Dos Ojos Cenote — cenote
Dag Lindgren · CC BY-SA 3.0

Dos Ojos Cenote

Sistema dos ojos

  • 1 min read
  • 20.325° N 87.392° W

Interesting facts

  • In November 2010 the Venezuelan freediver Carlos Coste set a Guinness record here, swimming 150 metres through the cave on a single breath.
  • Dos Ojos is an anchialine cave: fresh water lies over seawater that seeps in from the Caribbean, and the tide can be felt far underground.
  • The water stays at about 25°C all year, and its clarity comes from rainwater filtered through almost pure limestone.
  • The Pit, the deepest shaft in the system, lies roughly 1,500 metres from the main entrance and can only be reached by long cave dives.
  • Explorers found a dry passage linking Dos Ojos with Sac Actun in 2012, six years before divers confirmed the underwater connection.
  • The cenote basins at the two openings are only about 10 metres deep, and typical cavern dives stay at 5 to 7 metres.
  • Small fish, mostly under 10 centimetres long, and at least two kinds of freshwater shrimp live in the flooded passages.
  • Parts of the 2005 Hollywood thriller The Cave were filmed in the system.

Why it is worth it

Dos Ojos, "Two Eyes", takes its name from a pair of neighbouring cenotes in the jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula, two round openings in the limestone that lead into a single great flooded cavern. Seen from the water, the effect is of looking through the eyes of the earth: shafts of sunlight fall through the openings and travel deep into water so clear that swimmers seem to hang in air above pale rock, while stalactites and stalagmites crowd the edges of the light.

What lies behind the two eyes is far larger than anything a visitor sees. Explorers began pushing into the passages in 1987, and the survey has never stopped: the system now counts some 28 cenote entrances and more than 80 kilometres of mapped underwater galleries. One shaft, known as The Pit and found in 1996, plunges to about 119 metres, the deepest known cave passage in Quintana Roo. In January 2018 divers confirmed a connection between Dos Ojos and the neighbouring Sac Actun system, joining them into the longest known underwater cave system in the world.

The cavern zone at Dos Ojos, within reach of daylight, is open to snorkellers and cavern divers, while the deeper cave passages remain the domain of trained cave divers. It draws a steady stream of swimmers and divers, and its luminous water has made it a favourite location for filmmakers, including the IMAX film Journey into Amazing Caves (2002) and the BBC series Planet Earth (2006).

Getting there

Dos Ojos lies in the forest north of Tulum, about 15 km from the town, on the Riviera Maya coast of Quintana Roo. The nearest airport is Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport at Tulum (TQO), about 33 km away. The site is reached by road from Tulum or from the resort towns farther north; diving is organised through local dive centres.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Mexico 56The Most Beautiful Cenotes 7The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Mexico 11The Most Mystical Places 138The Most Beautiful Water Wonders 429

From the encyclopaedia

Dos Ojos is part of a flooded cave system located north of Tulum, on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The exploration of Dos Ojos began in 1987 and still continues. The surveyed extent of the cave system is 82 kilometers (51 mi) and there are 28 known sinkhole entrances, which are locally called cenotes. In January 2018, a connection was found between Sistema Dos Ojos and Sistema Sac Actun. The smaller Dos Ojos became a part of Sac Actun, making the Sistema Sac Actun the longest known underwater cave system in the world.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

20.32472, -87.39194per Wikidata