Cenote Angelita

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. Dead trees that fell into the cenote long ago stand upright through the layer, their bare branches reaching out of the mist, and the scene is so strange that it has become one of the most photographed dives in the Yucatán.

The effect is the product of the peninsula's peculiar hydrology. Fresh rainwater floats on top of denser salt water that seeps in from the sea through the limestone, and the boundary between them — the halocline — lies just below the sulphide cloud. Leaves and branches from the forest have fallen into the shaft over a very long time and decay at depth with little oxygen, producing the hydrogen sulphide. Above it the water is fresh and warmer; below it lies colder, salty water in near darkness.

The shaft continues down to well over fifty metres, but the classic dive concentrates on the zone between thirty and forty metres, where the cloud and the drowned trees are. That makes Angelita a deep dive, reserved for experienced, appropriately certified divers going with local guides; nitrogen narcosis and gas planning are real considerations. For those who cannot dive this deep, the cenote is no more than a quiet pool in the jungle — the beauty here is entirely below the surface.

Getting there

The cenote lies about 15 km from Tulum, around a quarter of an hour's drive south of the town. The nearest airport is Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport Tulum (TQO), about 9 km away; Dives are organised through dive centres in Tulum and Playa del Carmen, which handle transport to the site.