We finished at three, giving us a short break in our rooms before we had to leave for the public appearance at a local surf shop. With Christmas coming, it was a popular event, and we gave out Bodyglove T-shirts and other swag to the adoring crowd. After a good meal and some dancing at a local club, where I failed miserably on camera at salsa dancing, it was back to the hotel.
The next morning we met our security escort, four off-duty Mexican police officers, and loaded into three SUVs for our trip into the countryside. We’d hooked up with a dive shop specializing in diving cenotes, sinkholes now filled with freshwater, or layers of salt and freshwater, that dotted the jungle. Juan was our guide, an English-speaking twenty-five-year-old dive instructor who ran tourist dive epeditions. We piled our gear into the backs and hopped in; Linda, Amy, Fiona, and I were riding with Juan, while the twins and Carly followed. “What can we expect today?”
“We’re going to blow your mind on three dives, all completely different cenotes,” he said. “Have you done any cave diving?”
“Smaller caves in the ocean, and mining pits back in Minnesota,” I said as I thought back to the cave near Perth we’d dove on.
“You’re going to love these. We are diving three cenotes today; one shallow, one medium-depth with lots of formations, and one deep. The first is all snorkeling, the second we’ll snorkel then scuba, the last is all scuba. We’ll be in depths from five to eighty feet.”
“Photographic conditions,” Linda asked.
“The best you’ll ever see,” Juan promised. “Crystal clear water that makes it appear like you’re floating in the air. In some places, you’ll need good lighting for your cameras, and everyone will be carrying underwater flashlights. The best shots are when the broken rays of the sun come through the water and light the caverns up. Get the cameras on the bottom and shoot up as they swim through the rays, and that’s the money shot.”
“Sounds fun,” Linda said.
“How is the temperature? Are we going to need wet suits?” Even though we were in the tropics, groundwater could be cold.
“You’ll need a wetsuit for the second two dives. Our first one has perfect conditions for snorkeling, with wide swaths of shallow water, lots of fish and vegetation, and warm temperatures.”
That would give us a chance to wear some more revealing swimwear, which would make Mercedes happy. “How about crowds?”
“We have paid extra to have privacy for the time of your shooting,” Juan said. “Linda made it clear she needed the best filming conditions, so I blocked off two hours at each of the first two sites. The third is on private land, and we’re diving it only because the owner is a fan and wants to be on your show. I’ve been in that cenote once, and it blew me away.”
We arrived at the first dive area, a long, shallow cenote near the ocean called Casa Cenote. It was a popular tourist spot, but we traveled by kayak to an entrance at a more remote area reserved for us. Our gear was minimal; mask, snorkel, and our free-diving fins. As we paddled across the turquoise waters and looked at the sand and mangrove roots under it, I started getting excited. “This is fantastic,” I said as we arrived at our dive site.
The management had strung a line across warning the area was closed, and one lifted it so we could paddle under it. Juan gave us a quick brief of the area as we arrived at a small beach area. Linda and Carly were using scuba gear to stay underwater and film; Fiona was going to follow us snorkeling with her camera. Of course, we had small cameras built into the sides of our masks, as Linda never met a camera she didn’t like. We were also wearing our waterproof necklaces with the built-in microphones. I pulled my diving shirt off, leaving me in a white bikini with a narrow back. Amy had chosen a red one, while the girls were in matching neon green and neon pink. One last gear check and the ceremonial starting of the cameras, and we slid under the water.
The edges of the cavern were broken limestone and mangrove, and there were thousands of small fish among them and the algae growing like fields of grass. The tangled mangrove roots were fun to swim around, but soon Juan led us to deeper water. Linda would motion for us to swim somewhere as she maneuvered to get the light and the shot right, and we’d do it. After her second tank, we changed gears. “We’re doing the Crack now,” he said. “Normally we do this in scuba gear, but it’s only twenty feet deep, and you two can free-dive it if you want. It’s open along the top if you need to come up for air.”
The twins weren’t as comfortable, so they got on scuba gear as well. They followed Juan through the long broken-rock formation first with Carly filming. We waited until they were out of sight before we started after them. Linda dove to the bottom with Fiona staying near the surface with cameras running. We’d added weight belts around our narrow hips to stay down; after our breathing exercises, we started our dive.
The key to a long free-dive is economy of motion; the more you move, the faster you use up your oxygen. We kept our arms still and used the big muscles in our legs and hips to drive the extra-long fins we used to push ourselves down. It didn’t take long to level out just above the bottom, and it was spectacular. The crack was between two and five feet across, with sheer rocks on both sides reaching towards the surface. Boulders and sand were on the bottom, and we moved through the winding passage for almost three minutes before we headed to the surface for air. “Wow,” I said as I took deep breaths.
“Amazing,” Amy agreed. Fiona kept filming above water while Linda stayed at the bottom looking up. After preparing, we dove again, taking three more trips before we completed the run.
“That was the warmup,” Juan said. “Time’s up, let’s get back to the cars and head to the next spot.”
We stowed our gear and headed out, this time to the Dream Gate Cenote. Half our security team waited at the cars, while the other two waited by the water. As we pulled on our wetsuits near the water entrance, Juan and a local guide gave us our diving brief. “Dream Gate is a limestone cave with an opening to the air,” he told us. “Like other caves, it has formations formed over millions of years. It is not allowed to remove, break, or disturb these formations, so be careful as you dive in narrower areas. Buoyancy control is critical as you swim through the caverns, so stay on top of that. The maximum depth is thirty feet, so no decompression points are required. Keep your lights on bright and wide; the camera lighting will help as well. The more light, the better the formations show.” We grabbed our flashlights, while the camera operators put dual high-power lights on each side of the camera.
We broke into two groups; Amy and I would follow the local guide with Linda and Fiona, while Carly would film the twins with Juan. The entrance was a round hole with light streaming, and as we got down lower, it took my breath away.
The cavern looked like a cathedral to the Gods. Isolated columns covered in calcite formations stretched between the floor and ceiling, looking almost alive with the oozing flow of the calcite. Looking up, I saw the cavern ceiling was covered with thousands of stalactites from millions of years of groundwater leaching into the cave. Below us, stalagmites and mounds littered the floor. I’d toured caves back in Minnesota and Wisconsin as a kid, and these looked just like them, except filled with water. Visibility was exceptional, and I could understand what Juan said about it feeling like you were floating in the air. Only the bubbles broke the illusion.
Things got better when we started exploring the caves off the main cavern. We had to go single file as it got tighter, and I knew the ‘mask cam’ footage would be sensational. When our tank air gave us the warning, I was disappointed. We swam back and changed tanks, this time switching areas with the twins to see other parts of the cavern. After the second bottle, our time was up, and we had a big problem. “How are we only going to do ONE episode with all this footage,” I asked Linda. “This is unreal!”
“Good problem to have,” she said.