Cenotes! Cenotes! Cenotes! Poop!

Yay! We're finally blogging again (because it's our last day with the internet)!
Here's the first of a few posts that will follow. We made it back to Cuzama as we had hoped to check out the other water holes there.


Remember that first one before the turkey farm that we didn't go down? Well, we went back to that one and considered descending, but the water was visibly nasty from up top. Then we noticed that the little rock-sign by the opening mentioned two cenotes, so we took a dirt path on faith (and in the heat) to find the other one.
We passed this home and chicken coop on the way which we assume belongs to the owner of the cenotes.




And there's the second of the two cenotes Chen-Chen. We scared another iguana as we approached and it dove straight for the opening, although we didn't hear a splash.




The water here didn't look very clean either, so we headed out. It was nice to look at, and the tree roots where awesome.




And there's that same sign as the last post. Upon arriving at Chunkanan (the city on the South border of Cuzama where the three big cenotes are), we eventually figured out that there's only one way to get to the water...




...hiring one of these guys to take you there by pony-powered rail car. So cute!




The ride was loud and bumpy, like a slow and anticlimatic roller coaster, but it was a blast. Although the price was reasonable, having only 30 minutes at each cenote was a bit of a downer :(




Imminent collision! (actually, one of the drivers just stops his car and lifts it off the tracks for the other to pass)




Mmmmmm. Shade makes for happy gringos.




Woooohoooo! Cenote Chelentun! Not very impressive from this viewpoint...




...or this...




...but it did not disappoint. The cavern went very far back (probably the widest cenote we've seen) and the water was deep and sparkly.




These three cenotes were difficult to photograph because of a combination of sun-splashed areas, dark areas, their size, other tourists, and a time crunch, but between the two of us taking turns swimming and photographing we got a couple good shots at each.




There are three faces (at least) in this picture. Then...




Voi la! Cenote Chacsinic-Che. A Mayan man at the entrance of this one told us that the name means "Red Ant Wood." Chacsinic-Che's tree root nostril hairs were impressive. The roots of one tree didn't even hang in, they broke right through the rock of the cenote's ceiling.




Topside from the inside.




Little fish in a big pond.




The other tourists left just before our time was up so that we could get this picture with the water still.




OK! The entrance to the last cenote, Bolonchoojol! A quick climb down these tree roots and we were set!




Just kidding. This is the way down. The other hole was one of many in the ceiling of this cenote, which might be our favorite one of all.




Karina went down first and waited for Justin as he waited for others to finish climbing out. She found this little gruta to the side of the cenote entrance as she looked for a place to put her stuff and get out of the tourist traffic.




There's a view of the entrance when looking from behind, just inside the little cave.




We wanted to see how far it went, so we kept the flashlights fired up and proceeded inward.




Cool formations.




We eventually had to crawl a little, but it dead-ended quickly. Still a cool little cave though!




These caves are made of limestone like the majority of Yucatan bedrock. It takes millions and millions and billions and quatruple-wammy-bananie-cadoodle-gilliones-of-anos for surface water to drip through the porous rock and create a "melting" affect like this. In fact, the whole peninsula is like a huge stone sponge saturated in water. The deeper into a cave or cenote that one goes, the hotter and more humid it becomes.




We caught this little cave crawler spying on us as we made our way back to the cenote entrance.




And there's Bolonchoojol. Unfortunately, this was the hardest one to photograph, because of the light and because we used half our time on that little detour. It was exceptionally pretty. That's Karina on the rock in the middle of the water.




Another four cenotes under our belts (but not in our ears this time)! Yayfun. Oh yeah, plus a horsey-train ride. Bonus!




The day left us pretty...fatigued.




And with the cenotes of Cuzama and Chunkanan all straightened out, we just enjoyed our ride back.