Found throughout the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes are natural sinkholes formed by the collapse of limestone bedrock. The resulting holes fill with water, providing ancient Mayans with a water source and today’s tourists with beautiful swimming destinations.
There are over 6,000 cenotes in Mexico, but only about 150 of them are accessible to visitors. But that’s still a lot of options! You can choose to visit them on your own or as part of a tour. Because we did not rent a car while we were in Cancun, we opted to book a tour with Aventuras Mayas. Their Mayan Adventure Tour took us to three different locations – an open cenote, an underground cenote, and an ocean inlet.
We were picked up at our hotel with 4 other tourists by our guide Emilio. We stopped at one other hotel to pick up another group, for a total 10 people. The drive to the cenote from Cancun was about 2 hours. We made a brief stop at the Aventuras Mayas main office in Playa del Carmen for snacks and a bathroom break before continuing on to the first stop of our tour.
The open and underground cenotes were both on the same property, which Aventuras Mayas had exclusive access to. We took a dirt road off the main highway through the jungle to the parking lot, which led to a gift shop with (free) lockers to store your belongings while you swam.
Through the back of the gift shop was the first of the cenotes, and it was beautiful! The water in the cenote was a beautiful blue-green color and clear enough to see the bottom in the shallow areas. The jungle surrounding the sinkhole was lush and green.
But, for better or worse, this cenote was not completely natural and untouched. It is run by a tour company after all! The far end of the cenote had three platforms – one for jumping off of and two for ziplining into the water. While it obviously detracted some from the natural beauty, it made for a really fun morning.
There were quite a few tour groups there at the same time but somehow we never waited more than a minute or two to jump or zipline. When we first got there, Emilio took us to the jumping platform and provided instructions before we each made our first jump. Then he moved us to a zipline and provided similar instructions for that activity. Once we all had our supervised first turn, we were free to enjoy the site on our own for about 45 minutes. (We did have the option to snorkel for the last 15 minutes but we chose not to since we knew we would be snorkeling at our next stop.) The boys had so much fun zipping and jumping again and again.
When our time was up at the open cenote, we walked for about 5 minutes down a dirt road further into the jungle to get to the underground cenote, Aktun Koh. The “Cave of the Puma” is part of a vast underground network of rivers in Quintana Roo, with water flowing through over 500 miles of cave passages.
We walked down some stairs to reach the entrance of the cave, where another set of steps led you into the water. I stopped there though. That water was cold! I opted to stay on the platform and let the boys explore the cave with Emilio and the group. They snorkeled in the cave and I was surprised that they actually saw fish in there. They said it was a really unique experience and had a great time.
After the cave cenote, we had lunch at the thatched roof restaurant right near the entrance to the cave. They served a buffet of chicken, rice, and various other sides. The food was good and it was nice to rest and refuel before our final adventure.
From there we hopped back in the van and headed to our next stop, Yalkú Lagoon in Akumal. This is not a true cenote because it is not fully enclosed. Presumably at some point thousands of years ago, this was a true cenote, but the collapse of one side ultimately connected the freshwater of the cenote to the saltwater of the Caribbean sea, resulting in a protected lagoon with a brackish ecosystem where dozens of marine species thrive.
The lagoon was a lot larger than the cenotes, but it was just as beautiful. Located among the mangroves rather than deep in the jungle, the backdrop was different but the crystal clear water was the same. Aventuras Mayas has private access here as well, but another tour company has its own access point in a different part of the lagoon so the water was crowded at some points. Thankfully there is a really large area to explore so it was easy to get away from people.
The snorkeling here was amazing! From the second we got in, we were surrounded by fish. The water was stunningly clear so we had a fantastic view of everything. While there were fish literally everywhere we turned, we found that large schools of fish tended to congregate near the outer edges of the lagoon. So we spent a lot of there, marveling at the number and variety of fish. As a family, I feel like we hadn’t had a great snorkeling experience before but we finally did here.
This was a really fun day and a nice change of pace from the resort. It was a little farther away than I had wanted to go, but apparently the cenotes closer to Cancun have greener and murkier water. I liked the variety of this tour – we experienced three distinct types of cenotes and a few different activities as well. It was well worth the cost and travel time.
