Nico and I spent 10 days on a dive trip to Mexico in October - 7 days on the island of Cozumel and 3 days on the Yucatan peninsula diving in caves (cenotes) and visiting Mayan ruins. We had been to Cozumel a few times before, and the diving was as spectacular as always - with water temperatures of 86 degrees and visibility typically 150 feet. But this trip we made the time to visit the mainland to experience cenote diving and see some Mayan ruins.

On Cozumel, we stayed at the Reef Club resort. The food was good and the accommodations and amenities were nice and its proximity to the best dive sites was definitely a strong plus.

Villas DeRosa hosted us on the mainland. Villas DeRosa is a dive resort which focuses on cave diving. We did three dives in caverns/cenotes in the Akumal area - one in Cenote Chac Mool and two in Cenote Dos Ojos. Dos Ojos is the cave system in which the IMAX film "Journey Into Amazing Caves" was filmed.

Diving in the caverns was such an amazing and surreal experience. The water was so exceptionally clear that divers appeared suspended in mid-air. At one point during a dive, all three of us (Nico, the guide, and I) turned off our lights. The only natural illumination was a faint blue glow filtering past the stalactites and stalagmites in the distance.  Want to see some underwater pictures of the Dos Ojos cave system?

Sunrise and sunset on the beach in Cozumel:




Here's what the water looks like on a good day in Cozumel - crystal clear and beautiful!


Here's one of the entrances to the Dos Ojos cave - just a big hole in a rock cliff with a big pool of clear-as-air water from which passages branched out in a few directions.

Want to see some underwater pictures of the Dos Ojos cave system?

Finally, we had a chance to visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum. They are the only Mayan ruins built right on the coast, and are not as ruined as the other ruins we had visited on Cozumel...