Last day of cenote diving: Carwash and dreamgate

It’s our last day of Cenotes diving and we will visit Carwash and Dreamgate.

Carwash is a little over an hour drive away. It’s a cave complex with about 4 km of tunnels and caverns.  I would describe carwash as a garden. In casa cenotes yesterday, there were mangrove roots but at the bottom it was sediment and some rocks. In Carwash there is a soft alga that looks like grass and grazing on it are small turtles. The kind we find in ponds. As trees, we have the stems of water lilies, some have already reached the surface blooming, and the other are on their way. It makes for some nice underwater scenery. We also spot an eel, that looked like a small, flat faced moray. 

Half of our dive is in the cavern on the right side and we do a nice circuit. At some points old Mayan pottery shards and bones can be found ( some fossilized and some more recent ).

The water color is green with some hints of yellow, but because there is a lot of vegetation in this one, we have a haze at the surface and we don’t have that much sunlight peeking through. It doesn’t help that it’s been raining since we woke up. Below this layer, the water is crystal clear.

We eat our lunch before driving the 30min separating us from our last dive: Dreamgate.

This one is a real hole in the ground. A smaller opening with a wider cavern below and a staircase to reach it. I find again that beautiful turquoise blue water that I like. It’s highlighted now that the sun is shyly peeking through the clouds.

Here there is a very shallow ponds where you jump in, but the majority of the dive is in the deep caverns that are on each side of it. It’s possibly the closest that we will come to cave diving with our current certification. The cavern is wide but deep, at one end a small escape ladder is set up with a tiny exit to the surface. In between these two exits, it’s a good 3min swim. At our sedate pace, we do that distance in 10min, enjoying beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. It’s incredibly beautiful and very dark. We had two lights and my first one died just as we exited the first cavern. We stayed in the super shallow part of the cenotes to cross to the other side. In this other beautiful site, I spot some shrimps.

This would conclude our 3 days of Cenotes diving. Each one was different, none looked the same. They all offered a unique landscape. I don’t think anyone can truly describe the feeling you experience in these otherworldly places. I am so glad we had the chance to see this. We will be back, there are so many more cenotes to visit.

We have found a comfortable AirBnB and now a great dive center and guide. It’s the recipe for awesome diving holidays. 

Once we are back in Playa Del Carmen, we bid Anna goodbye and walk to our apartment. The rest of the day is spent resting and eating in. The weather has turned sour again and it’s grey and rainy.