Cenote Diving Part 2 – Little Angel
Read Part 1 here.
I recently learned that Buddhists do not believe in happiness. Instead, they assert that the general ‘suffering’ of life or ‘dukkha’ as they refer to it is something that we all should acknowledge and work hard each day to accept. It is the absence of dukkha that the rest of us would recognise as happiness. 5000 miles away from the grey skies of England and my cluttered desk lay the placid waters of Angelita Cenote, and upon seeing her I am filled with a sense of calm serenity. As we prepare to slip beneath the green water of a sink-hole nestled quietly in the jungles of Riviera Maya, it is safe to say that there will be no dukkha for us here today.
Luis is leading what will turn out to be an unforgettable dive; Angelita or ‘little angel’ is unique and difficult to justifiably describe. His briefing by the edge of the glorious fresh water pool fills us with nervous anticipation as we are reliably told from someone who has dived the Cenotes for close to twenty years that this is by far his favourite. We will reach a depth of 40m; regarded the maximum one should safely go on a single tank of air. During our descent we will lose sight of each other as the sunlight cannot penetrate the layer of mulshy water after 30m or so. Due to the nitrogen in our system, the depth of the dive and the overall freakiness of the dive site itself, Luis explains to us that everyone suffers from nitrogen narcosis when taking on Angelita; a condition that temporarily renders a diver feeling somewhat drunk and light headed. We will get ‘narked’ today. This dive, he tells us, will separate the men from the boys.
After more than 500 dives in locations all over the World, this is the first time I recall feeling slightly anxious since my early training dives more than a decade ago. Anxious, but utterly excited.
Laden with cameras, Sam and I step carefully into the water by a small wooden platform on one side of the Cenote while Luis plunges in from a higher point on the opposite fringe of the spherical swamp-like sink hole. We float to meet in the centre and take a look around us. We are in no hurry. Birds can be heard singing to each other in the trees that surround Angelita and dragonflies dance around our heads just inches from the water’s surface. We smile, nod and signal that we are ready to begin our descent.
The broken branches of gnarled trees waste no time in presenting themselves beneath us. It is as though a long forgotten forest has slipped beneath the water for only a fortunate few to witness. Our descent deepens through a foggy haze of particle rich water and seconds later the light leaves us as if a switch has been flicked off unannounced.
Blackness…
If not for the narrow beam of light from our torches, complete darkness surrounds us. Scattered on the Cenote floor are leaves of brown and yellow. We navigate around the protruding branches. Sam will later tell me that it is at this point that the narcosis set in. I don’t recall getting ‘narked’ but I certainly had a strange feeling. The previous day I had dived a Cenote called Chac Mool without Sam; I would later describe it to her as the setting for Indiana Jones if it were to be filmed underwater. On a similar note, Angelita stirs up evocative comparisons of Sleepy Hollow or better yet, Alice in Wonderland, only a much darker version than even Tim Burton’s re-make. Like Alice, we are now falling down the rabbit hole. Whether up might be down is almost impossible to tell… light creeps back to us; the fog of the dense water all around does its best to convince us that we are not diving at all. Instead we emerge from a cloud, flying through the forgotten forest in water that could be air.
We sweep around the edge of Angelita during our slow purposeful ascent. The past 30 minutes have elapsed in what now feels like mere seconds. The other world, the unusual place that has captivated us like never before is now disappearing beneath our fins; it is forsaken for the portal that now waits a few feet above our heads. The sunlight pierces the surface of Angelita and reveals the familiar world we left behind. Trees and clouds can be seen all around us; just an arm’s length away we need only to reach out, another fin kick or two and the mystique of the Little Angel will become a recent memory. Warmth kisses our cheeks and daylight hurts our eyes as we take our first breath of earthly air and look to each other for a reaction. What just happened? We are unable to effectively describe the feeling, the experience we just shared. We are elated. Luis has been here hundreds of times before but it’s clear to see that Angelita remains a special place for him. It is magical.
Freya Stark said something beautiful that I find poignant after such a day; “Good days are to be gathered like grapes, to be trodden and bottled into wine and left for age to sip at ease beside the fire. If the traveller has vintaged well he need trouble to wander no further, the ruby moments glow in his glass at will.”
Angelita is a ruby moment I will treasure forever.
