The Pit is the pits

[Richardthesecond]

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

 

[TSandM]

Some friends dove there in November. There is apparently a very nice upstream and downstream cave dive at about 35 feet. I know I was never interested in making the effort to dive there before, but I will do it now, because I can safely get the rental car there, and I don't have to hire a sherpa for the tanks.

Different strokes, you know . . . if you want to dive stuff that's hard to get to, I'm sure there is still plenty of stuff a guide can find for you.

[video]http://vimeo.com/frogkickdiving/pit[/video]

 

[rongoodman]

Some of us senior citizens appreciate those stairs, especially as I was feeling quite under the weather in November on the day I was there. (Six trips to Mexico and I finally got a GI bug on the last trip--I guess I can't complain too much.)

 

[TSandM]

I had eleven before Montezuma got me . . .

 

[ibj40]

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

We were down there, about a year ago, when they first started the "modernization". We parked up at the old "wide spot", but the constructoin workers were kind enough to put our gear in the bucket of a tractor and drive it down to the site. We couldn't tell how much they were going to improve the access, but it sounds like a pretty thorough job.

We're heading back to PA next month, and had been debating which cenote to do this trip, a return to the Pit might just be an option.

 

[Richardthesecond]

Some friends dove there in November. There is apparently a very nice upstream and downstream cave dive at about 35 feet. I know I was never interested in making the effort to dive there before, but I will do it now, because I can safely get the rental car there, and I don't have to hire a sherpa for the tanks.

Different strokes, you know . . . if you want to dive stuff that's hard to get to, I'm sure there is still plenty of stuff a guide can find for you.

[video]http://vimeo.com/frogkickdiving/pit[/video]

Oh, you got that right. There's Sunrise, where you have to crawl through the roots of an overhanging tree, and Heaven's door, but my point is that it's not going to be too long before all the cenote's are eventually going to have nice paved roads leading up to them, complete with striped parking lots, air conditioned visitors' centers . . . kind of Disneyfied, and thus lose a lot of their charm. There are so many cenotes -- Dos Ojos, Tam Ma Hal, Chac Mol, that are plenty easy to get to, and believe me, with my ol' knees starting to give out those stairs are appreciated. I'm just moaning about the inevitable march of progress, which sometimes can be a real mixed blessing.

---------- Post added February 24th, 2013 at 02:00 PM ----------

Ask for Pet Cemetery. It has incredible decorations. But boy, is it a real gut buster of a drive there. As we were bouncing along it did make me think about my griping about the smoothed road to The Pit. Maybe they could just smooth the Cemetery road out just a little bit.

As I said in another reply, am heading back down at the end of March for a side-mount class, and Pet Cemetery, along with Heaven's Door (Gate?) will certainly be on my list of must dives.

 

[TSandM]

Yeah -- it's nice to have places that all and sundry don't go, because they're private, but Pet Cemetery sure takes it out of the rental car. I wouldn't mind it being just a mite bit easier to get there. The price will keep it private

 

[JamesK]

I have to agree so the OP. We feel the need to modernize things to horrible outcomes. Look at some of the springs in Florida. Same way. Little River? UGH. While I admit the things like stairs and walkways are nice, they detract a lot of times from the natural beauty of the sites. I like to visit sites for the natural beauty above and below the water. Some places modernization is necessary though to help protect the ecosystem. Imagine what Ginnie would look like right now if not for the steps! All of the people trucking up and down on the rocks and banks. You have to have a balance. A lot of the fun of cave diving for me, especially in Mexico, was the trip to the cave.

 

[ADeadlierSnake]

While I have never been to the cenotes in Mexico (about to change in 4 days though!), I can easily visualize what the OP is talking about, and despite not being a cave diver yet, I already hate that type of "modernizing" behavior. It's crap like this that really makes me feel a time crunch when it comes to getting into cave diving. The longer it takes for me to get the experience, the training, and the money, the more cool stuff is going to be bulldozed, smoothed, "fixed", made "better", etc. As someone who dives for the adventure, and who enjoys the journey every bit as much as the destination (if not more so), all this modernization really bothers the hell out of me, and not just within the confines of the diving world. I sincerely hope that there will still be some reasonable amount of exploration to be done 5 years from now...

 

[TSandM]

ADS, there is a lot of unexplored Mexican cave country. If you feel the need to shoulder a set of doubles and do a military forced march through 100 degree jungle filled with ravenous mosquitoes, I'm sure somebody can find that opportunity for you