Chak Mol Cenote

[kurat]

Just got back today from spending a great week in Mexico.

We drove out of Puerto Aventuras at around 8:30 in the morning and the guides promised it was only a 5 minute drive to the Cenote. I assumed that they meant mexican time and it would be closer to 20 minutes, but amazingly enough we were there very quickly.

I was lucky to have Mario, the guide, all to myself. Mario has 12 years cave diving experience in the area and is NSS-CDS trained. We chatted at length about my dive experience, what we were going to see, what we would be doing, rule of thirds, hand and light signals, etc.

The Cenote we were diving today was called 'Chac Mol' which I believe is named after a Mayan god. The figurines of Chac Mol typical have him lying on his back holding a bowl on his belly.

Anyhow, once we got our gear put together and went over the dive plan again we entered the cenote where we would be splashing in. From the surface it basically just looks like a shallow pool and I was immediately dissapointed. It looked to be no more than 5 - 10' deep. There was a gold line running through the middle of it. Once I jumped in though I quickly realized how wrong I was. The cavern was huge and went back and down quite a ways.

Mario gave me a few minutes to adjust myself and make sure I was happy with my weighting. I had been diving in the Ocean all week and wanted to make sure I was all good to go. I clipped off my camera and turned on my can light and we started the tour. We basically did the 'gold line' tour and followed it through various passages, even stopping to look at the ominous grim reaper sign.

It was stunning. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was under there. We followed the line to the right and went through a tighter area and immediately entered into another cenote that was at least triple the size of the one we started in. In here Mario took me on a little tour down little passages within this cenote, pointing out amazing formations, fossils and other neat stuff. Once we hit our turn pressure we went back to the starting cavern and he let me take pictures to my hearts content while he hovered nearby.

A quick tank change and we started our second dive. This time we went to the left into a third cavern and again toured around, there was holes and side passages everywhere, and every once in a while groups of other divers would appear from them and continue on their way. The highlight of this dive has to be the stalactites and stalagmites in one particular area - visually stunning. Although I noticed there was a lot of debris on the bottom of the cave, Mario later explained that a lot of this can be attributed to divers with poor buoyancy and respect for the caves and also people wanting to take a souvenir home.

The halocline was much larger than I thought it would be - it seemed to be several feet thick and wasnt a smooth layer like I was expecting, rather it seemed to be 'wavy' and the huge reduction in visibility as I was following Mario was quite a weird feeling at first. Thankfully he was wearing bright yellow fins and this is all I could see at some parts through the halocline while going through tighter spaces.

I would definately love to dive these cenote's again.

Max depth of 47' and total bottom time of about 1:45.

These pics were not taken by me, but are of me and my guide (Mario is with the yellow fins)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/8.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/DC8138.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/DSC02311.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/IMG_0004.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/IMG_0011.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P10100101.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120019.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120021.jpg

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120023.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120024.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120027.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120028.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/daval/Mexico%202008%20-%20Cenote/P4120032.jpg

[kurat]

One thing I forgot to mention was what I felt when I was in there. When I was in the big caverns with sunlight streaming down I was completely comfortable - even though I was in an overhead as I would have had to go diagonally quite a distance to get out. When we were in areas (and there was a couple) where briefly you could see no daylight, I did feel a little clausterphobic and was very aware of the rig that I was diving which was a single AL 80.

Is cave diving for me? I don't know. Maybe the clausterphobic feeling was just because it was my first time in this sort of environment.

I'm in no rush to jump into cave though - I think I'll do a few more of these and the cavern course first.

[owlbill]

Very nice.

[scubagirl]

cool pics, Dave!