the route of a trip is often based on the fortunes of the encounters. That's the way I sit down in a minibus which drives on a winding road towards Semuc Champey. We penetrate into the heart of the valley to end up at a greenery-wrapped campground where smiling, cumbia-fans Guatemalan young people welcome us. The rustic bedrooms lodge in the wooden huts scattered in the campsite. We need to walk a little bit further to enter in the Semuc Champey park. A river follows the outline of the valley bottom when it suddenly disappears over 300m for a brief underground pass before gushing out downstream. But, instead of a horde of trees and bushes spreading over the surface, a trickle of water diverts from the river to form a set of natural ponds. A lookout gives a bird's eye view over the clear- and stagnant-watered pools. The effort to reach this viewpoint quickly fades as we walk down. I slip on my boardshort and go to jump into one of the basins. Our guide planed an aquatic course with a descending of a rope ladder, the discovery of the grotto where the water of the river gushes out of the earth then a jump from the top of the rock. A local way to marvel at a fantastic place and to release a little amount of adrenalin in the same time.
At the end of the afternoon, the Las Marias grotto offers me the extraordinary experience of moving in a dark cavity, only lit by a mere candle. Sometimes walking, sometimes swimming, the community reaches the depths of the gallery. A swimming not really academic since we can only use one hand, the other one holding out the burning candle. Like a procession or a band of explorers-wannabes, the group trudges in a single file with these simple flames as a guide. Our sense of sight clings to this orangy and flickering glow which dimly lights the walls. The one of hearing captures the hollow sound reflecting each one of our moves. Two magical hours for this sort of caving of an ancient time. Unforgettable!
And to finish this day of adventure, we hop on inner tubes of trucks to let the current of the river carry us for half an hour.
Keyword - grottoes -
Saturday 6 December 2008
the natural ponds of Semuc Champey
By dorian on Saturday 6 December 2008, 08:56 - RTW2-Guatemala
Monday 24 November 2008
the spellbinding play of light in the cenotes
By dorian on Monday 24 November 2008, 15:13 - RTW2-Mexico
Divers of all over the world rush to the Yucatan for a little bit special immersion. And so do I, I gave in to temptation, the weird universe of the cave diving. Here, no fish, no corals, no current, but a couple of stalagmites and stalactites, flabbergasting plays of light, a visibility that can reach 100m and a Dantean impression of navigating in another world. For my introductory dives, I booked an intensive day with the discovery of 3 cenotes, Dos Ojos, Calavera and Grand Cenote. An inebriating selection: Dos Ojos for its subaquatic rocky outgrowths and the rays of the sun which in places hit this submerged cathedral, Calavera for its green waters and haloclines and Grand Cenote for its half-moon shape. Before diving, we get strict instructions about the safety. We go into the water and fitted with a lamp we start kicking alongside an Ariadne's thread. The feeling of breathing underground and wandering about among an almost complete darkness make me shiver with joy. We play with the stalactites surrounded by a heavy silent that only the noise of our bubbles tear. At the end of the Dos Ojos cave, a hole lets the rays of a soft and saving light gush out; the divers of another group seem to hover in the middle of this luminous halo. Exhilaration of gliding in this unreal world. Time goes too fast and we are already at half-dive, we go astern and kick towards the entrance. We get off, the smile clung to our lips and not totally recovered from our underground experience.
The other dives will complete the emotional patchwork of these aquatic peregrinations.
Halfway between Tulum and Playa del Carmen, another cenote attracts the fans or neo-enthusiasts of these underground aquatic networks. The cenote Chacmool offers the most beautiful plays of light and to that, we'll have the unforgettable opportunity to split the dive into two by surfacing into a grottoe. We take off our masks and regulators to contemplate this exclusive cavity. We are the pioneers in front of their discovery. Filled with pleasure, we swim on the surface, we observe the different stalactites and the roots of several trees which seep through the rock to come and draw the nourishing liquid. It's time to leave our find and kick back towards the land with the same sensation of not being completely here when we finish the dive, the mind drifting at several meters underwater.
Thursday 13 November 2008
bathing into the northern cenotes
By dorian on Thursday 13 November 2008, 13:44 - RTW2-Mexico
We leave Cancun for a several-day loop when in each stop Mayan ruins stand. But on the way and to cut down the stifling heat of the day, a network of water-filled sinkholes fed by subterranean rivers offers a bath of salutary coolness. The area around the town of Valladolid gathers three of the most beautiful cenotes, the cenote Zaci in the heart of the city, the cenote Dzitnup Xkeken where the stalactites are reflected in the calm and pure waters of the grottoe and the cenote Samula where a light shaft gushes out from the ceiling and a poplar, settled at the edge of this hole, lets its roots gliding over several meters down to the sapphire-tinted water.
On the road to Chichen Itza, we divert from this aquatic pleasures once for the Balankanche grottoes. This long dimly-lit cavity seeps under the ground in a overheated atmosphere. We end this subterranean stroll by diving again into another cenote, the Ik Kil one, a genuine natural swimming pool where the surrounding wall doesn't array itself in blue mosaics but a smooth rock inlaid with moss and thin hanging roots.
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