The Most Mystical Sinkholes in North America
5 places in 3 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most mystical sinkholes in North America are Great Blue Hole (Belize), Ik Kil (Mexico) and Dean's Blue Hole (The Bahamas). The list covers 5 sinkholes in 3 countries. Mexico has the most, with 3. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Few landscapes feel as charged with meaning as the sinkholes of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Caribbean. The region is a vast plate of porous limestone with almost no surface rivers; rainwater runs underground through flooded caves, and where a cave roof collapses, a round window opens onto clear water. For the Maya, these cenotes were sources of life and doorways to Xibalba, the underworld, and offerings were thrown into them. Offshore, blue holes formed the same way during the ice ages, when sea level was far lower, and were drowned as the oceans rose.
The Great Blue Hole, on Lighthouse Reef off Belize, is a near-perfect circle of deep blue water about 300 metres across, set in a ring of shallow coral; Jacques Cousteau's expedition made it famous in 1971. Dean's Blue Hole, on Long Island in the Bahamas, plunges more than 200 metres from a sheltered bay below a limestone cliff and is a celebrated arena for freediving.
The Mexican cenotes show the variety of forms. Ik Kil, near Chichén Itzá, is an open well with vines and roots hanging down to the water from the rim far above. Cenote X-Keken, near Valladolid, lies inside a cavern lit by a single opening in the roof, its stalactites reaching towards the water. In Cenote Angelita, south of Tulum, divers descend through fresh water to a cloud of hydrogen sulphide that lies over the salt water below like an underwater river, with tree branches emerging from it.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Great Blue Hole | Blue hole | Belize | ✓ |
| 2 | Ik Kil | Cenote | Mexico | |
| 3 | Dean's Blue Hole | Blue hole | The Bahamas | |
| 4 | Cenote Angelita | Cenote | Mexico | |
| 5 | 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 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.
04 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.
05 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 North America?
- On our list, Great Blue Hole (Belize) ranks first, followed by Ik Kil (Mexico) and Dean's Blue Hole (The Bahamas).
- Which country has the most sinkholes in North America?
- In our collection, the most come from Mexico (3), Belize (1) and The Bahamas (1).
- What is a cenote?
- A cenote is a natural sinkhole formed when the roof of a limestone cave collapses and exposes groundwater. The word comes from the Yucatec Maya term for a well, and the Yucatán Peninsula has thousands of them.
- How was the Great Blue Hole formed?
- The Great Blue Hole began as a limestone cave system on dry land during the ice ages, when sea level was much lower. Its roof collapsed and the hole was flooded as the sea rose, leaving a deep circular shaft surrounded by reef.
- Why is there an underwater river in Cenote Angelita?
- Cenote Angelita has a layer of fresh water resting on denser salt water. At the boundary, decaying organic matter produces a cloud of hydrogen sulphide that looks like a river flowing along the bottom of the shaft.
- How many sinkholes are on this list in North America?
- The list covers 5 sinkholes in 3 countries. Mexico has the most, with 3.