When in town, we spent most of our time either on the beach or eating. It's a little hot and humid here this time of year, so town and beach were pretty quiet. Interestingly, quite a few of the other tourists actually seemed to be from around Mexico. We like a lot of quiet, so we pulled our usual trick and bought a pair of floaties so we could hide from the hawkers and enjoy our naps out on the waves. There usually was a bit of current pushing us towards Belize so we'd tie our toe up to a little buoy out front of our favorite section of beach.
The walled ruins of Tulum sit on a 40' bluff overlooking the Caribbean. The combination of jungle, sea and ruins make for a really beautiful site. Even better, there's a nice beach right below the ruins that is accessible via a long staircase. There's a tremendous population of healthy lizards, a few up to 3 or 4 feet, that wait patiently for tourists to drop a snack... or small children... One end of the beach is isolated for turtles to nest in. Protective net enclosures are built quickly to protect the eggs from the voracious lizards.
The ruins at Coba aren't terribly spectacular, but they are a nice mix of rubble and restoration. Most fun is that the big pyramid towering over the jungle can be climbed for a great view. The three sets of ruins are each about a half mile apart, so it was a good walk for us. The less motivated have a gaggle of bicycle rikshaw drivers at their disposal to save legs for the pyramid.
The big Mayan draw in the Yucatan is the vast ruin of Chichen Itza. The beautiful restored pyramid: that's here. The gigantic ballgame court: that's here. The observatory: it's around the corner. These popular sites definitely draw the crowds going by the size of the tourbus parking area and the fancy welcome area. We were actually grateful for all the tourist services as we hadn't found a good place to stop for lunch on the long drive out. The ruins here are generally nicely restored and the site is very impressive. It was nice to be there late in the day and enjoy the colors coming out as the sun started to sink and the tourbus crowds headed back to Cancun.
The Yucatan peninsula is a big chunk of limestone Swiss cheese. Over time, rainwater has carved and filled caverns, passages and underground rivers in the jungle. These caves and sinkholes were important to the Mayans, who worshipped them as passages to the underworld. In the early 1990s, SCUBA divers started jumping in and there are now a few dozen that have been explored. We had time for 5 dives into 4 different cenotes: Dos Ojos, Chikin Ha, Tajma Ha and Angelita. We had a great guide who took us beyond the cavern limits and through some of the deeper caves. We even did a little exploring of areas he hadn't been through before.
We did 'caverns', where the entrance is visible and no more than about 200 feet away. But we also did a fair amount of 'cave' diving, where the entrance is not visible or necessarily very close and there is no external lightsource. The caves are generally shallow; we never went below about 50 feet. Because they're filled by rainwater, most of the water is fresh. However, salt water does creep in sink to the bottom, because it's denser than fresh. At some level, the two meet in blurry mixture called a halocline. In one of the caves, the water very near the bottom was much warmer than the higher water. But the halocline was so strong and blurry, that even with my flashlight pointed straight down, I could not tell how close I was to hitting the silty bottom, so I could not enjoy the warmth just inches away from me!
One of the cenotes is quite different than the others. Angelita (little angel) is a sinkhole that drops straight down to about 160 feet. There is a halocline where the fresh and saltwater meet at just about 100 feet. Trapped in the halocline is an opaque cloud of hydrogen sulfate. The fresh water is invisibly clear about the cloud, and the salt water is pitch black below the cloud. The feeling above the cloud is like flying through a misty swamp in Pirates of the Caribbean. It is absolutely incredible. Some dive shops won't go to it because it is so far away... and maybe there have been car thefts and driver beatings in the past. But if you are ever here, find a shop that goes. It is one of the most amazing dives I've ever done. And there's a small crocodile living on the surface. So cool.
For our first ocean dives, we took a morning ferry to Cozumel and hopped a dive boat down to the southern end of the island. We met with a bit of rain and a group of really poor divers. Between the two, I'll say that the Cozumel reef is nice, but we really didn't get a lot out of it. Back on the mainland, we had a somewhat better time diving off Playa del Carmen. The dive shop was close enough to the shore that we just walked through town in our gear to the beach. On the first dive, I saw my first bull sharks and then sunk to a depth that sent my head spinning. A few days later, we did a decent wreck and then a nice drift through a wavy reef full of fish.