During our trip to the Yucatan in 2015, we worked with Jeff Shaw from Freedom Divers
in Merida.
Cameraman Todd and I traveled with Jeff into the jungle to visit a bunch of cool potential
dive sites.
We did a lot of hiking around to scout possible film locations.
Some of the cenotes were quite beautiful, but not known for great diving.
We did however dive several cenotes—so many in fact that we had way more content than
we could possibly use in the Blue World segment that followed.
So some of our adventures were never seen.
In this extra, Jeff is taking Todd and I to explore a cenote called Dzonbakal, which is
actually a popular local swimming hole.
Dzonbakal is a classic Merida cenote, in that it’s not terribly deep, nor do the caves
go very far.
It’s a great place for relatively new cave divers to gain some experience.
The water is clear and warm, and there is no current.
As we pass through the cavern zone and into the cave zone, the walls become bright white—the
color of limestone.
No algae darkens the walls down here since there is no light.
I stop for a shot, and then Jeff leads the way into a large room, where a permanent guideline
has been installed.
The patterns on the walls are sculpted by hundreds of thousands of years of erosion,
as the water has slowly dissolved the stone.
The patterns actually remind me of the way that ocean water dissolves the ice of an iceberg.
Striations in the walls show where water levels were in the past, during ice ages when the
sea levels were lower, so the ground water was lower too.
In the past, this cenote was either partially or completely dry.
Following the guideline, we progress into another room.
Soon we hit a dead end and have to turn around.
Down here there isn’t much in the way of speleothems like stalactites and stalagmites.
But as we ascend back towards the cavern zone, Jeff takes a side trip into a shallower tunnel.
On the sand, a piece of Mayan pottery, likely thousands of years old.
And next to it, a human skull.
Who knows how it got here.
Sacrifice?
Burial?
We will never know.
Soon we turn and head for the surface.
Back in the cavern zone, with light peeking in from above, we head up the slope.
There are some dripstone formations on the wall.
They have been broken by careless divers or perhaps souvenir seekers.
With the dive over, we surface and load our gear out of the water, while curious locals
watch.
Dzonbakal might be an easy and relatively shallow dive in an easily-accessible cenote
popular as a swimming hole, but the human remains point to a mysterious past.