Cenote Diving Tulum Mexico – Best Cenotes Guide

Cenote Diving | Best

When you visit the Riviera Maya, you must explore the Cenotes. The best way to discover this new world is underwater, Cenote Diving Tulum

The Best Cenote Dives Guide for Scuba Diving Cenotes in Tulum Mexico

Do you know where the best cenotes for scuba diving are?

The Best Cenotes in the whole of the Riviera Maya, Mexico can be found near the ancient Maya archaeological town of Tulum.

There are thousands of Cenotes scattered in the jungle across the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, but less than twenty that you can dive safely with a normal “recreational” Open Water scuba diving certification. Yes, that’s right you don’t have to be Cave trained to enjoy the wonders of cenote diving, so long as you dive with a registered guide.

There are many very unique and special cenote diving Tulum experiences available.

Cenote Diving Tulum

Here are the Best Cenotes for you to discover in the Riviera Maya. Then you can book your Private & Personalised Cenote Diving Adventure with Best Cenote Dives.

If you are scuba diving the beautiful reef in Cozumel, seeing the Bull Sharks in Playa del Carmen or visiting the underwater museum near Cancun, you should certainly build into your diving schedule at least one day of cenote diving. Certainly, after your Cenote dive, you will wish that you had done a whole week. So it’s best to book a week at the beginning.

What is Cenote Diving?

Cenote Diving Tulum is Scuba Diving in a Cenotes. Open Water trained divers can explore the wonders inside an underwater cave. We stay close to the entrance and explore the cavern zone.

What do you see underwater in Cenotes?

We see amazing things like Stalactites, Stalagmites, and many other beautiful rock formations. There are stunning light effects, haloclines, clouds of gas, Mayan artifacts and prehistoric bones to see. We might even see a crocodile!

What are Cenotes?

A Cenote is a hole in the ground, that goes down to the water. It is a geological feature in “Karst Topography” caused by erosion of limestone rock. Flowing water underground dissolves the rock to form a cave system. When the water dissolves so much of the rock that the roof falls in a cenote is formed.
It’s all good most of the cenotes have formed during the last ice age when the water level was considerably lower than today. As the caves are now filled with water the chance of it falling in is very low. We don’t get new cenotes forming above us whilst we are diving. If the caves fell in regularly we wouldn’t go cenote diving. More about the history of cenotes here.

Is Cenote Diving safe?

Yes, it’s very safe. It is like most things if you follow the rules it’s very safe. If you break the rules it can get very dangerous. We will explain everything in great detail before we go in.

What is the Safest for Cenote Diving Tulum?

The most important thing to consider when choosing which cenote for cenote diving is safety. Read about the cenotes and decide which ones best fit your comfort level. We don’t like to say that any cenote dive is easy because it depends absolutely on the person. But if you are feeling nervous or it’s been over 6 months since your last dive look at the beginning of the list.
With this in mind, we have chosen these dives because we think they are the safest, and best cenote dives in the whole of the Yucatan. We hope it makes deciding which cenotes to dive on your visit to Mexico easier for you.

What is the Best for Cenote Diving Tulum?

It’s really difficult to choose the best cenotes for cenote diving as we love them all for different reasons, but we understand your time can be short and you don’t have two weeks to explore the full range of Cenote dives with us. You need to decide which is going to be the best cenote diving experience for you, based on what you want to see and also your skill and comfort level. You can ask your self;
What is the Best Cenote if I am a beginner and i’m nervous about Cenote Diving?
What is the Best Cenote for Photography?
What is the Best Cenote Dive for Open Water trained divers?
What is the Best Cenote to see a Halocline?
What is the Best Deep Cenote Dive?
What is the most awesome Cenote Diving experience?


Casa Cenote

Features:

  • Mangroves
  • Fossils
  • Halocline
  • Underwater life
  • Dancing light

Minimum Certification: Beginner / Open water

Casa Cenote is a perfect Cenote for divers of all levels. It’s a great place to start a week of cenote diving, refresh your skills or, if there are non-divers in the group it’s a great place to snorkel or even try discovering diving for the first time. Newbies can’t go into the Cave.

It has a big Open Water area so it offers the divers a safe place to practice your safety skills before going to discover the cavern.

This cenote is surrounded by mangroves, which are home to numerous juvenile fish, protected from predators and with all the food necessary for their growth. The unique underwater life is an unforgettable experience, enhanced by the sunlight passing through the mangroves.

Once inside the cavern certified divers can experiment and play with the Halocline that is a surprising visual effect. We will also admire the fossils of conches and giant corals, as well as some other surprises.

This is a great dive for all levels of divers, It’s full of surprises from the beginning to the end.

So Casa Cenote is the Best Cenote if you are a beginner and you’re nervous about Cenote Diving?


Car Wash

Features: 

  • Fossils
  • Dancing light
  • Rock Formations
  • Stalactites and Stalagmites

Minimum Certification: Open water

Car Wash is great for seeing nature and marine life. The abundance of light makes it a particular favorite of photographers and videographers. 

The larger open water area is home to fisha turtle and sometimes we see a small crocodile. This area is a great training space, so if you want to do a Sidemount or Cavern Course, this is where we will come to start the training. The cavern is very large, from the darkness inside, we look out on a beautiful wall of light outside.

There are broken pottery, coral, fossils and rock formations to see as well.

If you want to get stunning pictures and videos, let’s go to Cenote Car Wash.

Car Wash is the Best Cenote for Photography?


Dos Ojos

Features: 

  • Dancing Light
  • Rock Formations
  • Stalactites and Stalagmites
  • Fossils

Minimum Certification: Open water

It’s quite shallow with an average depth of only 5 meters. There are big caverns to swim through with lots of natural light coming in. But the best thing about Dos Ojos is the Stalactites & Stalagmites. These are crazy rock formations that look like they are flowing liquid, they are abundant in the massive cavern at Dos Ojos. Coral and conch fossils decorate the passageways.

There are two dives the Barbie line has bigger passageways and formations, whereas the Bat cave is darker but with more beautiful formations. So the dives get a little more challenging as the day progresses.

It is the classic cenote diving experience, a bucket list dive for any open water trained diver.

Dos Ojos is the Best Cenote Dive for Open Water trained divers?


Calavera

Features:

  • Halocline
  • Fossils
  • Dancing Light
  • Stalactites and Stalagmites

Minimum Certification: Open water

Calavera means skull in Spanish and this dive is more challenging than the previous dives. There is a 10ft / 3m drop into the water, don’t worry there is a ladder to climb up at the end.

Upon entering we are rewarded with a beautiful green light that marks the entrance. Calavera is the best dive to see the halocline.

As the salt and freshwater come together it creates as when we dive through it. You have to see it, to believe it. The refracting light looks like another surface to the water. On the dive we see a stunning visual effect, rock formations that look like modern art sculptures, fossils of coral and plants decorate the walls and floor, and ancient Mayan artifacts that have been found on the dive site conveniently placed for us to look at. At the end of the dive, we surface underneath hundreds of bats nesting on the Cenote ceiling.

It s an epic cenote dive for anyone who wants to see the magical halocline.

Calavera is the Best Cenote to see a Halocline?


The Pit

Features:

  • Cloud of Hydrogen Sulfate
  • Rock Formations
  • Stalactites and Stalagmites
  • Halocline
  • Dancing Light

Minimum Certification: Advanced

The Pit is the fairytale dive. It’s a deep dive so you must be advanced certified to do it. The Pit is a vast chamber with many special Cenote features. We see a cloud of hydrogen sulfide gas that looks like thin wispy layers of smoke in the water. Beams of light penetrate from the surface 100ft / 30m to the bottom of the room. To see this from the back of the chamber is one of those truly special moments, but we need a clear sky for the best effect. The position of the beams changes at different times of the year. A halocline divides the space in two. 

The visual effects we see here can be truly out of this world. There are stalactites on the ceiling and a few stalagmites on the floor. The CAVE entrance off to the side goes down to 200 ft/ 120m, we don’t go that far 130ft / 40m max for DEEP TRAINED divers.

The Pit is the Best Deep Cenote Dive?


Angelita

Features: 

  • Hydrogen Sulfate Cloud
  • Rock Formations
  • Stalactites and Stalagmites
  • Halocline
  • Unforgettable atmosphere

Minimum Certification: Advanced

Angelita is a deep dark dive into a cloud of hydrogen sulfide gas. That’s right, it’s a gas that has formed because of decomposing vegetation that has fallen into the Cenote. It’s poisonous so we don’t drink it and that’s why we call this dive the horror movie dive. It’s like an alien landscape you will feel as if you are in another world.

Unlike other Cenotes, we don’t go into a cavern. It’s cylindrical in shape and down at 100ft / 30m is the cloud. During the Cenotes formation, the falling ceiling rocks have blocked the cave entrance, so there is no flowing water and the gas builds up. 

The atmosphere is like being on another planet. Fallen rocks form an island that rises out of the gas. Dead trees rest on the island and the adjacent wall. Under the cloud, it’s pitch black like a night dive. The best bit is when we rise through the cloud and halocline, which is just above it.

If you want a deep dark dive into a cloud of poisonous gas, then maybe Angelita is the dive for you.

Angelita or The Pit. You have to decide which is the most awesome Cenote Diving experience?

Are there any other cenotes to visit?

Absolutely. There are many more beautiful cenotes that we can visit. Some are beautiful but just not as beautiful as others like Nicte Ha and TakBi Ha. There are some cenotes that are a bit more challenging like Dreamgate. That would require us to see you diving in cenotes for at least one day before we go there. Then of course once you have fallen in love with cenote diving you can do your cave course and open the door to a wonderful and exhilarating new type of Scuba Diving.

  • Tajma Ha
  • Nicte Ha
  • TakBi Ha
  • Dreamgate

So that’s it our Guide to the Best Cenotes to Dive in Tulum.

As you can see the most important thing to guarantee your safety & enjoyment, is that you decide on the right Cenote for you. So long as the Cenote is suitable for the skill level of everyone in the group, we will all have a safe and awesome day out. 

We love to dive in Cenotes, are passionate about the Caves, and fanatical about your safety.