Cenotes Recomendations????

[DetectorGuy]

I haven't "dove" in any of the cenotes yet but I did some cliff jumping into one about 20 miles west of Cancun. Not real clear water like the ones near the Gulf. Alot of bat guano with signs warning to shower off after swimming there. another cool cenote system is at Xcaret MX about 4 miles South of Playa Del Carmen. I snorkeled through a 2000' long underground river there. at the end of this underground river there is a bunch of smaller cenotes that you can snorkel through. at the end of the series of cenotes there is a big lagoon where you can swim with the dolphins. The Xcaret area is one of the most beautiful areas that I have ever visited. If I could only "Scuba dive" one cenote in the world it would be the one in Chichen Itza about 150 miles West of Cancun. I went there to see the ruins and I guess they did Mayan sacrifices there. Here is a quote that I found on the net:
"The Cenote Sagrado was a place of pilgrimage for ancient Maya people who, according to ethnohistoric sources, would conduct sacrifices during times of drought. Archaeological investigations support this as thousands of objects have been removed from the bottom of the cenote, including material such as gold, jade, obsidian, shell, wood, cloth, as well as skeletons of children and men. In 1926, the Mexican government charged Edward Thompson with theft, claiming he stole the artifacts from the Cenote Sagrado and smuggled them out of the country. The government seized the Hacienda Chichén. Thompson, who was in the United States at the time, never returned to Yucatán. He wrote about his research and investigations of the Maya culture in a book People of the Serpent published in 1932. He died in New Jersey in 1935. In 1944 the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that Thompson had broken no laws and returned Chichen Itza to his heirs. The Thompsons sold the hacienda to tourism pioneer Fernando Barbachano Peon, and his heirs own the property today.

There have been two later expeditions to recover artifacts from the Cenote Sagrado, in 1961 and 1967. The first was sponsored by the National Geographic, and the second by private interests. Both projects were supervised by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). INAH has conducted an ongoing effort to excavate and restore other monuments in the archaeological zone, including the Ossario, Akab D’zib, and several buildings in Chichén Viejo (Old Chichen)."

Diving here would require extreme bribery and/or stealth tactics...