The planning always begins about 6-9 months in advance and before we know it, we are moving through airport security with equipment and gadgets that no TSA agent has a clue of which it is used. That planning put us in Cancun, Mexico, the busiest airport in Central America (27 million passengers annually) at 4 pm to find Immigration EMP-friggin-TY! 10 minutes and we were waiting for bags. 15 minutes and we were at the shitty car rental counter of National (which like all car rental agencies in MX consistently can not deliver the vehicles promised!). By 5pm we were heading south in our Chrysler Mini Van of which we would beat to crap on the dirt jungle roads; we asked for a Jeep; they said we would have one; they lied. Oh well, won't stop us. After making our ususal stops along the way for tanks, groceries and supplies, we got to our Casita at about 7:30pm. Opened the door and it was locked...it is never locked. Usually the door is open and the key is inside. Guess things changed. After logging onto the property, Luna Azul, wireless and activating my Spanish Translator App, we gave communication with the night security a try. Clave (key)? No yo se! ( I don't know)! Just about that time, Parker ran into a vacationer, he spoke English and told us where to get the key. While Parker was fetching the key, I opened up the registration email and had I read the last paragraph, we would have been in the room by 7:35pm vs 8! The one thing in life that is for sure, change in always inevitable.
DAY ONE - began at about 8am (in our minds) but really 9am local - daylight savings time hadn't started there yet. Took us about 2 days to get the right time. Anyway, after a nice breakfast on our resort beach
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| The view from "Breakfast on the Beach"! |
It is now noon and we are just arriving at Grand Cenote. This is truly one of the more developed cenotes in the area and after paying 200 pesos to enter (used to be 70 and that was expensive...my god, inflation effects every land) we set up our equipment, carried our support equipment down to the waters edge-in this situation, a nice dock at the bottom of a nice stairway, right on the waters edge. Walked back up to our equipment table, wriggled into our wetsuits (man they must have shrunk!), hoisted up our double tank rigs and headed back down to the water.
Now true to form, Parker has to make a very special, "we have arrived" statement just prior to his entry...I am in the water waiting. He steps toward the entry ladder, stepping on the end of a 2"x 8" deck plank and he breaks the deck and damm near falls into the water potentially busting himself up good but fortunately he catches himself and prevents injury. Now I must digress. In 2001 on our first visit, this deck was made up of 2-3 inch logs banded together and Parker steps on the deck in just the right way, his entire leg slips through and he is stuck up to his knee with full equipment of 100 plus pounds on his back. We have to get a log to pry him out. Then in 2003, on the final day of our advanced cave class, he trips walking to cenote Muchachos, again in full equipment, and hits the ground crushing his eye socket on a rock. We move slowly now!
We enter Grand Cenote, 1pm and away we go for our first dive. Dive One - This was planned to be a mainline dive with one jump, off the mainline, to the Paso de Legarto line with double tanks (doubles) only.
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| Cenote entry deck right at waters edge - very common in the popular cenotes. |
We wanted to have an easy, simple, relaxing first dive. We wanted to get our "cave diving chops back" in good form before progressing into more complex dives. After Parker's stunning entry, we did our dive checks and drills, descended and attached our mainline reel onto a stalagmite in about 30 feet and headed into the cave. After about 12 minutes on the mainline, Parker deployed our jump spool (line) and lead us to the Paso de Legarto line where he tied off and we then continued up into this passage way leading to several great cave junctions, most notably the Lithium Sunset line and the cenotes, Calimba and Bos Chen. However, today was not for us to leave the Legarto line, but to simply work with on our team skills, our cave awareness and our gas pressure which we use only one quarter of our gas for entry when we are diving a two man team in doubles. After about 40 minutes, at an average depth of about 35 feet, we turned our dive and exited the cave leaving all our lines in place for Dive Two.
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| Cave formations typical of all caves we dive; here is a wall of Stalactites, Stalagmites and Columns |
Dive Two we would retrace our earlier dive along the same lines except for this dive we would use a Travel Stage bottle which would allow us to extend our distance and time, while using the rule of "thirds" for our distance into the cave. After 60 minutes of swimming, we exited in 45. Why? Well when cave diving is it safest to begin your dive in the upstream direction against and water flow. If you were to begin your dive with the flow and forgot that you were being carried further due to the water flow and the ease of swimming with the current, you might find yourself too far into a cave and with too little gas to exit alive. We like to exit alive so we begin all our dives upstream. What we found was the flow this day, due to some heavy rains, was quite strong. You really do not notice it too much swimming in because it is subtle but coming out, we usually get anywhere for a 20-25% reduction in swim time; welcomed I can assure you. 105 minutes later and after a primary light failure (mine), we exited the cave, cleaned up all our lines and exited Grand Cenote. The last we would see of her for the rest of the trip. She served her purpose and did not let us down in beauty and challenge.
Due to the lateness of our start and not having the right time on our clocks we found ourselves starting our vehicle around 5pm. We were invited to a wonderful beach side dinner with some great friends also visiting the Riviera Maya. By 6 we had completed the task of dropping off tanks for fills and were back to the Casita for quick showers and then an evening of great tacos, conversation and friends...Thanks! Marsha and Alberto.
DAY TWO - began with a bit more organization under our belts; tanks located, pesos in hand, gear checked out. We headed down south of Tulum to KM marker 216 where the cenote of Chan Hol was located.
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| Cenote Chan Hol - About 10 feet in diameter; entrance - 3 feet below surface -below wall above the right ladder rail |
Chan Hol is a beautifully decorated cave about 10 km south of Tulum, Mexico. Since this is one of our favorite systems, we planned to spend a long day here. First exploring the western part of the system and then explore north. As you see in the picture, the cenote is quite small and once you are ready to descend, you gently secure the cave line in your right hand, drop about 3 feet to the rocky/silty bottom, give one kick and you are now on a steep slope leading into the cave. Your visibility for the first 10 feet is zero, that is why you are gently holding the line but after about 20 seconds of descent, then you descend below the silty aspect of the entry and the clarity becomes magnificent. Where we find ourselves is in this big room where the mainline connects to a looping line that travels a 150 foot diameter right back to the room we are in. From this loop, we then make our decision and mark the line appropriately based upon our dive plan.
This first dive, as I mentioned, we were heading west so when we hit the loop, we took a left and began our dive. Not being dissapointed by the beauty and clarity of the system, we traveled in for 60 minutes against some minor flow and exited in 46 minutes. A great dive and considering there were 3 dive teams of 3 ahead of us, we never ran into a soul sans 20 minutes into the dive as they were exiting.
The second dive, was for us into unknown territory so we just took our time. When we hit the loop line, we took a right and followed that line for about 6 minutes until we jumped up to our right onto the Babylon line which is the largest tunnel of this section of Chan Hol. Once we got to the end of the Babylon line, we turned and headed back to its beginning. Once back, we replaced our jump line onto another non-named tunnel in this area, reset our depth, time and gas calculations and ventured in. Neither the Babyon line or this No-Name line were as beautiful as the western part of Chan Hol, but beautiful just the same. Once we came to the end of this No-Name line we turned for our exit. After 90 minutes, we returned to the cenote and exited the system. Two really wonderfully visual and fun dives.
Just a couple interesting side notes on this day, first, being that day one usually shakes out any equipment problems, I found that my 6 hour light was only working for about 2 so I had to carry a second primary light. Usually each diver carries one primary light and two smaller, much less powerful, back-up lights [each diver carries 3 lights on all dives ] but for the rest of the trip, because our back-up primary light was of a brightness between our main lights and our smaller back-up lights, I decided to carry 4 lights, both my big main light that worked for about 120 minutes, the back-up primary light we take on all trips in case something like this happens and my two normal small back-up lights. Second, remember the 3 teams ahead of us during the day and the fact that when you descend you gently hold the mainline leading down into the system? Well these teams were inexperienced cave divers being lead by local guides and they managed to break the main entrance line twice going down! Thankfully the guides were very responsible and fixed the lines immediately and we were able to enter and exit without any sort of inconvenience. Still makes you a bit nervous having that type of experience in a cave ahead of you but again, we only saw them once at the beginning of our dive and on the exit of theirs.
As we packed up our gear, its now about 3pm, we formulated our plan for the rest of this day. Very status quo with one exception, we needed to get some pesos. So we headed to Tulum to get cash at the bank, learned that the local police hate it when you park directly in front of the bank with the car running and learned that you have to have your passport to get cash from the bank! This was new as we usually get cash from the street money exchange vendors and they never even ask for ID but guess that is why the street vendors have a poorer exchange rate! But after this small financial adventure, we dropped tanks, organized equipment, repaired where necessary, showered and ended the day at Pizza Leo's one of the finest Italian eateries on the Riviera Maya for some incredible seafood lasagna.
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| Pizza Leos - Chymuil - Sorry about the crappy photo! Great Riveria Maya Italian! |
