Cenote X-Keken

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. The vault overhead is studded with stalactites, and the largest of them hang in a dense cluster that reaches down almost to the water, so that swimmers move between stone fingers rather than beneath a bare ceiling.

What makes the chamber memorable is the light. A single small hole in the roof lets in a shaft of sun, and as the day turns the beam slides across the walls and the surface of the pool, picking out one formation after another while the rest of the cave stays in half-darkness. Tree roots from the forest above push through the same opening and dangle in long strands towards the water, and small fish drift in the pool. The effect is closer to a natural cathedral than to a swimming hole, and it repays sitting still on the steps for a few minutes until the eyes adjust.

Cenotes are the sinkholes of the Yucatán's limestone plain, where the roof of a flooded cave has partly or wholly collapsed; on a peninsula with almost no surface rivers they were the main source of water for the Maya, and many were treated as sacred thresholds to the underworld. X-Keken is a "closed" cenote, still roofed over, and its name is Maya for pig. Local tradition holds that a farmer's pig kept vanishing into the bush during a drought and coming back wet and muddy, until someone followed it and found the hidden pool. A second cenote, Samulá, lies a few minutes' walk away in the same Dzitnup complex and has a larger opening that floods its water with turquoise light; the two make a natural pair.

Getting there

The cenote lies at Dzitnup, about 5 km from the centre of Valladolid in Yucatán, close enough to reach by bicycle or taxi. The nearest airport is Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport at Tulum (TQO), about 81 km away.