The Most Mystical Sinkholes in the World
7 places in 5 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most mystical sinkholes in the world are Great Blue Hole (Belize), Ik Kil (Mexico) and Blue Hole (Egypt). The list covers 7 sinkholes in 5 countries. Mexico has the most, with 3. Last updated 14 October 2026.
A sinkhole is already a strange thing: solid ground that gives way into water, darkness or a perfect circle of blue. The mystical ones add something more — still water that seems bottomless, shafts of light falling into caves, and a long human tradition of treating such openings as thresholds. For the ancient Maya, cenotes were the only fresh water on the flat limestone of Yucatán and doorways to Xibalba, the underworld; offerings and human remains have been recovered from their depths. Around the world, blue holes also carry their own legends and their own warnings.
The Great Blue Hole off Belize is a near-perfect circle of deep blue in the middle of Lighthouse Reef, made famous by Jacques Cousteau; stalactites far below the surface show it was a dry cave when sea levels were lower. Ik Kil, near Chichén Itzá, is an open cenote where vines and roots hang down to the water from a sheer round wall. Cenote X-Keken near Valladolid is almost entirely enclosed, lit by one hole in the roof and a single beam on the water. Cenote Angelita hides a cloud of hydrogen sulphide that looks like a river flowing underwater, with trees standing in it.
Beyond Mexico, the Blue Hole at Dahab in the Red Sea is a drop-off of legendary reputation among divers; Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas is one of the deepest known; and Bimmah Sinkhole in Oman is a turquoise pool that local tradition attributes to a falling star.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Great Blue Hole | Blue hole | Belize | ✓ |
| 2 | Ik Kil | Cenote | Mexico | |
| 3 | Blue Hole | Blue hole | Egypt | |
| 4 | Dean's Blue Hole | Blue hole | The Bahamas | |
| 5 | Bimmah Sinkhole | Cenote | Oman | |
| 6 | Cenote Angelita | Cenote | Mexico | |
| 7 | Cenote X-Keken | Cenote | Mexico |
01 Great Blue Hole
Belize17.316° N 87.534° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
The TerraMar Project · CC BY 2.0 The Great Blue Hole is a near-perfect circle of deep indigo set in the pale turquoise of Lighthouse Reef, an atoll some 70 kilometres off the coast of Belize. Seen from the air it looks unreal: a ring of coral about 318 metres across, with the water inside dropping away to around 124 metres.
Did you know? A 30-metre sediment core drilled from its floor records 574 storms over 5,700 years, showing tropical cyclones becoming more frequent in recent decades.
02 Ik Kil
Mexico · 35.9 km from Valladolid20.666° N 88.545° W
Image by mattiaverga from Pixabay Ik Kil doesn't look like a cave that happened to fill with water — it looks like the ground simply gave way, which is essentially what happened. The cenote sits open to the sky, a nearly circular shaft about 60 metres across where the water sits some 26 metres below the surrounding ground level and continues down to a depth of roughly 48 metres.
Did you know? In Yucatec Maya the name Ik Kil is usually translated as 'place of the winds'.
03 Blue Hole
Egypt28.572° N 34.537° E
S. Ellermann · CC BY-SA 3.0 A few kilometres north of Dahab, on the Sinai coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, the fringing reef opens into a near-circular shaft of dark blue water. The Blue Hole is a submarine sinkhole more than 100 metres deep, cut off from the open sea on the surface by a shallow lip of reef about 6 metres down, known as the Saddle.
Did you know? Trained freedivers swim through the Arch on a single breath, passing beneath a rock ceiling that lies about 55 metres below the surface.
04 Dean's Blue Hole
The Bahamas23.106° N 75.009° W
Ton Engwirda · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl On the coast of Long Island in the southern Bahamas, a small crescent of white sand curls around a patch of sea that suddenly turns from pale turquoise to ink. That dark disc is Dean's Blue Hole, a vertical shaft in the limestone that drops to about 202 metres — the third-deepest blue hole known in the world.
Did you know? Only two blue holes are known to be deeper: Taam Ja' in Mexico's Chetumal Bay and the Dragon Hole in the South China Sea.
05 Bimmah Sinkhole
Oman23.036° N 59.071° E
Prof. Mortel · CC BY 2.0 On the stony coastal plain of eastern Oman, a few hundred metres from the Gulf of Oman, the ground simply opens. Bimmah Sinkhole — Hawiyyat Najm in Arabic — is a near-round pit some 50 by 70 metres across and about 20 metres deep, its pale limestone walls dropping to a pool of startlingly clear turquoise water. Seen from the rim, the colour looks almost artificial against the dun rock around it.
Did you know? The pool is widely believed to connect to the Gulf of Oman through a submerged cave passage, but no diver is known to have documented the route.
06 Cenote Angelita
Mexico20.137° N 87.578° W
Serge Melki from Indianapolis, USA · CC BY 2.0 Cenote Angelita — "little angel" — looks unremarkable from the surface: a round pool of dark water in the forest south of Tulum. Its fame lies some thirty metres down. There the diver reaches a thick, milky layer of hydrogen sulphide that hangs across the whole shaft like a cloud or a ground fog, so that it seems to be an underground river flowing through the middle of the water.
Did you know? The sinkhole reaches a total depth of about 60 metres, roughly twice the depth at which the famous cloud appears.
07 Cenote X-Keken
Mexico · 4.6 km from Valladolid20.661° N 88.243° W
Laslovarga · CC BY-SA 3.0 X-Keken is a cenote that keeps its secret underground. From the surface there is almost nothing to see: a low entrance in the scrub a few kilometres outside Valladolid, and a flight of steps cut down into the rock. At the bottom the passage opens into a domed limestone chamber holding a round pool of clear, blue-green fresh water, roughly twenty-five metres across.
Did you know? According to Valladolid's tourism office, the cenote was discovered only around 1950, in the middle of the twentieth century.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most mystical sinkholes in the world?
- On our list, Great Blue Hole (Belize) ranks first, followed by Ik Kil (Mexico) and Blue Hole (Egypt).
- Which country has the most sinkholes in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Mexico (3), Belize (1) and Egypt (1).
- What is a blue hole?
- A blue hole is a marine or coastal sinkhole, usually formed in limestone when sea levels were lower and later flooded. Its depth makes the water look dark blue against the lighter shallows around it.
- Why were cenotes sacred to the Maya?
- In northern Yucatán there are almost no rivers, so cenotes were the main source of fresh water. The Maya also saw them as entrances to Xibalba, the underworld, and left offerings in them, most famously in the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá.
- How was the Great Blue Hole formed?
- It began as a limestone cave system on dry land during the last ice age. When the roof collapsed and the sea rose, the cave flooded, leaving a circular sinkhole with stalactites still visible in its depths.
- How many sinkholes are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 7 sinkholes in 5 countries. Mexico has the most, with 3.