1. What is a cenote?

2. Cenote diving in Riviera Maya

3. Cenote vs cavern vs cave diving

4. Best cenotes for diving

5. Who can dive cenotes?

6. Safety

7. What certification is required?

8. Best time to dive

9. FAQ

10. Book a Cenote Dive

What is a Cenote ? 

It is the Cenozoic period, and dinosaurs and other mega wildlife are eating from the Sabana on the area on those times. And then, booom ! A huge asteroid of about 10 km of diameter  came into the Yucatán Península and crashed into Chicxulub, a little area close to Progreso town too. Leaving a  crater of about 200 km wide and 3 km deep into the Gulf of Mexico. Nowadays in Chixulub town we can go to an awesome museum that shows all the artifacts and facts about this huge cataclism that happened approximately 66 millions years ago. 

 This cataclism soon brought out an athmosphere of toxic gases covering little by little everything on earth. And starting the extinction of the dinosaurs as we know it.  The Yucatán, always being part of an ocean floor,  and exposed on those times on dry due to some of the many ice ages on those periods, quickly began a process of limestone calcification with the acid rain than combined with the carbon dioxide from the athmosphere and other gases too.  This combination then got to the ground and started to filter underground througth the limestone bed, known as  "The Karst" , as we know it in Geology and science of the Earth.  Everything being dry started to grow because of the filtration of these little drops of acid rain combined with carbonate calcium that  gave birth to the Stalactites, as we know them, those beatiful calcified formations that come down from the ceiling of the carverns. As these little drops continued to fall into the ground they formed the Stalagmites, the other ones that formed from the bottom up.  And so on, as they continued to grow and for the whim of nature, they formed those columns as they got close together and that we can admire while we dive in places like the Sac Actun system. Nowadays we can calculate with certain studies that for every centimer of calcified formation it took a process of 100 years to form, calcify and grow, more or less depending of the amount of rain and water filtration that varies from area to area, on the whole Yucatán Península. 

After some centuries and when the water level began to raise from the ocean side these huge galleries started to flood carrying parts from the jungle and organisms from out there, and when they coulnd´t go any farther and got stock inside these flows of water began to decompose inside the limestone ceilings. Amonia gases, hydrogen sulfide gases and other gases began to push these ceilings little by little and where they were fragile enough to find a way to get to the surface, they did and boom! , all that ceiling around collapsed, forming  as we know it in science, a "Karstic Window" or locally known as a Cenote. 

Cenote or  ( D´zonot ) the main Mayan word to designate these windows, were sacred places for our ancestors, meaning that they were windows to their underworld or "Xibalbá" as the Mayans know their afterlife world.  Something similar to the Valhalla from the Vikings or the Hades from the Greeks. 

This is the place where our Cenote Diving takes place, no more or less. 

 Being flooded nowadays we can enjoy these pristine clear and cristal clear waters where we can admire the beauty of all these formations that have millions of years age. Of course as you may deduct they don´t longer grow as they are submerged into the water and the filtration of the rain doesn´t affect anymore. And of course this is one of the reasons why we need to be very careful on the way we dive on these environments and need to have advanced bouyany diving skills.  

Don´t worry if you don´t have these skills because we can get you trained in that. 

Through our dives we will get into the transition between salt water and fresh water known as a "Halocline" ,which looks surreal and looks like another surface or river inside the same dive. Reflections or trippy views are often described by many divers as they get through them.  And of course this makes one of the highlights of diving in these special environments. 

Now there is a big difference between diving in a Cenote, diving in a Cavern and diving as a Full Cave Diver. Let me explain you the main difference, rules and protocols.  Many years have passed since the develpment of good and safe practices to dive these environments. One of the pioneers of course, Sheck Exley, known as the Father of Cave Diving,  began on this quest writing his book  Blue Print for Cave Diving, in which he states the basic protocols and rules for any of these overhead environment dives.  As stated nowdays from many agency manuals, Cavern diving is whithin 200 feet / 60 meters away from the nearest exit or daylight, and you will be using a single tank and the rule of thirds. Being said, one third to come in, one third to come out and one third for reserve at the end of the dive.  These dives can be perform by any Open Water Diver with decent experience on bouyancy and self control as long as he follows a Full Cave Diver as a guide.  

A Full Cave Diver is that diver trained to go beyond the Cavern Limits of any Cenote, trained in advanced protocols and discipline to perform a formal Cave Dive, using the same Gas Management principles but using more tanks and equipment as part of the Redundancy  Philosophy of Cave Diving and Technical Diving. A proper Cave Dive is that one beyond daylight limits and distance to any exit and limited only by the penetration distance and number of used tanks depending of the planning of that dive.  

Being said, it is not posible or allowed to dive any of these systems ( Cenotes or Caverns)  without a proper Full Caver Diver as a guide.