Category — Cristalino

Patrick, Allie and myself made a lunch time trip down to Cristalino.  This was my third trip to the cenote and Allie's first dive as a full cave diver.  Congratulations sweety!  We elected Allie as the team lead with Patrick in tow taking notes.  Our plan for the dive was to tie in to the loop at the southern end of the cenote.  Take the first jump to the left and head towards Cenote Azul.  Our turn conditions were 45 minutes or 1/3'rds.  The cave between Cristalino and Azul is very very beautiful.  There is rarely a straight run and there is plenty of entertainment.  If you do not have your buoyancy absolutely dialed or you are a bigger guy in backmount, you need not apply.  Luckily, Patrick and I were in sidemount and Allie is tiny even in backmount.  Plus she has the skills of a humming bird.  She lead us to the end of the line.  We elected to jump to the line to Ponderosa when we were in sight of the Cenote Azul.  We headed west towards Ponderosa.  Along this section we had to repeatedly stop and fix the line.  It is pretty thrashed in this area.  We came across slack line 3 times.  Once the line was back in good working order, we continued.  We stopped in a very cool air dome that was full of bats.  We chatted for  couple of minutes and turned the dive on time and gas.  The swim back was as beautiful as the swim out.  There was plenty of percolation.

Allie and Patrick are really a joy to dive with.  Both are very capable and super laid back, which makes for excellent buddies.   We did our safety stop, ended the dive and drove Patrick back to work.  Arriving on time and under budget!

Today's dive was excellent.  The only problem I had was that my BC just doesn't want to provide enough buoyancy on the surface.  The way it is, I can not really take stages with me.  I am going to have to make some changes.  I have a jacket style BC over a super cool minimalist harness.  In an effort to  minimize my profile, I have been nipping and tucking the jacket and I think I went too far last night.  During our S drill, I really struggled staying on the surface and I was completely squeezed by the jacket.  I think I am going to need to find a way to get some additional life out of the jacket without it being too loose on me when I am in diving trim.  I see some liberal use of bungee in the near future.  I will keep you informed.

To start with, I need to make a correction. I have made an egregious mistake on the name of the cave system to which Cristalino and Ponderosa belong. It is Sistema Ponderosa not X'Tabay. When I looked at the map I saw X'Tabay in the upper left corner and never looked further. Actually, X'Tabay is the system on the other side of Chickin Ha. Patrick pointed it out to me today when we were in the car. The water flows from X'Tabay to Ponderosa, but there is no way to swim between the two. So now I have cleared the air. With any luck, I will refer to the systems with thier correct names from here on out.

Today, Patrick and I snuck out at lunch time to do a side mount dive at Cristanlino. Patrick hadn't been to Cristalino yet and I had only been there once, so we were both excited about exploring another part of the Ponderosa system. I LOVE going to new places. I love to look for the end of the line. For me is all exploring. I know it won't get me into the Explorer's Club in NY, but it sure makes me happy. Showing up to a cenote with no direction except that there is line somewhere, makes my heart run. I just can't wait to get in search. The moment I find the line, I am overcome with a sense of discovery and accomplishment. I think there is something very noble about going to new sites and learning them from scratch.

Our general plan was to tend north and east starting from the line in the easterly most cenote. Patrick started the day with a little power snorkling (See the photo above.) to locate the lines and make sure there was actually a line for us to tie into. He found two lines. On the map both lines look very short. We chose to take the line to the west and south and then jump onto a longer line. This took less then 10 minutes total. We were not really sure where we were headed. I was team leader and Pratick was the passenger. His job was to accurately document all the jumps and lines we found. We followed the main line to its end. On our way we passed one T, an air dome and some marked jumps. It is very beautiful cave with a lot of up and down. No big depth changes, just a lot of them. There is A LOT of water moving through parts of this cave. Near the air dome we could see a lot of water moving off into a big room with no marked jumps. At about 35 minutes we got to the end of the line. About 15 feet away was another line running perpendicular. We jumped over and made a left following the double arrows. About 50 feet later we were in Cenote Kantun Chi. I know I was surprised to have ended up at the cenote. I thought we were headed more north then we actually did. I was even paying attention to my compass. I had expected us to stay in cave for the entire dive. We explored the cenote for a while and found the other lines that lead into it. Patrick had been here twice previsously using two alternate route from Cenote Ponderosa. At 50 minutes we called the dive; Patrick needed to get back to work.

The swim back to Cristalina was uneventful. When we got back to the cenote, I was doing some drills and stumbled on the second line Patrick had found. I didn't even realize it was there. I was compelled to remount my tank and take a short swim up the line. This line looks way fun. The passage is much smaller then the others here and there is a lot of black sediment. I only went 20-30 feet before I turned. I knew I was supposed to be doing a safety stop and my little adventure was going to put us behind schedule and make us late.

Well, we cleaned up and I drove like a MAD MAN back to Playa. We pulled up in front of Protech at 4PM. Wow... that was close.

I think we have another 5-10 dives at Cristalino before we are satisfied we have that section of the system pretty well in hand.

Cenote Cristalino is an alternative entrance to the same system that Ponderosa belongs. Cristalino is just before the entrance to Ponderosa on highway 309. The parking for the cenote is just off the road. The entrance fee was $40 pesos. I chose Cristalino because I am still not signed up to get into Ponderosa and I wanted to check out the eastern end of the system. The gate keeper at Ponderosa can be an extreme PITA and it is expensive at $100 pesos.

The walk to the Cenote takes about 5 minutes down a nice path. The Cenote is beautiful and was mobbed with locals. The Cenote is broken into a couple of sections by groves of mangroves. I had decided I wanted to tend to the north and west when I entered the system so I made a left at the waters edge and setup. I was the entertainment; there were lots of people intently staring at my gear as I mounted up. I can only imagine the spectacle as I put on my sidemount tanks and purple helmet. Little kids kept asking me where the cave was in Spanish. I gestured under the ledge.

My hopes ran high because I had assumed that the Cristalino area would have been less traveled then the Ponderosa area, and I was expecting it to be in better shape. I had made this assumption because access is a little more challenging and it is a decent distance from Ponderosa. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

I started my search for one of the lines. As I headed southwest along the edge of the collapse, I came upon a sit cloud. I thought, “hmm… weird… where is this silt coming from? There aren’t any other divers here.” I never got my assumption confirmed, but I did find the end of a line. I tied in and made my way. The very first thing I noticed was the damage to the ground. It looked like someone dragged themselves out through the mud. It is really sad the damage we are doing. People are clearly careless or completely unaware that the passage they are in is way too small for them. The line looped around and terminated at Cristalino. On my return, I jumped to the right on the second arrow. Swam to the end of the line, jumped and went right. I made it about 50 minutes out when I turned the dive. It was a rather uneventful dive. When I got back to the loop, I had some gas so I made a short trip out the first jump at the double arrows. The dive is beautiful, once you get past the majority of the damage near the Cenote. There was a decent amount of percolation. The highlight of the dive was the extensive break down. There are lots of big cracks and slivers of rock balancing. There was some bedding plane. I enjoyed the dive and I am planning on going back so I can work my way over to Azul and then up to Ponderosa.

I am happy to report that my Dive Rite MR11 burned for the full 98 minutes of this dive. I am going to burn it down for another 120 minutes or so to check its total burn time now. Maybe it was really just a faulty charger.

A benefit of Cristalino is it is open till 6pm and no one was chasing me out. I do a lot of my diving in the late afternoon and evening. I appreciate the flexibility of being able to surface when I want. And the locals are really cool. When I was walking down to the Cenote with my gear someone offered to carry one of my tanks. He insisted and I obliged. After the dive, I left one of my tanks near the water’s edge, so I could make two trips. When I got to the car and turned around, one of the locals had carried it up to the car with out my asking. It was really surreal and it made me feel really welcome. In almost all cases, Mexicans have proven to be extreme friendly and hospitable.