Cenote Dives

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Cenote Dives

I got up early on December 27 and the kids slept in. I grabbed my dive gear and walked over to Pro Dive, located at a resort right beside ours on the beach and after checking in I then got in a van to Chikin Ha.

No Chicken at Chikin Ha, but there was a cenote.

Time to dive a Cenote for the first time. This would be a guided cavern dive. A cavern dive means you're in an overhead environment but still within range of seeing the natural light from the entrance in essentially a straight-ish path from the entrance. There were three other divers and the guide for a total of five in the group.

The plan was for the first dive to take the line on the left (starting form the bottom left of the diagram of the diagram to the rainbow cenote, surface in the rainbow centore and come back along the line. Dive 2 took line 2, the one on the bottom to the right for a longer dive.

This was done on single tanks. One wrinkle emerged as one of the divers had a full-face mask. If he had an out-of-air problem, the only one who could donate air to him was his spouse who had a special hose for that purpose. This presents some problems in terms of redundancy . Worst comes to worst you can always rip the full face mask off, shove a normal regulator in his mouth and then give him your spare mask (you do carry a spare mask in your right pocket, right?). The problem of course is the fellow had 60 dives to his name and I'm reasonably sure he hadn't done mask removal drills since he was certified and having someone freak out in an overhead environment would suck.

We had a very detailed safety brief and a condensed cavern diving class - keeping the guideline in sight at all times; keeping your fins up and don't kick up the silt; how to use the flashlight for proper signalling; diving thirds (1000 psi out, 1000 psi back and 1000 psi in reserve); and emergency procedures, all the stuff I knew but was completely new to the other divers in the group.

We dove in a single straight line. The guide led, and I got to be tail-end charlie for having the most experience in an overhead environment, and the guide could tell I knew what I was doing.

We all showered as required, and then kitted up and headed to the entrance.

Going into the cavern was neat. Heck it was otherworldly. The water was crystal clear and the flashlights gave some good illumination.

Some areas were a bit of a tight fit but nothing too serious.

We then reached the Rainbow Cenote:

We surfaced in the Rainbow Cenote

Simply breathtaking. We looked around for a bit and then descended back down to return to the cavern entrance.

We then changed tanks, had a snack, and got ready for Line 2, which would be a longer dive.

Line 2 rocked.

Lots of rocks.

We also got to experience the halocline. A halocline is what happens when fresh and salt water meet.

It looks like this when you go through it:

Do not adjust your set. The picture is actually in focus, but the mix of the salt and fresh water makes for really interesting distortion. Rather neat making our way through it. Crystal clear on either side of the layer and then this cloudy mess in between.

We then headed back towards the entrance.

It was an amazing experience, a first taste of Caverns Measureless to Man. I want to get cave certified to be able to experience this some more, which is going to be a heckuva lot of work. Apparently Mexico is a great place to get cave certified,

Mexico has some awesome cenotes for diving, and ProDive offers a great cenote diving experience.

Mexico in addition to great Cenote diving also has cute Cenote dogs.

Lots of stray dogs around Mexico, and a bunch hung around this cenote. This little fella was pretty skittish but eventually came to get a snack from me as I donated some meat from my sandwich to him. Poor fella didn't look like he was getting regular meals.