Cenotes and Crocodiles

I had never heard of a cenote (pronounced seh-no-tay) prior to this trip to Tulum. Cenotes are defined as surface connections to subterranean water bodies. So my understanding is that they're like lakes that are all connected, from Mexico to Florida, allegedly, deep below the water table. Pictures of cenotes typically tout caves, stalactites and crystal clear water.

So when our local friend, Diego, told me and Claire that he had a cenote on one of his properties we begged him to take us. He quietly rebutted with a suggestion to go to the beach – but we were insistent on the cenote. We hopped a barbed wire fence and made our way through the jungle – areas of it quite dense with our feet sinking in the mud – to an opening that dropped right into a cenote. But it resembled the kind of dirty lake with scum on top that you would see in the midwest – and less like a romantic scene from the end of Goonies. Needless to say, Claire and I were a bit unimpressed and maybe even a little scared.

So we turned around and went down the street to a cenote you can pay $50 pesos to go into. Again... it pretty much looked like a murky lake. But by God, I was going to get in that cenote. And so I did. Then Diego, followed by a very reluctant Claire who was warning us of the dangers of these kinds of waters that she had learned from Lake Placid and Anaconda. We grabbed a kayak and took turns sitting on it in the middle of the lake. At one point we looked up and noticed the jungle entrance we had been at on Diego's property – it was the same cenote!

We spent about an hour or so swimming and sun as it began to set in the sky. At one point Claire dared me to dive to the bottom – I opened my eyes about two feet underwater and was greeted by a cloudy green fog. I just about expected to see the Lochness monster swim by. I quickly popped back up and took a turn on the kayak.

We grew tired of the unimpressive cenote and headed out. The next day, Claire had dinner with Diego and a couple of girls who claimed to have seen crocodiles swimming in that very same cenote that very same day. Diego later confirmed that this was true – that there were crocodiles in the cenote – but he didn't want to scare us while we were swimming. He said that the crocodiles are more scared of us than we are of them. I somehow doubt that.