Cenote Calavera

Cenote Calavera sits just outside Tulum Pueblo on the road toward Cobá, close enough to town that it can be reached in a few minutes by car or around ten by bicycle. Calavera means "skull" in Spanish, and the name comes from the openings in the limestone roof — one large hole flanked by two smaller ones, which together look like a skull's eye sockets from above. Divers and guides also know it by its English nickname, the Temple of Doom. It is a small cenote by Tulum standards, nothing like the sprawling cave systems at Dos Ojos or the wide, well-equipped Gran Cenote further along the same road. From the surface you see little more than the rock openings and the water below. A wooden ladder drops through the main hole to water level, though most visitors instead jump in through one of the openings, which for many people is the whole appeal. Under the surface, the cenote opens into a dark, flooded chamber considerably larger than the entrance suggests, and it forms part of the region's wider underwater cave system. It is a well-known cavern dive, and one of its notable features is a halocline — the visible layer where fresh water sits above denser salt water and the two blur together. Diving here is for certified divers accompanied by a qualified cavern guide. For swimmers and snorkelers the experience is simpler: the jump, a swim inside the chamber, and the light falling through the holes overhead. Because the cenote is small, it fills up quickly, and mornings are generally the calmer time to visit. The site charges an entrance fee and has only basic facilities. As at cenotes across the area, visitors are asked to shower first and to avoid sunscreen and insect repellent before entering the water, which flows through the same aquifer that supplies the region. Calavera is often combined with Gran Cenote in a single outing, since both lie on the Tulum–Cobá road.