Mexico Day 3
Day 3 Yax Muul and Dos Ojos
Fred asked whether I had been to Yax Muul, I replied that I thought I had but when we arrived at the site it was new to me – I would certainly have remembered the walk and the stairs had I done them before!
Yax Muul is a very small cenote – not much more room around the small, very steep wooden ladder required to access it. The mainline, which ends up eventually in NoHoch, runs straight through it from east to west.
We headed off upstream first. The passage is very shallow and for quite a length at the start has air space above the water – which means that when the depth is less than 1 metre your fins start to break the surface if you don’t adjust. The passage winds through very decorated caves with huge rim stones – the mineral deposits left at the edge of wet areas before the caves flooded. The line was marked here and there with Styrofoam cups – not that great an idea where they had broken free from their ties and taken the line to the roof of the cave.
The shallow nature of this cave meant that the dive was long – but given that we had to swim back against some flow we had adjusted gas plans accordingly and allowed only 30 bar for the dive. We returned to our reel, recalculated gas whilst still underwater and headed off again.
Downstream the cave was much dirtier, with deposits and branches. Fred lead us slowly through a couple of small sections of passage until we reached a room beyond which only side mount divers can access. It was time to go – and time to negotiate that ladder and path again.
After recovering from that ordeal over lunch - we headed off to Dos Ojos.
Dos Ojos means two eyes – as there are two cenotes here like two blue eyes in the jungle. We entered in the Eastern eye and headed, via the cavern line, to the western eye where we recalculated gas and headed off on our main dive. There was a stark warning from Fred – get back here with more than 85 bar or we have to get out in the western eye and walk. Hmmm….. don’t need much more incentive than that to watch my gas.
Dos Ojos is very pretty so it is very popular with snorkelers and cavern divers. We saw a few groups diving the cavern line and then left them behind as we entered the cave via one of the two main lines. I’m getting formationed out at this point – how much can one diver take in one trip? 
– I’m also getting tired and hand over the lead on the way out as I don’t feel that my head is quite where it should be. Luckily though I have ample gas to ensure that I don’t have to hike on the surface with my gear back to the car.
