Nicte-Ha - Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Shivering and seething from Misterio Maya, we decide to finish what our wristbands started. Thank goodness we went because Nicte-Ha negates quite a bit of the other crap. A literal swimming hole, a green glimpse of paradise. It's a smaller version of Yodzkonot, but without the towering walls of rock so sunlight streams right in.

For whatever reason, the only photo we have a is far-away glimpse through the trees, but once you’ve seen a couple of cenotes, I imagine you’ve seen them all in a sense. There are no two exactly alike, and they're a common sight in the Yucatan, but I don't know if all these beautiful variations of paradise lost will ever stop taking my breath away.  

Misterio Maya – Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico

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.

Cenote Yokdzonot - Piste, Mexico

“Things to do in Tulum,” I google. The internet screams “CENOTE”. Every site and every list, from Lonely Planet to a barefoot hippie blog lists three to four. That sounds interesting, but what exactly is a cenote? Wikipedia answers all my questions .It is a “natural pit, or sinkhole.” Lovely. I will be exploring a giant hole in the ground full of slow-flowing freshwater. Great.

The description does Yokdzonot no justice. I expect a giant hole with water, and I get this instead.

The waters are a deep sapphire, like taking a dive into the murky depths of the Heart of the Ocean, and the water is about as cold as where the Titanic sank. The sun kisses the surface where the rock-face lets it through, and the water glistens and beckons with an icy embrace. The hanging roots give it a magical mystique, and a hole in the ground becomes the scene of a fairy tale.

The US Virgin Islands are home to at least four of the ten most beautiful beaches on earth. I saw them all during a one-month St. Thomas stay, but there is nothing that compares to the wonders of the cenote. They say the Mayans were so taken by cenotes, that they worshiped them, using them for sacrifices to the gods. They find plenty of skeletons on the bottom, and religious artifacts as well. Creepy, but not enough to stop me from jumping in, both feet forward.