While updating some of our diving tours in Baja California I found out that from the beginning of 2007 (I know, it is a bit of a late discovery…) the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas designed the ‘Conservation Passport’, which is released upon payment of a mandatory fee of USD 25, which allows you to visit Mexico’s Protected Areas as many times as you wish for an entire year. (2008 fee will be USD 35).

The money will be used for the continued protection of the shorelines, inlets, beaches and coves.
One of our tour providers includes the passport it in their tour fee, well done!

People under 6 or over 60 years of age are exempt from this fee. However, we invite everyone to make the voluntary contribution of USD 25 to the conservation of Mexico’s Natural Protected Areas.

I am by no means an accomplished diver, but I have done my PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water certifications in Thailand in 2004, and enjoyed some great diving in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in 2005. Possibly my two favourite dives over that time were night dives as they seemed to add an extra air of excitement and mystery.

Today however, I have found a different type of diving that I don’t think any of my ocean dives can parallel. Now, I haven’t been diving for over a year, so the buzz that was felt at the time has well and truly gone, but the Cenote Diving I did today in Tulum, Mexico was simply magical.

Cenotes are an underground river system containing fresh water (and saline deeper down, read on for more) that has been filtered threw limestone and so provides amazing visibility well beyond that found in the ocean. The formations, formed over millions of years, provide the possibility of cavern and cave diving that gives you a feeling of being in outer space or on another world with only the air bubbles being there to remind you that you are in water. Magic or no magic, breathing is a must.

As cave diving can only be done by experts, I stuck with the cavern diving, the main difference being that cavern diving has the entrance to the Cenote relatively close by whereas cave diving can mean the entrance/exit being much farther away and so more dangerous should anything go wrong. Overall I did two dives, one at the Grand Cenote and the other at La Calavera (The Skull), or more ominously named, The Temple of Doom!

The Grand Cenote; well, this was described to me as like being in an underwater cathedral, and my instructor wasn’t lying. The beautiful white limestone walls along with the formations gives the feeling of flooding a duomo in Italy, jumping in through the dome and having a good swim about. It is quite the opposite to what you may think would be a claustrophobic experience.

There are a couple of more technical parts however where you do have the cavern walls all round you with little space to get through so does require good buoyancy control to not hit your tank on the formations. The dive went down to 10 meters at it’s deepest point and lasted 38 minutes.

The Temple of Doom; the initial jump in to the water, which is from 3/4 meters, with the full scuba gear on may be a little daunting, but it’s great fun. Getting out is a little harder. This Cenote is much darker and more mysterious than the Grand Cenote and really makes you feel like an explorer.

The guys in the dive shop also refer to this place as LSD due to the halocline or mixing zone, which is the layer where the fresh and saline waters meet which makes your vision go totally blurred. It is a very weird experience! The dive went down to 19 meters at its deepest point and lasted 33 minutes.

With both dives, the visibility is truly astounding. Throughout the dives your interest switches from what is close by, the formations, stalagmites and stalactites back to the glow of the entrance to the Cenote, which when viewed from a distance in the darker areas of the cavern provides an amazing contrast and you just can’t help to stop and stare.

It is also quite amusing to see the snorklers, fools don’t know what they are missing, swimming around on the surface. Although you do feel like a bit of a pervert hiding under the water watching girls in bikinis swimming around. Not that I was looking, of course.

On a more serious note, I do have concerns with Cenote diving. They are nothing to do with fear for myself or anyone diving there, more concerns for the formations that if destroyed have no way to be regenerated. There are points in either dive where you could easily damage the formations and having been diving with others who wave their arms around like they are trying to hail a taxi I would be quite concerned as to the damage they could cause to these wonderful places.

I feel more should be done to control who dives here, with recent dives being a must and preferably Advanced Open Water certified. Unfortunately, the dives are open to anyone who has done their Open Water, I wasn’t even asked to prove I was certified, and no one seems to care when you did your last dive.

Despite my concerns, this was a fantastic experience and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who loves to dive and would like to try something different. As with a reef, just be careful and respect your surroundings. And remember, don’t put on any sun block or mosquito repellent before getting in to the water! Do that when you get out, you’ll need it at La Calavera, the mosquitoes are rampant! Happy diving.

Having researched a bit further, we have put together an Ocean and Cenote diving package with a diving centre in Tulum that seems to be concerned about environmental conservation and safety… try it yourself!

If you have been around the Mayan Riviera you can not have missed the incredible amount of posters and leaflets advertising “Swim with the dolphins programs”. They are scattered around at every hotel reception, tourist information boot, café, bar and internet point. Not to mention the huge posters and boards promoting ‘eco-parks’ which display smiling ladies riding dolphins or cute kids patting their noses.

Luckily, I found a hotel displaying a leaflet by the Animal Welfare Institute titled “Dolphins are dying to amuse you – The truth about dolphin swim-with programs”. I wish I had seen it around more often.

I will summarize a few interesting points:

- Survivors of a brutal capture: Most performing dolphins are wild-caught, chased to exhaustion by power boats. They are ensnared in nets and hauled onto a capture vessel, or herded into shallow sea cages. A few die and the survivors endure hot sun and dehydration to their final destination: a void existence in a commercial facility.

- Taken from their families: Dolphins live in complex societies with their own cultures and dialects, maintaining close family ties. Individuals are violently removed with no hope of ever being reunited with their families. Young mothers, vital members of the community, are the most sought after.

- Forced to endure amputated lives: Captivity denies dolphins the ability to engage in species specific behaviours, such as swimming at 40 miles an hour and socializing. The stress of captivity and the lack of places to hide often results in stomach ulcers.

- Bored and aggressive: dolphins are naturally energetic, playful and inquisitive. But when tasked with entertaining tourists with no way to escape they often become bored and aggressive toward humans.

- An unnatural existence: wild dolphins do not ‘walk on water’, or jump through hoops or nod their heads on cue. These are forced artificial behaviours drilled by rote and food manipulation. The staple diet of captive dolphins is dead fish, a sad reality outside the wild.

If you love dolphins, please think twice before contributing to their capture and captivity.
You might assume dolphins’ perpetual smiles show contentment, but that is just how their faces are shaped; dead dolphins still ‘smile’.

Don’t swim with captive dolphins, let them stay wild.

Last week I have received the first After-Dean photos from some of the people we work with in Costa Maya, the southern part of Quintana Roo.
These are a few shots of Bacalar, near the beautiful lagoon.

Although the village of Mahahual has been hit pretty badly, Carolien - owner of Hotel Maya Luna - said they consider themselves lucky when compared to most people living in other villages just north of Mahahual, like El Placer, Limones, Bacalar, where entire families (mostly within poor indigenous communities) have lost everything.

These are a few images of Maya Luna after Dean
Carolien & Jan are already working to clean up the place and rebuild the thatched roofs.
I wish them the best of luck to get back to business asap.

Also 30% of the beachfront houses and resorts in Tulum suffered some damage. Hemingway lost 3 beachfront palapas and their restaurant. They will reopen the surviving palapas in about 10 days and plan to complete the restoration of the restaurant in about 45 days.

Most people who emailed me from Costa Maya shared the same concern about the government support; Dean has not been as strong as Wilma, but will the reaction and reconstruction be as quick when the affected areas are not ‘big tourism money machines’ like Cancun and Cozumel?

The Oslo Statement on Ecotourism will be published as one of the main outcomes of the Global Ecotourism Conference 2007, which took place 2 weeks ago.
The conference organizers have crafted, based on the main themes and topics of the conference workshops, the draft statement.
Download the PDF draft statement