Scuba diving in the Cenotes Angelita and Gran Cenote

Tulum – 

It’s raining again*. On our schedule today are the cenote Angelita and the Gran Cenote.

Angelita, “little angel” in English, is a unique and rather unusual cenote experience. Actually, Angelita is more for more experienced scuba divers (AOWD or 30+ dives), but even with an OWD from Germany this is not an issue, as all of your training dives are in worse conditions and much lower visibility in lakes. Verena may therefore also dive with us… and it sure would be a pity if she missed Angelita.

Cenote Angelita

Die picturesque cenote resembles a circular lake and is about 60m deep. Once you dive down about 10m, you look down at a swirling layer of hydrogen sulfide at about 30 meters, which looks like a huge cloud. Dead tree trunks and branches reaching out from it makes the whole sight kinda spooky . Since the density is changing at that level, we put in a little air in the BCD and descend down slowly. Below the cloud is salt water… and absolute darkness. During our slow ascending through the cloud again our fins create swirls on the sulfide layer. We spirally follow Carlos along the walls to a depth of 10m and then pass through a small cave. That is a scuba dive location you shouldn’t miss.

Ena is a little too exhausted for the next dive in the Gran Cenote, but I don’t wanna miss this experience. According to the name, the Gran Cenote is a very large and impressive cenote – a bit similar to Dos Ojos – but not only interesting for cavern and cave divers, but also for snorkelers. It is part of the Sac-Aktun-System, which means “White Cave” in Maya and just about 4km from Tulum towards Coba. The cenote has only a max. depth of 10m, yet good buoyancy control is necessary because of many narrow passages and plenty of stalactites and stalagmites reaching into the cave.

The rest of the evening is quite similar to the one the day before. First we have a siesta and then we look for a nice restaurant for dinner. Meanwhile, the drizzle started changing into a storm. Just as we find a restaurant that looks nice and sit down, we have a power outage on our side of the road. No cooked food, no daiquiris, no margaritas. But hey! You don’t need a mixer for a mojito .

* Overall, I believe that you can have better visibility at good weather in the cenotes thanks to better light, but with such rainy weather we made the best out of the situation