The warm, dark water is refreshing. Small black fish dart around my legs when I swim in the middle of the pool. I look up to see fifty yards long, string-hung like tree roots in a kind of see through the curtain. Colorful birds dart through the curtain to rise up to their nests to be found. High up, strangely-shaped stalactites. One of them looks like a wasps' nest, papery gray and marked Pock. Light streams from above, view from the moss-covered rock walls. Ferns, green and flowering plants growing out of cracks in the stones.
I swim in a Mexican cenote. On a trip to Cancun, I had the opportunity to test the waters of a cenote to. There are over 3,000 cenotes in the province of Yucatan in Mexico. Divers and visitors have investigated only one tenth of them. Many remain, hidden in the jungle. Cenotes are freshwater sinkholes and underground caves. The soil in the northern part of the Yucatan peninsula rather stony and filter partially permeable, so that by rainwater and cavities are formed. These natural reservoirs are very low, before a layer of rock that prevents the water from filtering that later made. The water in cenotes is turquoise and is usually a pleasant 78 degrees. We swam in the cenote was quite small, but some are thousands of feet in length and can affect other cenotes by underwater passages linked.
The ancient Mayan cenotes thought were sacred because their only source of fresh water. The cenotes were considered the home of Chac the Mayan god of rain. Skulls trapped between rocks resulted in many cenotes have archaeologists believe that human sacrifice were made in the cenotes Chac. I was little afraid, my husband could these people have become victims. He decided to climb the steep stone steps below on one side of the cenote and directly from this precarious situation of the landing down in the water. He survived the crash, steep and enjoyed it but enough to try it, several times. Fortunately, he did not have to suffer the fate of the Maya sacrificial victim, cast into the waters of the cenote and were never seen again.
The cenote were we swam near the ruins of the Maya city of Chichen Itza. The layer of limestone on the surface had collapsed filter allows light and create beautiful rainbows and shadows. We visited in late afternoon, so there was not that about many other swimmers. At one point I had the water of the pool all to myself. Swimming sunlit tree roots I imagine a weird kind of feeling, all the people who had visited the same underground cavern in the last two thousand years.
Pour on some of the spas in the high-end resort in Cancun, they water from a cenote on your body. It is said that the water is scared and will bring peace and healing. At other spas, they take mud and moss gathered from a cenote, and put it on your skin. Apparently you keep looking youthful. These special Cenote treatments cost over $ 100. Luckily I got to the cenote's water for free use. A yoga expert who offers guided, tours of the Yucatan takes its followers to swim in a cenote. She says the experience is a saint. Swimming in a cenote, it claims, can you smarter and give you a longer life. I think, I'll just wait and see whether my experience that's somewhat magical effect on me cenote.
