CamOne+aquapixs in Chan Hol

Great 90' cave dive in Chan Hol led by Jeff, who carried an extra video light for your visual pleasure. Chan Hol has some really cool tunnels, the perfect place for a staged lighting configuration.

Today I actually trusted my CamOne into my self modified DiveBox, i.e. the one with a flat lens prototype in stead of the original dome lens. This flat lens prototype was kindly sent to me for trial at my own risk by aquapixs, the German company that also makes the GoForFocus flat lens replacement for the popular GoPro. Whether they'll commercially produce flat lenses for the CamOne I don't know?

The two main advantages of this solution are that you don't need to change the CamOne's factory set focus and you can shoot both above and below water in Full HD. More about pros & cons in another post.


For the record: Importing & converting the 25 Full HD clips at only a 1/4 of their original resolution into iMovie 08 took 1h, for about 3.3 GB of raw material I collected this morning. Followed by about 90' of editing. Exporting the quickly cut together 2'48" selection of passages at 960x540 only required 6'. Uploading to & processing by YouTube demanded another 39' of patience for this 82.5 MB teaser.

[ 19.12.2018 ] new 1080p video uploaded to Youtube

Chan Hol

Nice 82' dive through narrow tunnels, low passages and decorated rooms, past old human bones, traces of charcoal fires and almost intact pottery, then back to the present and unlimited free air.

Chan Hol

Short 23' dive (incl. 3' safety stop), aborted due to a technical issue.

Chan Hol

[ entrance fee: 100 Pesos ]

Cave dive in Chan Hol

We're heading south again this morning. A good way past cenote Cristal but before cenote Angelita, there're a couple of cenotes located not far off the road. Che is exploring one of them.

In order to get in you have to plough yourself through half a meter of bat shit. Small price to pay to go where nobody else has gone before :o) However, we're not diving that smelly cenote today, but walk off to Chan Hol in stead. A short march from the parking spot along highway 307.


Just a couple of meters into the jungle is yet another crack hole in the earth's crust. No entrance fee. It's a rather tight squeeze through to get in, but the cave immediately opens up in a black soil room, where we go left at the T and again left at another T 5' later. A short-cut according to Che.


At first we dive through a tunnel like passage, which later on widens out in vast decorated rooms with some pretty tick columns here and there. A real dungeon cave. Where you get a bit of everything.

I call the dive after 46', as I've pretty much reached 1/3 of my air and 1/2 of my light's burntime.


Back in the entrance room, Che shows me two clay jars. Who knows how long they've been lying there...

A very enjoyable 84' dive. And as usual there're plenty of side jumps for more.