Temple of Doom

Splash in, through the Madonna passage, past the Fang and back after having used up a third of my nitrox. The best part here for me being the return to the dome area and the sun's streaming light rays.

Temple of Doom

Splash movie

Not all entries are this splashtacular, most of the time it's possible to just step or wade in, climb down or fall back into a cenote.

Calavera

Also known as the Temple of Doom, the thrill here starts with a 2m high splash in, followed by a blurry descent through the boundary between fresh and salt water, continuing with a silent prayer past the Madonna, along eroded tunnels, beyond the Fang and back to the fossilized past, when this was not a cave but the bottom of the sea.

[ entrance fee: 80 Pesos ]

Deco cave dive in Temple of Doom

Cave dive with Hannes for some more video shooting. And we're lucky, for we're the first ones in today, meaning visibility should be perfect. After carefully lowering the video camera into the water, we splash in ourselves, a 2m jump, do a quick gear check, then slowly descend into Calavera's dark water.

I lay the short line to the Madonna passage's main line, after which we slowly continue along, going right twice at the T's, thus performing a short circuit dive. Having plenty of air left we decide to check out another narrower tunnel too. And just as last time I also get to try out some video shooting. Hannes fully built his housing and lights himself, and the camera glides through the water almost by itself. Nice piece of workmanship indeed.

Bottom time 73', including a short 5' deco stop at 3m. That's two deco dives in a day, so tomorrow I'll be taking it a bit easier again :o) FYI: It's 30°C in the shade.

Cavern tour in Grand cenote and Temple of Doom

Holidays? Not this morning. Attila didn't feel too well after a rough night out in Playa del Carmen and asked me if I could take two divers for a cavern tour in Grand cenote and Temple of Doom. So before I knew it I stepped into my old role as cavern guide, breefing an Australian with South-African roots and an American with Asian roots about diving in cenotes and leading them around in two of Yucatan's underwater wonders. Besides getting two free dives, I also got paid for the trouble :o)

Cavern dives in Grand cenote and Temple of Doom

Two short 45' dives without camera, to check out my primary gear and review some basic skills like line laying & retrieval, valve shut-off and equipment R&R.

The first dive was in Grand cenote (a.k.a. Sac Aktun, entrance: 100 Pesos), within the cavern zone. Plenty of sun light and speleothems, an ideal site for some photo trials later on. The water is slightly greenish but otherwise crystal clear.

Second dive in Temple of Doom (a.k.a. Calavera, entrance: 80 Pesos), a much darker cavern and the perfect place to evaluate my new TillyTec HID 35 light. Which indeed has a pretty powerful 125W (halogen equivalent) tightly focussed 10° beam. Tomorrow I hope to try it out with a 80° flood reflector for a wider more shooting-friendly beam. Here too the fresh water has a greenish tint, whereas the salt water, below 11m, is bluish. The tunnels are beautifully eroded, and again I wish I had my camera to try out some video shooting, but that will be for later.

Cenote Calavera

Entrance used to be free here, but it was also rather risky to leave your car unattended by the side of the road. At least now there’s a small table for gearing up, and the car is being watched.


After a 100m walk through the Yucatan jungle, under a 30°C hot sun, in a 7mm neoprene wetsuit, carrying about 50kg of cave diving gear, you kind of get rather hot and steamy.

You’re then faced with a hole in the ground and a 3m jump into Calavera, supposedly meaning skull for the gaping mouth-like hole with two smaller eye-like ones around it, but better known as the Temple of Doom.

Wings pumped up you take a couple of deep breaths and apprehensively (the first time) or brazenly (the next times) step forward – hoping your gear will take it. The subsequent big splash causes the resulting waves to splatter noisily against the cenote’s walls, waking up the few bats that call it their home.

There’s nothing like feeling the fresh 24°C water flood your suit and cool you down. Soon the peace is restored as you prepare to submerge. Buzzing bloodthirsty mosquitoes clearly audible in the ominous silence.


Like every cenote, this one has its own character, in this case a slightly somber one. Due maybe to the rather small hole and surrounding trees filtering most of the light, except around noon, when sun rays break through the water’s surface and delight the blessed diver with a spell binding show.

Calavera is a dome like cavern, with a mount of debris in its middle. About 10m deep, along the circular wall, there’s a fossil layer of coral bits and shells, witnesses of a time long gone by, when Yucatan was part of the ocean bottom.

The two parallel cave entrances are both located below the halocline, here at around 12m – where fresh and salt water meet but do not willingly mix. When both are inevitably disturbed by the first diver, this causes very blurry vision for the following divers, until they sink further down fully into the warmer and heavier salt water.

The main tunnel, known as the Madonna passage, is bright bluish white, with a lone brownish statue, the Madonna, halfway in. The water flow’s slow but constant erosion really has done some strange things here with the soft calcareous walls, creating weird sculptures here and there.

It’s possible to do two circuit dives here, after careful preparation and attentive planning by all team members, as the multiple T junctions invariably cause some confusion otherwise. Continuing past the two circuit branches, the tunnel opens up into a great room, with a big stalactite known as the Fang.

Getting out of Calavera is a bit harder than getting in. But the steep metal ladder helps.