Cenote #2 – Jardin del Eden

In honor of my mom being with us and because we just doggone LOVE centoes, yesterday we went to two of them. We took Mom to the cenote we went to last time  since we knew it already. We also wanted Haley to see it since she had missed out last time due to a bad cold.

It was a cloudy (but still muggy and borderline hot) day and we had a few raindrops on our windshield as we drove down. But even “bad” weather here isn’t bad enough to keep people out of the water. Yeah, the water was a tad chilly at first but your body acclimates to it quickly. We convinced Mom to go in the water (read: we wouldn’t take no for an answer).

Sometimes overcoming your fears in front of your children sucks is important so I had to jump off the cliff once again to show Haley how it was done. It didn’t take me as long to take the plunge and she followed shortly after. Although it turns out she was tricking me to “support” her so I would do it again, and she wasn’t really afraid to do it. Such a devil child angel. But we checked the box and neither of us felt the need to do it again. It was very entertaining to watch the various people hem and haw about it forever decide to make the jump. A cute boy from France who was a year or two older than Zoe worked on his nerve for about 45 minutes before he finally jumped. He had an instant support group below as we were all encouraging him to jump. Haley tried to learn a few words in French to encourage him in his own language. Rosetta Stone, eat your heart out.

After the first cenote (Cristalino) we felt the need to see another one. There is a cluster of them all very close to each other so about 50 meters down the road we turned into another one. This one was called Jardin del Eden Cenotes.

Each cenote has a different personality. Jardin was much bigger and there were even higher places to jump from and more of them. At Cristalino, we had one scuba diver that kind of stayed out of the way. But Jardin had a LOT of scuba divers. Probably because it was deeper than Cristalino. You’ll be swimming along and some bubbles would just emerge from the water under you or next to you. You look down and notice a silver tank and some colored fins below you. We called them the silver people. Jardin even had a special parking place just for divers where they had a cement staging shelf to unload all their gear.

Daniel was the only one to jump off the cliff at the Jardin cenote. I guess the rest of us were ninnies figured we had already overcome that demon so no need to fight it again. But we watched others take it a step further and climb the tree on the cliff to get a even higher. Boys will be boys. Plenty of girls there but none would climb the tree.

Nanna decided to sit this one out but she did some good people watching and watching the jumpers. One thing we noticed at these cenotes is that sunblock is not allowed. We learned from our coral reef workshop that the chemicals in traditional sunblock are really damaging to the coral reefs and evidently that extends to cenotes too. So people have to find other ways to protect themselves from the sun. It’s interesting to see this level of concern for nature, alongside zero recycling and what seems to be limited pollution control from cars. #babysteps

For those of you reading this who might be planing on a cenote in your future, we recommend you take water shoes (no real place to leave your flip flops by the side and you’ll want feet protection anyway), snorkel gear (to see all the cool stuff under the surface) and a flotation device. Even if you can swim it’s nice to be buoyant while you are checking things out. We think pool noodle rings would be ideal. #cenoteexperts

We have deepened our love for cenotes after yesterday’s visit and we vow to see as many as possible while we are here. It’s so fun to see the different attributes and compare them. The weather right now is lovely but the hot season is coming so I have a feeling our cenote hopping will become a critical part of our down time. Field trips galore!