In planning our quick spring break trip to Mexico, I knew that we would spend most of our time at the resort but that we also wanted to take at least one tour to get out and explore the area a little bit. I was most interested in doing a cenote tour.
I wanted to avoid the cruise-ship style, cattle call tours that stopped at 5 hotels and picked up 40 people for an overcrowded, chaotic experience. In the weeks prior to the trip, I looked into a few private tours but none of them worked out. I had trouble getting them to reply to my messages or they were booked or too expensive. I had one pull a bait and switch on me where they quoted me one price and then sent an invoice for a much higher amount. Frustrated, I decided to just wait until we got to Cancun and book through the hotel.
The Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe has several tour desks in the lobby manned by Thomas More Travel. We got a ton of information from one of their agents about the different cenote tour options and ultimately booked their “Mayan Adventure Tour” that took us to 3 different cenotes. (See my full trip report here.)
What I didn’t realize until we were picked up the next morning was that Thomas More is a travel agency and not an actual tour company. They had booked us with a company called Aventuras Mayas and their guide is the one who met us in the morning.
There were two other groups (each a parent/teen duo) from our hotel that joined the tour. I was excited that we had a small group but Emilio, our guide, told us we would be going to another hotel to pick up a group of 6. This is what I had been hoping to avoid – large groups and wasted time going from hotel to hotel to pick them up. We had to meet at 7:15 am (early for teens on vacation!) and it was frustrating when we drove back past our hotel 30+ minutes later after we had picked up the other group and were actually on our way.
But we only made one other hotel stop and there were still just 14 of us on the tour so it could have been a lot worse. The van was clean and comfortable and the guide, Emilio, was friendly and funny. We settled in for the almost 2 hour drive to the cenotes.
We did make a stop at Aventuras Mayas headquarters in Playa del Carmen. This seemed like an odd and unnecessary detour. There was an open-air, thatched roof building where they were offering drinks, snacks, and a bathroom break (and a gentleman in what I assume was a traditional Mayan bird costume of some sort). I was expecting the stop to be centered around trying to sell us additional tours but it really just seemed to be a pit stop. The drive wasn’t so long that this felt necessary but maybe they found it easier to have a scheduled stop so that people weren’t randomly asking to pull over during the drive.
The first two cenotes were located within walking distance of each other and Aventuras Mayas had exclusive access to the site. This was definitely a well-planned operation. We entered through a gift shop, where we were given a free lock to use on the lockers to store our things while we swam (and of course the opportunity to buy many things). We were given a brief overview of the activities and then Emilio walked us to the open cenote. He gave us instructions on both the jump and the zip line and supervised our first attempt at each before leaving us to enjoy our time as we saw fit.
I liked that we weren’t just thrown out on our own at first. It was helpful that Emilio gave us advice (and encouragement!) on the jump and then instructed us on the zip line and when to let go. And it was nice that after that initial assistance, we were free to enjoy the site on our own. One of my boys preferred the jump and the other the zip line, and it was great that they could each follow their own interests.
I had been concerned about a tour with a lot of people. Our own group was only 14 but there were probably more than 20 groups there at any time. Still, despite the large number of people there was never a wait of more than a minute or two to jump or zip, and the water never felt crowded. It looked like a lot of people but never really felt that way. They did a great job of spacing the groups out and timing the visits to the 3 different cenotes to keep things from backing up anywhere.
At the underground cenote and the snorkeling site our guide again struck a balance between guiding and allowing independent exploration. The cave required a little more guidance so that nobody wandered off into cave-parts unknown but we still had some leeway to explore on our own. And at the snorkeling site, Emilio took us to different areas as a group and then allowed us to swim around on our own, occasionally calling us over if he saw something of particular interest. This was definitely the type of tour (and my kids were of the appropriate age) where I appreciated initial instruction and then independence.
At the first site, Aventuras Mayas had professional photographers at both the open and underground cenotes to take group and action photos. It was really clever – they took a photo of each group on the dock when we first arrived and then someone used that photo to compile your family’s photos taken throughout the day into a presentation that they showed you before leaving. There was no obligation to buy and it was definitely not a hard sell. But of course I bought them! It is so rare for us to have photos of all of us and the quality of their action shots was much better than the ones I had taken. There were two package options – the underground cenote photos only or the entire set of photos (from both cenotes) – or you could buy individual photos. We purchased the whole package for about $100 and it included almost 150 photos, which felt like a pretty good deal.
All in all, we really enjoyed this tour. It was well organized and we had a great guide. It felt very safe – there were tons of guides around supervising and the equipment was good. I liked that we had some assistance at first and then independence to explore on our own. Going to sites that the company had private access to eliminated some of the unknown regarding crowds. They definitely had a lot of groups there but controlled it well so that everything flowed naturally and it was never backed up at one activity/site. Cenotes are such a unique feature of the Yucatan Peninsula and we loved that this tour offered an opportunity to see three very distinct examples of them.
