground to reach the water.  Be forewarned though that these stairs and ladders are VERY rudimentary and rustic.  The carts and rail lines also do not exactly meet anybody's ideas of modern safety standards so hang on tight and watch where you put your feet!  The small track is actually two-way and every now and then you will meet carts coming towards you.  Some how they decide who has to give way and you will all disembark and the driver will release the horse and manually lift the cart off the track to let the other one by, then lift it back on, retrieve the horse and everybody climbs back in to continue on your way.

Stairway down into a cenote at Cuzuma

The ladder drops straight into the water

Water so clear its nearly invisible

Looking up from half way down

Chris and Adrienne after their cenote swim

 

The "skylight" far above us

Everybody goes in their bathing suits and brings along towels for this trip.  It can be quite a mystical experience swimming underground in a seemingly bottomless blue hole with stalactites above you and only a small hole high above letting in the daylight.