A travel lesson re-learned: You get
what you pay for. The cenote tour that the info center sold us for
$25 each seemed too cheap to be true.
To be fair, it wasn't a scam, but it wasn't our soundest decision. First of all, getting to Misterio Maya is an ordeal. Situated at the farthest reaches of the Dos Ojos Cenotes park, it requires at least 20 minutes of driving down a dusty dirt road, and that's from the park entrance. Never mind the time it takes to get to the park from Tulum. Luckily we hired a private taxi. Otherwise it is an impossible distance where no sane driver would go.
That said, Misterio Maya does have its merits. The deep, dark underwater cavern is full of mystery, and for an hour you feel like Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, it becomes a mysterious cavern full of misery if you tour it with our guide. He handed us snorkels and life jackets, dropped us off at the freezing cold pool at the mouth of the cave and told us to swim around for the next ten minutes. Ten minutes turned into half an hour of shivering and wondering when he would return.
Maybe I’m just paranoid, but you'd think he'd be a little more careful about pissing off the paying customers he's about to take into a dark, potentially dangerous cave... But wow, what a cave. A guide is a must – it’s dark in its watery depths, and self-navigation is probably not so simple. Not much to see when snorkeling, but the bats are cute, and the stalactites are majestic. Aerialist me appreciates that; everything beautiful hangs upside-down.
I'm sure there are better cenotes to explore, and there have been plenty of positives about Dos Ojos proper. Misterio Maya is great in that there's no crowd, but if you book with the tourist info center outside of the Tulum ruins, you will be in Misery-o Maya instead.
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