Tulum sumer 2011

[andrea]

Hello everbody,

We are now in Tulum and what can I say? - Live is great.
Today we dived in Chan Hol? We found a new arrow: Santi 2011 sr ...... So, this means that we have to go back and find out more about this arrow and this line.

Tomorrow we will dive in Nohoch with 2 stages and than its time to switch to sidemount.
The blue abys and pets cemetary are closed. But they are building a streat and they use the sand from the cavern in pets cemetary!

The restaurant La Nave is moved to the other side of the streat. The food is and was still great.
The breakfast restaurant Azafran has now a Biergarten ..... beer and a Hax'n mit Sauerkraut .....
Protec place is super .... later, during this holiday, we want to dive with Kim in Hell bells.
But now we want to go to the beach ......
And than we have to solve a difficult question: where do we have dinner ????

The sun is shining.
greating from Tulum
Tjibbe and Andrea

[LCF]

So Pet Cemetery is still closed? Sad.

Try a little restaurant on one of the west side streets at the north end of town -- it's call Elemental. Food is superb!

[chuuk]

So Pet Cemetery is still closed? Sad.

I think it is to be closed for 3 months as part of his fine. That is what I understood when I was in Tulum in July

[Dominic]

Nohoch, my favorite place on earth!!!

I haven't heard, Why did they close Pet Cemetery?

[andrea]

Today we did Nohoch mainline upstream, always a nice dive and today our dive was well over 2 1/2 hours. We passed a cenote after 50 minutes on our left hand on our way in, there is an arrow with the tag TAE on the line but we don't know the name of the cenote. Later on we had a look at the map of Nohoch to see if we can find out the name of the cenote, till know we don't have any idea so perhaps someone on cavedivernet can put us in the right direction. A little bit further on the line the arrows changed direction and the old Madden exploration styrofoam cups appeared. After 85 minutes in we had enough and turned around, also we would like to know where this line is going, loooking at the map didn't clear up things, so if anybody knows please tell.
All in all a very nice dive again, it's been a long day and right know we're thinking of food.

Greetings from sunny Tulum Andrea and Tjibbe

PS iff the moderator thinks this item is better suitable for dive reports, please do.

[LCF]

I think, if there were a section for "torturing other divers who are NOT in Mexico", this thread should go there . . .

[BB1]

I 2nd that!!!

I'm stuck here in Australia and 4 buddies are in Tulum right now as well.

Their dive reports are killing me.................

Keep beating myself up and saying I should have gone on this trip.



I think, if there were a section for "torturing other divers who are NOT in Mexico", this thread should go there . . .

[FW]

I think, if there were a section for "torturing other divers who are NOT in Mexico", this thread should go there . . .
Yes, here is fine. Most of the reports in the Dive Reports section are Florida, anyway. The people that come here are interested in other places besides Florida :-)

[phillip1]

I am in Mexico...lol

[Slüdge]

Most of the reports in the Dive Reports section are Florida, anyway.

I thought all cave diving took place in Florida.:smt102

[andrea]

@BB1

Any change your buddies were diving in Grand Cenote for a set up dive from Calimba to Grand Cenote?
Because on our way in we met 4divers coming out , and later on saw their jumpspool to the paso de lagarto and off course 4 stages on the line. also a marker on the line with marking kuck.

groetjes Tjibbe and Andrea

[Aktun]

Hello everbody,



we want to dive with Kim in Hell bells.


The sun is shining.
greating from Tulum
Tjibbe and Andrea
went to Zapote last sunday, the sulfide layer is dense, go below it if want to see something, 110-120 feet.

[BB1]

Not them as far as I know.

They're staying with Bil at Speleotech and did Angelita yesterday.

Not sure they'd all be using stages either.

I know they've already done Carwash, Ponderosa and Taj Mahal.

Sorry for the external link FW but Jez's blog of their trip is HERE (http://ozdiving.blogspot.com/)


@BB1

Any change your buddies were diving in Grand Cenote for a set up dive from Calimba to Grand Cenote?
Because on our way in we met 4divers coming out , and later on saw their jumpspool to the paso de lagarto and off course 4 stages on the line. also a marker on the line with marking kuck.

groetjes Tjibbe and Andrea

[andrea]

Once again another hard day working in Tulum. Our day started very earlywith a 45 minutes walk on the beach, after our daily exercise we thought we deserved a nice breakfast and decided to have a breakfast at our friends place 'Azafran'. But before we got there we dropped over at Kim at his new place, Protec Tulum, and discussed our diveplan for Hells Bells. Off course talking about diving takes up a lot off time and by the time we left we were almost starving. After handing out our presents we finally got our excellent hangover breakfast around eleven. around midday we left to go diving. We had to set up our sidemount kit so it was already pretty late when we left the diveshop. Unfortunatelyon our way to the divesite we met some more friends from Aquatic Tulum and ended up talking even more about diving and divegear. So around three we were finally of to casa cenote to tune our sidemount rigs. We ended up in some pen water classes., very funny to watch but keep n mind to we all started like this.
After some tweaking we're pleased with our gear and so tomorrow our first sidemount cave dive, most likely Gran Cenote.
So you see it's been a hard day working and I think we deserve some very nice 'arranchera'.

Greetings from Tulum Andrea and Tjibbe

[phillip1]

Arachera is best at el asadero down the street from Azafran

[andrea]

Arachera is best at el asadero down the street from Azafran

Yes, we know! It's the only place in Tulum were we eat Arachera.

Afterwards we had a couple of nice beers (imported German beers) at Azafran's biergarten. Not ideal for diving, but it make's you sleep very well.

[andrea]

The last couple of days we've been diving sidemount. We started at Grand Cenote and did the cuzanha circuit, always a nice classic, after this dive we're convinced that sidemount is the way to go.
The next day we went to tajma-hal but before we got there dropped by at zero grafity. Over there we met Fred and he assured us that getting the trimix over there was no problem, just drop your bottles the day before you need them tell what mix and they will be ready the next day, and even the prices of the trimix are decent.
So after our stop it's was time to go diving, we decided to do the waterfall line. We did have a go at this one a couple of years ago but got sidetracked by an interesting jump. So this this year it was time to get this one off our list and we went for it.
On our way in we soon noticed that the lines were changed, the hidden jump to the chinese garden was different. The line always used to run a bit bit to the leftside and had an almost 90 degrees bend where your suppose to jump. Also later on there used to be a T on the line but now the mainline goes straight to the waterfall. We got there and it looked ok/nice but we've seen places were it looks just as nice or even better. We finished the dive and had some nice discussion over the lines with some other cavers.
Next day Dos Pisos was on our list, this really is one of my favourite caves. We went over there and took a stage with us to make sure we reached the second cenote. On our way in we noticed lots of jumps but there also were severall arrows where there were no jumps, a bit strange. After about 45 minutes the arrows changed and soon we past an airdome. Later on we were a bit surprised when we encountered a T, according to what we were told this shouldn't be there. We marked the T and went in the direction of the arrows, not much later we reached the end of the line and saw the cenote. Just before the line ended we saw some jumps but we didn't wanna go there because they seamed to go deep. We turned and after a nice relaxing swim back we finished our dive.
So once again we can take one of our list of dives we have to make.
Our list is getting shorter but last night picked up some intersting prospects.
Yesterday evening we were at speleotech (Bill Philips place) where Steve Bogaerts was giving a presentation on his new Razor 2 system. The presentation was nice and the system seems to be very well thought of, I've seen it already on his website and did find some things unusual but after yesterday evening everything seems to fall in place. So I'm actually seriously thinking about replacing our razor 1 for the razor 2.
Outside it's hot and it's about time for us to go the gym to do a bit of exercise so that we feel not to bad when were enjoying our diner and drinks at la Nave.

Greetings from a sunny Tulum
Tjibbe and Andrea

[andrea]

Today we decided to go our favourite underwaterhole, Chan hol.
We went over there but before we changed had a look at the cenote and saw something in the water that didn't belong there.
In the entrance hole there was a dead dog floating, this was enough for us to change our minds about diving here, bacteries etc.
We informed the housekeeper and he got the dead dog out of the water. So the next days we will pass on Chan Hol.
Off course know we had to think of another cenote, a couple past our review but since both of us have some stomach problems a proper bano was numero 1.
So we ended up in Zacil-Ha otherwise known as Luke's hope. We geared up and decided to go to Dreamland, we tried this before but because of ear problems, it's a bit of a up and down dive and not really a nice profile, we never were in dreamland.
This time we did and after the dive we discussed why it's called dreamland. For us, perhaps we're spoiled?, it's wasn't anything special. The best thing was the way heading there, through the beautifull room of tears and all the narrow passages.
Next time we'll try either T-left or T-right maybe that's a more beatifull way.

After the dive we ended up in El Camello for some lunch, probably, no sorry, definitely the best fish in Tulum. And after some diving and eating it's now time for a bit of relaxing.

Greetings from a sunny Tulum
Tjibbe and Andrea

[andrea]

Yesterday we didn't go diving, we had an appointment with HP, Bogaerts partner in gosidemount.com.
So we went to Puerto Aventuras, we were there at half past ten in the morning and left around four.
We went there to get our new Razor2 systems, for the most time HP was busy fitting the systems to our
specific bodies. I can tell you that getting the system fitted perfectly takes a bit of time. Of course there was a lot of talking of diving and how they came to this new system. We saw some of their prototypes and we could see that they spent a lot of time engineering and testing the system. Later on we also made an appointment with HP to go diving in Hells Bells and another sinkhole that according to HP is even better Hells Bells, and he should know since he is the guy who always films Steve Bogaerts. So we left with 2 Razor 2 systems, a dive planned to some nice cenotes and we did score some baby jumpreels and the obligatory Go Sidemount T-Shirts.
We would like to thank HP for his time and hospitality, did I already mention the beers?
So today with two new Razors in our hands it was time to test them.
We decided to go to Dreamgate and do the upstream section, for those who don't know the cave it's got probably the best cavernline, although calling it a cavernline is stretching the rules mexican style, and the cave certainly ain't bad.
We ended up doing T after T after T and finally reached end of line, marked Stanton 2005.
Since we were well within our thirds we ended up making a jump to a line from Alex 2009. After ten minutes on this line we decided to turn. After two hours we surfaced and were both very happy with our Razors. We still need to adjust some of our stuff, meaning out of the pockets and in to the bag behind us. I think we still need some more dives to get the full benefits of the systems but things look very promising, the system just feels like a tailormade suit, big thumps up from us.
Finally we had to drive back to the main road, it took a bit of time but our Atos did it without any complaining, I think we almost made it with an average speed of two mph.. So between the lines to can read that the road to Dreamgate is awfull, at least for our car.

Greetings from an almost dark but warm Tulum,
Tjibbe and Andrea

[LCF]

The line to the right at the Dreamland jump terminates about 75 feet later. The line to the left gets very small -- I can't remember how far we went (backmount) but I turned back when I couldn't figure out how to get through between two closely spaced formations.

Sounds like the road to Dreamgate is like the one to Pet Cemetery! The best trip we ever had was the one where I was told they didn't have the car I had reserved, so I would have to cope with having a Dodge Dakota for a week :)

[Nick Ambrose]

Later on we had a look at the map of Nohoch to see if we can find out the name of the cenote, till know we don't have any idea so perhaps someone on cavedivernet can put us in the right direction. A little bit further on the line the arrows changed direction and the old Madden exploration styrofoam cups appeared. After 85 minutes in we had enough and turned around, also we would like to know where this line is going,

The Cenote is likely "Dinner Hole" --- the map is hard to make much sense of honestly.

The line will eventually go up toward the "X-Line" I think. If you jump off to the left up there somewhere you can make it to the Blue Abyss but its about 11,000 feet and so a scooter is probably advisable :)

I am not sure if the mainline turns directly into the X-line, or if you have to jump.
The Diaz line/X-lines will both take you to the abyss...

[andrea]

Hello everybody, here an update of our dives from the last days.
Off course we tried out our new razors in Chan Hol, we decided to do the first and second jump on the right side of the circuit. After this dive we decided that the mainline in Chan Hol is the least attractive part of the cave. I think we're spoilt because most people really enjoy the mainline over there, but after getting the new QRSS map at Bill Philips place we realized that where this map ends our spectacular dives begin. So Chan Hol really is our nr.1 cave although???
I also can tell you that you when you're in the water you can take of your razor very fast if you need to go to the banjo, personal experience.
Next day we got some info from on of our friends and went to winter/wonderland. This name was also a bit of mental support for our divebuddies in holland who went on a divetrip to Willingen in Germany, Willingen is an old mine where you dive in water of 4/8 degrees Celcius. So mentally we were there only the temperature of our winter/wonderland was a bit better.
What can I tell you about this dive, hmmmm once you know where you have to make the jump it's easy to find. The cave is a really nice one in the middle of the halocline. After about ten minutes there is a restriction and we made an attempt to pass it, first attempt failed and got back out again, after carefully looking at the restriction I did another attempt and got a bit further but still didn't make it, at the same time Tjibbe made a different approach and got through. But we decided to call the dive and got out, above water we discussed our different attempts to pass the restriction and decided that in the next week we'll have another go at this one.

Two small Mexicans blocking our car.
For this year on our list of dive to make White River was very high on our list. People who've been there know that the road over there is not good, to say the least. We managed to borrow a pick-up from on of our friends since I don't think our Atos would have survived this trip. We got a lot of info for this dive and all of our friends told us we had to enter at cenote Bonita. So that's what we decided to do, the pick-up brought us there comfortably. After entering the property we asked someone for cenote bonita, but he kept on talking about cenote fenomeno and concha both of them he showed us. But since we wanted to go to bonita a second mexican appeared and finally told us that bonita was further on this road so we stepped in our car and planned to continue. However the mexicans didn't move and with our limited spanish we managed to understand that they were busy with a building project and we couldn't go to bonita. After some "nice" dutch words we decided to enter at fenomeno. We had a look in the cenote and found enough lines, after picking one we went in. Fenomeno is a typical Nohoch dive, big and with a lot of beautiful formations. After about fortyfive minutes we passed a big mayan pot a few minutes later we passed a cenote, which I didn't even notice, but Tjibbe signalled and when I turned there was a big cenote. Up till know we don't have any idea what the name of the cenote is. On our way back we passed a hole in the floor of the cenote and I remembered something what on of our friend told me and decided to have a look over there. After placing the spool I went in and indeed there where bones, big hipbones and vertebrae so Tjibbe also had a look. We finished our dive and didn't have the energy to do a second one.
Next day we had a rest, not completely because we had to go Zero Grafity to pick up our doubles with trimix and get the rest of our stuff ready for the next day.

Next day we were up early and drove to Puerta Aventuras where we met with HP from Go Sidemount, he was our guide for the day.
After getting our stuff in his car we drove to Puerto Morelos and over there went in the jungle to go to cenote Zapote also known as Hells Bells. We got there and made our dive plan, HP deepest diver and the two of us above him.
He told us that Zapote is a sink hole and almost all the time you can see your way out. So we got in the water relaxed and after about ten minutes decided to descend, around 25 meter the bells appeared and although I've seen the film it was so amazing that I almost stopped breathing. We dropped down even further and smelled the "rotten eggs", luckily enough the layer was deep enough so that we had a good look at the bells. They are amazing and you wonder how they emerged over there, If there is something/someone in the world who created this world he certainly must have spend a bit of time in cenote Zapote. After the dive Tjibbe and I were speechless for a moment and fellt as if we just seen one of the wonders of the world.
For our second dive HP had a special treat for us, according to him even better than Zapote and he should know since he is the guy who shot the video of Steve Bogaerts in hells bells.
So for our second dive we drove to another "sinkhole", at first when we got there we didn't see anything but HP showed us a hole with some nice stairs. We got down and he talked us through the dive, he mentioned that we're not supposed to turn on our lights above water since the cave was loaded with bats, he was going in first and at four meters he would turn on his light so that we had a visual point where to go. We went up, geared up and went in ready for our dive. This sinkhole is more than 80 meters deep, we didn't test this. Once we got down and turned on our lights we were amazed, if you don't believe in a higher being the things you see here make you rethink the presence of a higher being it fellt as if we were in a cathedral. This cave/sinkhole has so many different structures in a single cave, it has bells, curtains, closed flowers. A big part is covered with a structure that looks like womanbreast without nipples a bit further the structure looks like colliflower off course there are stalactites. It's like all the formations you've seen in different caves all gathered in one. We finished the dive and were very quiet, just rethinking this dive.
As I already mentioned Chan Hol used to be our favorite but after this dive lost it's nr.1 place.

We really like to thank HP for showing us this and sorry that we forced you to dive backmount, next time we'll dive it sidemount.

Today we have a rest again and are rediving yesterday, still amazed

Greeting from a warm and rainy Tulum
Tjibbe and Andrea

[limeyx]

We had a look in the cenote and found enough lines, after picking one we went in. Fenomeno is a typical Nohoch dive, big and with a lot of beautiful formations. After about fortyfive minutes we passed a big mayan pot a few minutes later we passed a cenote, which I didn't even notice, but Tjibbe signalled and when I turned there was a big cenote. Up till know we don't have any idea what the name of the cenote is.
Next day we were up early and drove to


The cenote you passed (on the right after the pot) is "White River" cenote, and you can enter there, probably easier than entering at Fenomeno. A very nice staircase and decent road, but no tables last time I went there (although for sidemount I guess tables are less of a concern)

[Aktun]

After about fortyfive minutes we passed a big mayan pot a few minutes later we passed a cenote, which I didn't even notice, but Tjibbe signalled and when I turned there was a big cenote. Up till know we don't have any idea what the name of the cenote is.
Tjibbe and Andrea
you passed cenote Vasija, white river is 10 minutes further


. This sinkhole is more than 80 meters deep, we didn't test this. rethinking this dive.


Tjibbe and Andrea
there are not a 80 meters sink hole there, zapote is the deepest, with 50+ meters, the other two goes to 40+, if doing a second dive to 20- 25 mts following the walls, they look "bottomless", but they are not., the debris cone is at 25 mts, but you can not see it from the walls.

[break4]

you passed cenote Vasija, white river is 10 minutes further

there are not a 80 meters sink hole there, zapote is the deepest, with 50+ meters, the other two goes to 40+, if doing a second dive to 20- 25 mts following the walls, they look "bottomless", but they are not., the debris cone is at 25 mts, but you can not see it from the walls.

Probably then I and some other divers have to bring their computers to service. There is even a sinkhole, that is around 150 meters deep, but I don't have to tell everything in the forums :)

[Aktun]

Probably then I and some other divers have to bring their computers to service. There is even a sinkhole, that is around 150 meters deep, but I don't have to tell everything in the forums :)

I am talking about zapote, kin ha and holbox, which one goes to 80 mts, and which one goes to 150 mts? want to know just to be better informed
the only one i am aware goes to 150 m. is sabak ha, at yucatan, interestig to know exists a deep sink hole near PM

[break4]

I am talking about zapote, kin ha and holbox, which one goes to 80 mts, and which one goes to 150 mts? want to know just to be better informed
the only one i am aware goes to 150 m. is sabak ha, at yucatan, interestig to know exists a deep sink hole near PM

"Aktun", as said I'm not going to argue here on a forum and initiate another gold rush. Zapote has a max depth of 64 Meters and one of the other two is around 80 at some part of it.

[andrea]

Short summary of our diving, not in any particular order since I don't exactly remember when we did what, yes I know I should log them and I always intend to do so. But since this is Mexico intentions always seem to disappear.

We did make some more dives in Chan Hol and it still seems like the more answers we get even more questions are raised. So next year Chan Hol is definitely back on top of our list. Also I would like to thank Kim Davidson for his directional pointers so that we saw a very nice almost complete skeleton of what seems to be some kind of alligator. Once again we noticed during this dive the many different faces of Chan Hol.
Last time we dove cenote Fenomeno in the White River section because we couldn't get to cenote Bonita, thanks to our friends who new the owner we were able to dive in cenote Bonita. We went over there with 10 people for a nice sunday dive/relax/lunch day.
We were diving with to of our friends and went upstream, since it's been raining a lot we had a bit of current we had to deal with.
Plan was mainline penetration 50 minutes but due to the current and air consumption we turned after 45 minutes and were much faster coming out. The cave over there is huge and it looks much like Nohoch Nachich. Very nice but I did notice a lot of collapses probably something to do with the use of heavy machinery. We also heard that due to the heavy machines who were busy making a new entry a part of the Pit wall collapsed to that the bones are now covered by rocks.
We also had a go at Sac BeHa, before we got there we had the idea it was a small cave. I don't know how we got the idea but the cave proved us wrong. We tried a lot of different jumps and lines and also went to another cenote. We ended the dive and this one is also on our list for next year, the only negative about this cave is the acces and the long walk with the tanks.
An old cave system is open again or not. Vaca Ha has been closed for at least 4 years or perhaps even longer, but some of our friends told us they were diving again over there. We asked them where to pay but nobody seemed to know, we asked them is it open and the answer was there is no gate anymore so just go over there and go diving, if there is someone ask permission and pay if not!!!!!
We went over there had a bit of trouble finding the line and the first minutes didn't see anything due to the tannic. A bit later the cave opened up and did go to 60/70 feet. After about 20 minutes we got to a very nice section were the halocline looks stunning, better than the waterfallline in Tahma Ha. All in all a excititng dive but next time we'll try to get permission before we go over there.

Im sure there are some dives I forgot to tell you, but these were the dives that made a permanent impression.
We still have two more days of diving ahead so maybe we still make some nice dives.

Also PepeNero in Tulum did cost us a day of diving due to their excellent Maracuja Mojitos, well worth it.

Greeting from Tulum,
Tjibbe and Andrea
G