Richardthesecond
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Why is it that we humans just can't leave well enough alone? We just have to smooth thing, level things, straighten things, and "improve" things. A case in point is The Pit, what used to be a pretty neat cavern / cave dive between Tulum and Playa del Carmen on the Yucatan.
I dove it the first time about two years ago, and boy did I have a story to tell. After an hour of a very rough, gut wrenching drive through the jungle, we pulled off on a wide spot in the road, geared up and then hiked a little over a quarter mile along a barely discernable path through the jungle. Sweating bullets the whole way. The Pit is a circular cenote, whose walls plunge straight down. We lowered our gear down via an old rope and even older, rusty pulley, and then either jumped the 20+ feet into the water, or very carefully inched our way down The Pit's wall.
Now, as cenote diving goes, The Pit really isn't much to write home about. Most that dive it do so as cavern divers, and it's pretty much straight down 140+ feet and back up. No decorations, but a nice dive. The cave, which starts at 40' or so is unremarkable, other than it does contain the skeleton of a giant sloth, which would be at least 14,000 years old as that's about when the cenote flooded. So, it wasn't so much the diving that was the great adventure, but rather the difficulty of getting there.
So, I was all excited last week when I was again down in Puerto Aventuras (the little community close by) and asked my guide, Carlos if we could dive The Pit. "Oh, you are probably going to be disappointed," he warned. And how right he was. Now, the road to The Pit is nice and smooth, and takes maybe 15 minutes. No need to gear up and walk in, because you can drive right up to The Pit. In fact there were workers clearing brush and it looked like putting up a couple of structures (oh please, not another T-shirt shop). True, the rope and pulley was there, but so is a huge cement platform extending over The Pit. But why lower your gear? Why bother jumping in? when you can take the nice set of stairs down the side!!
You used to have to pay extra to dive The Pit, because of the difficulty getting there. Actually, you still do, but I think the developers are going to find they are their own worst enemy. It's not going to take long for people to figure out that there are much better cenotes to dive -- you drive right past Dos Ojos on the way -- and that The Pit has lost the one thing it had going for it . . . it's inaccessibility.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Richard
I dove it the first time about two years ago, and boy did I have a story to tell. After an hour of a very rough, gut wrenching drive through the jungle, we pulled off on a wide spot in the road, geared up and then hiked a little over a quarter mile along a barely discernable path through the jungle. Sweating bullets the whole way. The Pit is a circular cenote, whose walls plunge straight down. We lowered our gear down via an old rope and even older, rusty pulley, and then either jumped the 20+ feet into the water, or very carefully inched our way down The Pit's wall.
Now, as cenote diving goes, The Pit really isn't much to write home about. Most that dive it do so as cavern divers, and it's pretty much straight down 140+ feet and back up. No decorations, but a nice dive. The cave, which starts at 40' or so is unremarkable, other than it does contain the skeleton of a giant sloth, which would be at least 14,000 years old as that's about when the cenote flooded. So, it wasn't so much the diving that was the great adventure, but rather the difficulty of getting there.
So, I was all excited last week when I was again down in Puerto Aventuras (the little community close by) and asked my guide, Carlos if we could dive The Pit. "Oh, you are probably going to be disappointed," he warned. And how right he was. Now, the road to The Pit is nice and smooth, and takes maybe 15 minutes. No need to gear up and walk in, because you can drive right up to The Pit. In fact there were workers clearing brush and it looked like putting up a couple of structures (oh please, not another T-shirt shop). True, the rope and pulley was there, but so is a huge cement platform extending over The Pit. But why lower your gear? Why bother jumping in? when you can take the nice set of stairs down the side!!
You used to have to pay extra to dive The Pit, because of the difficulty getting there. Actually, you still do, but I think the developers are going to find they are their own worst enemy. It's not going to take long for people to figure out that there are much better cenotes to dive -- you drive right past Dos Ojos on the way -- and that The Pit has lost the one thing it had going for it . . . it's inaccessibility.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Richard