Suitcase and World: Cenote X'keken.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Cenote X'keken.


Our Mexican tour officially ended today after our visit to Chichén-Itzá. The only thing left on the agenda was lunch. After that, my brother and I would get dropped off at our hotel in Tulum and Ayşe to her hotel in Cancun.

As we made our way towards Tulum, Francisco told us we had time to make one more stop. It wasn't on our itinerary but he thought we should go see it and so we went.





Our destination?  A cenote called X'keken ("Shee-keh-ken").  The only cenotes that I had ever been to were above ground.  This one was below ground.  I had no idea what to expect.

We followed Francisco as he led us down the stone steps.  I could hear voices and sound of splashing water as we descended.

When we go to the bottom of the steps, we had set foot into a cave.  Stalactites and stalagmites dotted the ceiling and there was a single hole in ceiling that brought light in.

Long roots hung from the ceiling bringing much needed water to the trees above ground.







The cave air was cool and damp. The lights were on and casted a purple shade over every surface.  There were people swimming in the water.  I commented that it looked like and felt like being at a swimming at night.







Surprisingly, there were quite a lot of people in the water.  Good thing here is that can enjoy the water without having to worry about getting sunburned.  The bad thing is that you can't see what's in the water with you.   We did see small fish swimming about.  My thought is if there are small things in the water, there are larger things eating them and I'd rather not be in the water with those big things, whatever they are. 

And I bet, if there was no one else in the cave, we would hear and maybe even see, bats!  They have bats in the caves here.  

Luckily (?) none of us had our swimsuits on so we people watched for a few minutes and then headed back out.

Group photo.  Earlier in the day I had mentioned to Ayşe that I wanted to have a picture taken of all five of us.  We had spent so much quality time during the 10 days that we had been with each other that it felt like a family traveling together.  I could not see us having a group photo, to remember this trip by, that did not include Francisco and Juan Jose as well.  Wouldn't feel right.

After we surfaced from the cave, we asked a passerby to take our picture and here it is.  We all look so relaxed and happy and that's because we were!!


It was a great tour to Mexico!  For my brother and I, our time in Mexico is not quite over yet.

Next destination.  Tulum.