In January 2023, my wife and I went on our baby moon (vacation while pregnant) to a resort we are familiar with and love, Bahia Principe Akumal Luxury Resort. We love the Akumal area of Mexico and didn’t want to miss out on some of the excursions with our booking company, Air Canada, put on.
If you want to know more about Bahia Principe Akumal Luxury Resort, Click Here.
We didn’t want to have a long day of excursions; some executions were great, yet they made for a very long day. One of those excursions is visiting the ecological site Chichen Itza. These Mayan ruins are incredible, and I think everyone who has a chance to visit should, but it is a 2-hour drive from the Akumal area. On that drive, the bus will stop several times, leading to the drive being over 4 hours, causing the whole day to be 12-14 hours before you return to the resort. I have visited Chi Cha Nitza twice and recommend it, but that wasn’t the experience we were looking for this time.
That is why we thought this might work when we had the opportunity for a half-day excursion that would allow us to visit the Archeological City Tulum, swim with the sea turtles, and visit an Xtune Cenote. We book the executions through the Air Canada representative at the resort. They let us know when and where to meet the tour guides at the front lobby. The whole experience had us leaving the resort around 8 am, and we were back before 4 pm. We had a great tour guide, Yule.
Yule is a great tour guide, and I recommend him and will use him in the future as he is licenced to arrange private tours catering specifically to what you would like to experience.
Getting to the Cenote was about a 20-minute drive from the resort. Upon arrival, there are several small buildings with a gift shop and a changing area where you can put on your bathing suits and a life jacket.
Once you have our safety equipment on ( life jacket and water shoes), we were taken to the mouth of the cave, and we were given a safety talk about what to expect in the cave, when we would go in the water and for how long we were shown a small map that shows us the route we are taking through the cave.
At the cave entrance, there were several broken pieces of pottery. Yule explained that during the colonization of Mexico, people escaped evangelization by hiding and living in these caves at different times. This is why many of the caves are riddled with artifacts from Mexican history.
Yule had a real passion for nature and went into depth explaining how the cave ecosystem works, with bats bringing in nutrients through guano ( bat poop) and dropping their prey, allowing for several animals to live in the cave. We saw many bats, a wipe scorpion and some eyeless white fish.
Throughout the cave, you will see massive beautiful formations Yule explained how they are formed, and we could also see fantastic tree roots bursting through the cave ceiling.
Most cenotes are formed by a hollow cavity opening up underground by water as the hole gets bigger, it will eventually collapse in on itself, exposing itself to the surface.
I was apprehensive about visiting a cenote simply because when I normally think of Cenotes, I think of diving them, not exploring the dry portions. Still, I was very pleasantly surprised at how beautiful it was, all the animals and the ecosystem inside. It wasn’t a very long visit, maybe 45 minutes in total, but well worth it, I would highly recommend it to anyone on the fence about visiting a Cenote.
Once again, I would recommend our guide, Yule, not just for a cenote tour but in general. He can organize private trips at your leisure. A small group with us on the cenote tour hired Yule to visit 5th Avenue in Playa Del Camren the next day. They had only good things to say. They said the trip was cheaper than if booked through the hotel, they were directed to a better store that wouldn’t ripe them off, and because Yule stayed with them, he could keep them safe if they weren’t familiar with the area.
If you would like to connect with Yule before your trip to Mexico, feel free to contact him via Instagram Click Here.