Cave Snorkelling – Riviera Maya
Vacationing with a teenage daughter is… well… challenging at best. However, the Riviera Maya wasthe perfect place to pull it off. Since Rachel inherited our love of adventure, the Alltournative Tours (Alltournative.com) JungleCrossing tour turned out to be the perfect way to spend a day. It really sets the tone for a tour when the tour bus turns out to be a rugged Mercedes Unimog (a military transport truck). After a short drive down the highway, we were soon bouncing down the roughest boulder strewn road I have experienced. Rachel and her friend, hanging desperately to the rope down the center of the truck, never stopped laughing for the short but intense ride to the caves. The first part of the tour enters the extensive caves of the Nohoch Nachich cenote system. The Alltournative tour folks have an arrangement with the farmer who discovered the entrance to (delete this) these caves on his property. The first trip into the earth was down a ladder to an island in the center of an underground pool. As we snorkeled around the house sized cave, a black hole 4 or5 feet in diameter came into view and plunged to unseen depths in the darkness. For some reason, we didn’t linger long in the vicinity of the hole. Re-emerging into the hot sun we heard the sound of a pool a couple hundred yards away that disappears into the side of a hill. Donning life jackets, we set out for a single filesnorkel trip deep into the hill. The crystal clear water is cool but not cold as we paddle along with a guide in front of us and a guide behind us with waterproof flashlights. As we made our way through the twists and turns of the cave, the guide behind us periodically dove down with his flashlight to reveal the cave terrain below. A rope anchored to the cave wall disappeared into a vertical crack in the earth underwater, the starting point for a scientific exploration team that followed the caves deep into the crust of the earth. The trip into the cave ended deep in the earth with the usual “turn out the lights a make a few jokes” routine required in every cave tour. Then we headed back out. The warm sunny outside came just about the time we were beginning to think the water seemed to be getting a little too cool.
It was interesting to see the way the tourist money has slowly changed the life of the farmer who owns the property. The satellite dish next to the rustic adobe dwellings is a stark contrast. Apparently they fire up the generator on Thursdays and Sundays.
The afternoon part of the tour was a little more conventional. The Unimog dropped us at the palm fringed Soliman Bay. Alltournative has hung hammocks between palm trees, but this welcome break is soon interrupted by the staff politely telling us to get a move on. We climbed into sea kayaks and headed out to the reef for a taste of salt water snorkeling. A few of our fellow tourists got a little more of a taste. Even though sea kayaks are generally very stable, it wasn’t MY family that tipped into the waves a couple of time and had to scramble back on.
It was about a ½ mile out to where the Soliman Bay joins with the open ocean. It is there that we moored the kayaks to buoys and snorkeled along the line of reef that protects the bay. There are fresh water springs in the bay so the water is a little hazy where the fresh and salt water mix. But the fish and coral are decent and the setting is spectacular enough to make it very enjoyable. After having plenty of time to explore, we paddled back to the beach. It was a full and tiring day and we were happy when the Unimog rolled back into
the resort and we could go off in search of a well earned supper. So if you are looking for a break from laying on the beach, I feel comfortable highly recommending the tours the Alltournative.com tour folks have put together. And no, they don’t give us a kickback.