Today was the big day, the day for which I came to Yucatan. The day of Cenotes!
We left from the same bus station as yesterday at 9:15 for Cuzama, one of the villages in the Cenote-area. Cenotes are big subterranean caves with springs inside that fill them up with crystal clear fresh water in which you can swim. Only around this village there are about 200 of them, many of which you can visit. Given the extreme heat, this is a very attractive plan for locals and tourists. From Cuzama, we took a “Mototaxi” to the beginning of the route of Cenotes. A Mototaxi is a small motorbike which instead of a front wheel has a little bank and two seats with a roof.
The only way of visiting the caves of Santa Cruz, Tzapakat and Chelentun is by a very special kind of transportation, wich was as new for me as the Cenote experience itself.
Little wagons for 4 people on very shaky, narrow iron rails, pulled by small horses bring you to the entrance points of the Cenotes. We rented one and the adventure began. There were almost no other tourists on the rails, but one wagon was enough for us to find out what happens if two wagons move in opposite directions on the on-way rails. Easy! Just hop off the wagon, remove the wagon from the rails, let the other one pass, put the wagon back on the rails, attach the horse and on we go!
We arrived to Santa Cruz in the middle of the jungle after about 15 minutes. The entrance was basically a stone hole in the ground from where you could descend into the cave. There was a little light bulb, fed by a gasoline generator outside so we could see something. Other than that, the cave was dark. Under beautiful stalactites, the small, black, subterranean lake reflected the light of the lightbulb. Little completely black “catfish” with long beards on their sides were swimming around in the water. We changed and stepped in. The water was fresh and clean, not cold, but very dark.
After this first one, we went on walking towards Tzapakat. This one was different from the first. The cave was much deeper, the entrance narrower, so that we had to climb down a steep ladder to the water level. The lake inside this cave was 24 meters deep and obviously completely dark. It felt very weird to be inside and not to know what is beneath you. The ceiling was again full of stalagtites that were illuminated in the distance by the entering sunlight. Again, we were completely alone.
The third Cenote in this area, and also the biggest one was called Chelentun and was even more beautiful than the ones before. It lay deep under the ground and was, unlike the closed ones we had been in, a semi-open Cenote. Through the hole/entrance in the ceiling, the sun illuminated a part of the water and painted it in a light turquoise. The shore was visible for the first 5 meters or so and then disappeared into a black, 24-meter deep hole. We stayed there for almost an hour and there was only one other group of 4 people. Big plants were hanging down from the entrance hole and of course the obligatory stalactites at the ceiling that was turquoise too this time. Like in the other caves, little swallows were flying around as if they were bats and the black catfish were looking for food in the water. Apparently they were not very afraid of humans, you could touch their tales without any problem. We swam around in the cave, lay on the ropes in the water and jumped from the rock into the lake.
Our way back by “truck” was very annoying, as the forest was full of gadflies everywhere, so we had to hit ourselves with towels the whole way.
Nevertheless, I was not yet tired of Cenotes, so we took the moto-taxi again and he drove us to Canunchen, our last Cenote and also the biggest one. This one had a hole in the ceiling through which you could enter the cave along a huge tree. The lake was even bigger than the last one and there was a platform in the middle of it. This was clearly the one with the most infrastructure and people, unfortunately also the obligation to wear a life jacket. I enjoyed the rope-swing very much and we spent one hour in the water and another hour outside having lunch under a roof with a little wind.
The moto-taxi finally took us back to the village (another 30 minutes of shaking and heat) and from there we took a van back to Merida where we arrived around 6. Our Mototaxi driver told us that most people around here still talk Maya and that most of the tourists that come visit are Latin Americans.
Once back home, the experience of the last days took us back to the vegan restaurant for dinner, almost without talking about it. As it is closed tomorrow, I didn’t think about it twice and ordered two menus, one for tomorrow.
Filled up with another 4 delicious dishes, we made our way to tonight’s event in the center: traditional Maya ball game on the square. In this game, players can only touch the ball with their waist and have to “throw” it through a ring (similar to the goals in quidditch) in the middle of the field. In the second half of the game, the ball was set on fire. Players were half-naked, with colorful hats made of feathers and painted with traditional white war paint on their bodies. All in all a pretty cool show. When it finished, we went on 6 blocks north to “Mercado 60”, a very fancy cultural market place with live music and dancing. Tonight was apparently Cuban themed and there was lots of Buena Vista Social Club, Celia Cruz, and salsa dancing. We stayed for a couple of Mojitos/cervecas and went to bed not too late.
For me, everything I wanted to do in Yucatan is done now and there is no concrete plan for tomorrow anymore nor any expectations that the Cenotes can be tooped.
