Harry's Wacky World

Caving in Aerolito Cenote
Cozumel Island, Mexico
December 2009

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In December 2009, my girlfriend Jackey and I headed to Cozumel for our annual scuba diving vacation. We planned to meet some friends and spend a week drift diving in the fast currents around the island.

Cozumel Island is just off the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.

I ran across the web site of German Yañez of Yucatech Expeditions. He is the only cave diving instructor/guide on Cozumel Island. I did some research into his background and discovered that he was a well-known and respected cave diving instructor. So I give him a call and arranged for three days of cave diving.

German Yañez gearing up at Aerolito Cenote.

German took me to Aerolito Cenote, not far from the southern cruise ship piers. The mosquitos were vicious. Aerolito Cenote contains salt water, and I noticed barracuda swimming around when we arrived there. The siphon side of the cenote has passageway that connects with the ocean. The spring side passageway drops down through the halocline into fresh water. Most of the passageways are simple, undecorated phreatic passageways. But the lower sections of the cave contain calcium carbonate speleothems.

Aerolito Cave contains the most profuse and diverse sea life that I have ever seen in a cave. Besides the barracuda in the cenote, the cave contains huge populations of brittle stars and sponges that an endemic only to Aerolito Cave.

During our first two cave dives, I ran the primary and jump reels. We started with twin, banded aluminum 80 cylinders filled with air to 3,000 p.s.i. Since there were only two of us, we planned to use 900 p.s.i. to explore the cave and 900 p.s.i. to exit the cave. This left us with a nice reserve of 1,200 p.s.i.

We ran the main gold line for about 500 feet through a large, undecorated phreatic passageway. This main passageway was about 40 feet wide, 40 feet high and ran through the halocline at a depth of about 25 to 35 feet. I jumped to a secondary passageway that was a large vertical rift about 25 feet across. After swimming another 200 to 300 feet, I jumped again to a teritiary passageway.

From there, we descended to a depth of 60 feet, below the halocline and into fresh water. This was the lower level of the cave. We entered a rather small passageway that was nicely decorated with speleothems. I called the dive a bit early a 2,200 p.s.i. to give us a bit more of a reserve on exit.