I spent a few weeks back in Cozumel and Playa del Carmen in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It meant I was able to do some more really nice diving in the area.
First was two really nice days in Cozumel and then a bit later one magnificient day of diving in one of the most unique cenotes in the world.
Cozumel Diving
Yes, there’s coral bleaching in parts of Cozumel. Yes, the sea life is dimished with all the fishing in the areas surrounding the park. But Cozumel still has some of the best diving in the world.
We did one dive at a place called Palancar Caves. I forgot how beautiful this dive is. If any of you have seen the movie Avatar, diving here amongst the huge, ancient coral formations feels like flying around the floating mountains of Pandora.
I did four dives in Cozumel and each dive we saw exactly one eagle ray. They are such incredible animals to watch floating past you.
While the coral wasn’t as dramatic as some other places I’ve dove, it was still a really nice aspect of diving here.
We saw some nice sea life besides the eagle rays.
Cenote Diving: The Pit and Nicte-Ha
The Pit
The Pit is one of the most magnificent diving experiences in the world.
Just starting the dive is fascinating. We walked down some narrow stairs with just our fins and mask, then a local park employee lowered our tank and BC down a rope to us and we put those on in the water. It truly is a narrow pit.
We descended down to around 100 feet (32 meters)…
…and immediately swam through a surreal hydrogen sulfate cloud where you can’t see anything in front of you.
We glided over thousands of years old dead trees, and then saw an incredibly rare sea worm slithering past us. There was an 11,000 year old human skull my guide showed me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good shot of it with my GoPro.
We swam around these tight fallen rock formations.
As we slowly ascended up, at around 60-70 feet, we turned our lights off and could see the blue rays of the sun filtering through the water as a group of divers behind us descended down to the sulfur cloud.
Then we went through a thermocline where the salt water at the bottom mixed with fresh water at the top. You can see how fuzzy the picture was as we went through this.
Here’s the entrance to a cave that led to another cenote a couple of miles away.
Getting closer to the surface the blue filtered rays of the sun became brighter.
Just before the surface we saw some 700 year old pottery shards.
Nicte-Ha Cenote
After the depths of The Pit, our second dive was to a long, shallow nearby cenote called Nicte-Ha. It was incredibly relaxing, we dove for 57 minutes and I still had 40% of my air left. As you can see below it had some really narrow passages combined with some stunning views of the surface light filtering through.
There were a few small creatures and some human bones that we probably 700-800 years old and some much older small bones that my guide told me were from a sabre tooth tiger.