< Back to tours

Cenote Calavera | Guide to the Cenotes of Tulum

Posted on 17/02/2013 By Agua Clara Diving Tulum

Eco tours into the Cenotes around Tulum, Mexico

cenote calavera

image

Cenote Calavera (skull in spanish) is called like that because it has 3 collapses in the ceiling that resemble to that, the two small ones would be the eyes and the big one the mouth. Now it is part of Sac Aktun cave system (same as, Gran Cenote, Casa Cenoteand cenote Sac Aktun), and in my opinion it is the nicest cavern in the area where to go if you want to appreciate a cool hallocline (where the fresh and the salty water meet).

This dive start is pretty adventurous, you have to get in to the skull trough its mouth by doing a 3 m high giant stride entry, but the real adventure doesn`t start until you deflate your bcd, the line in this cavern goes around a mountain that has formed under the big collapse (mouth). It`s maximum depth is 16 m (52 ft) and the dive usually lasts for about 40 min. While diving you can many times appreciate the light skull on your top formed by the light getting trough the holes in the celling, you can also get to see a lot of fossils and a very cool landscape that seems like been scuba diving on the moon or a swiss cheese. Any way the coolest thing about scuba diving in this cavern is the incredible hallocline that forms here. This is where the fresh and the salty water meet, since there is hardly any current in this cavern the two layers stay absolutely separed and since they each have different densities as the light passes from one to the other it gets refracted and create some very cool and unique visual effects.

This dive is recommendable for people that dived on one of the beginner caverns before because it can get to be a bit dark and small at points, also as the two waters mix they create a blurriness effect that can be scary to someone with out cavern diving experience.

Cenote pirañas tankah

Difficulty:Hard.

Dives: 1.

Localizado a 8 Km del pueblo de Tulum, el cenote Calavera gana su nombre debido a 3 colapso que vistos desde abajo al bucear parecen un craneo iluminado. La especialidad de este cenote son los avivamientos de haloclina, el punto de encuentro entre dos agua de diferentes densidades y temperaturas. En este caso se ve el agua salada debajo de la dulce y parece que nos encontramos en el punto de encuentro de dos dimensiones distintas tras separadas como el agua y el aceite. Al mover las agua y mezclarse también la vision se vuelve borrosa, como si requirieras de lentes. Es por eso que es importante ir preparado para no molestarse. Este fenómeno es muy visible en areas abiertas y obscuras, características reunidas por este cenote de la hollines son las bizarras formaciones rocosas que han sido erosionadas por el agua salada, la cuales son muy distintas a las de agua dulce. También se puede apreciar una gran luminosidad en la parte salda ya que el sedimento es claro y dispara la luz a todas direcciones.
Dificultad: Media
! tanque

List of the Cenotes near Tulum

All of these cenotes are part of our guided eco tours both for snorkeling and scuba diving