I’m bobbing in a crystal clear pool of water, clad entirely in a form-fitting neoprene suit studded with gadgets and equipment and staring at a cave ceiling carpeted by tens of thousands of bats. This is what Batman must feel like — and it feels awesome!
The Crime Traveller’s Wife and I travelled to Mexico’s Mayan Riviera to see what all the vacation fuss was about. For several years now, this region has experienced an explosive growth in tourism with travellers from all the over the world pouring in to enjoy its smooth white sand and frothing green water. We had already done the obligatory beach day and enjoyed a day-long tour of the vast Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza earlier in the week, and now I was feeling antsy just as my wife settled into her lounge chair. I had seen the look she gave me at that moment on many prior vacations: Don’t even bother asking me to pass you a towel — I will be reading this book until precisely two hours before our plane leaves. If you’re planning any other “activities,” you’re on your own. And so, my thoughts drifted to scuba diving.
While I have had increasing success convincing The Crime Traveller’s Wife to join me on bush planes, mountain hikes or zodiac boats, scuba diving is her Rubicon. Her logic is inescapable. Dizziness? Check. Claustrophobia? Check. Diabetes? Check. Nausea? Check. Check. Check. When you can put check-marks next to more than half of the medical questionnaire, you probably should just admit to yourself that the activity in question may not be for you.
And so it was that I approached the genial fellow at the ocean-side dive-shack alone. He looked up from hosing down a pair of fins and gave me a once-over as I presented my PADI certification card. I told him I was interested in a half-day dive and would like to know what he recommended. He rattled off a list of suggestions, including diving with turtles and swimming with angel fish. Then he took on a reverent tone and lowered his voice dramatically: “Or you can dive the Cenotes.” He laid a cracked and weathered photo album down onto the sand-strewn counter and invited me to leaf through its curled pages. The pictures showed lines of divers navigating the clearest water I had ever seen, against a backdrop of stalactites and stalagmites as rays of sunlight pierced through jagged cracks in a cave wall. He had me at “stalactite.”
Twenty minutes later I was hanging onto the rear tailgate of a pick-up truck bouncing my way over what our driver referred to as a dirt road (though it appeared nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the dusty vegetation we passed). After a few bone-jarring turns, we stopped to slip some pesos to a man seated on a beat-up wooden barstool. “I’m not even sure if he owns the land we’ll be diving on,” said our driver, “but he’s always here so we keep him happy.” Moments later we were preparing our gear at the side of a deep pool on the edge of the jungle.
Cenotes (pronounced seh-note-eh) are essentially sink-holes in the cracked Mexican dirt that have filled with a mix of rain and ocean water forming a network of navigable underground waterways. The opportunity to scuba dive these subterranean passageways is an experience unique to the Mayan Riviera. After a final check of my equipment, I was guided over to the lip of the sinkhole and performed a reverse flip into the dark waters below.
Cave diving is a thrilling yet dangerous sport. As disconcerting as it can be to run into trouble 80 feet beneath the ocean’s surface on a traditional dive, the opportunities for disaster are multiplied several times over when the ceiling of your dive is composed of solid rock instead of waves. Strictly speaking, cave diving is sufficiently complex to require additional specialty training. What makes Mexico’s Cenotes accessible to casually trained Open Water divers like me is the presence of light throughout the cave network. So long as the dive site is illuminated by natural light, it is classified as a cavern and safe from the extreme danger of diver disorientation that can happen when no natural light is available.
Despite the reduced classification, a number of extra precautions were taken during my cavern dive. Our dive-master carried a double-sized oxygen tank equipped with extra regulators (breathing tubes) so that any diver who ran low on oxygen could share the spare tank until they were back at the surface. Our route through the cavern was carefully planned following a pre-set string that wove its way through narrow trenches and crevasses as we glided from cave to cave. Periodically, the dive-master clipped a miniature O2 tank to the rope, so that emergency oxygen was always available only a short swim away.
As I slowly overcame the initial nerves of such an unorthodox dive, I began to appreciate how unique a setting the Cenote is. The clear water glowed with hues of blue, green and gold as shafts of light breaking through cracks in the surface illuminated alternating points in the cave. I glided slowly along a tunnel shaft leading towards a large cave opening. The only light was an otherworldly blue glow from the larger cave mouth. Tiny translucent brine shrimp glanced off my mask as I kicked gently to avoid stirring up silt from the cave floor.
Emerging into the large chamber, I could see zigzag scars of light along the ceiling and I realized that, for the first time on this dive, an air pocket was available. Our group breached the surface of the water and the diver master broke into a grin so wide it was clearly visible behind his regulator. Removing the hose from his lips, he proclaimed: “Welcome to the Bat Cave!” The screech of thousands of bats echoed off the cave walls. Hundreds of them streamed in and out of the small breaks in the cave’s roof, oblivious to our entrance from below.
It’s hard to capture what it feels like to float as an observer in a cave whose only humanly accessible entrance lies hundreds of feet away through a maze of underwater tunnels. I’d hazard a guess that this was about as close to feeling like a superhero as I’ll ever get. Eat your heart out, Batman.
When not jetting around the world as his alter ego, The Crime Traveller, Edward Prutschi is a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer. Follow Ed’s criminal law commentary (@prutschi) and The Crime Traveller’s adventures (@crimetraveller) on Twitter, read his Crime Traveller blog, or email ed@thecrimetraveller.com.
Photo by Serge Melki