Santa Maria Rediscovery and Exploration
My former housemate Mariano told me about this cenote towards the end of 2019. At the end of November, we visited Rancho Santa María, and he introduced me to Don Ramon, who showed me the cenote and invited me back to dive. It was a few months later, at the end of February, that I had time to dive into the cenote. Mariano had warned me about a tricky entry and that the line was not easy to find… of course I took this to mean it just took a little hunting and off you go. I mean, there is only a small area where the cave opening could be, right? I very quickly realised how wrong I was! Spool in hand, I entered the water, which was already quite murky due to algae.
Where I assumed the entry was did not open up, and trying to enter a dead end past a mound of organic silt only caused zero visibility. No worries, I told myself, I’ll find it by feel, it has got to be here somewhere! After 45 minutes of zero visibility groping, I gave up. Despite this setback, another trip to Santa Maria with Mariano, this time with clear water and improved visibility, resulted in the cave line from open water being found. Line in hand I ducked under the ledge and popped into the first giant chamber. Now the diving could begin!
According to Jim Coke at the Quintana Roo Speleological Survey the cave was historically reported as Cenote San Pedro. It was first explored in 2007 by Alex Anisimov and Victor Trostyanskiy. Bil Phillips and Tristan Bond Evans followed the Russian leads and explored three more smaller side passages in 2012. Later there was some further small passages added by unknown explorers, Mariano Schaller and Noe Caffesse. My first task was a systematic resurvey of the lines and mark potential leads to return to. See image of the map! With only 1600 foot of existing line this was easily done over two dives with just sidemount tanks. At the end of the second resurvey dive, I noticed that the cave seemed to open up at the bottom of the slope. Tying into the end of the existing line I descended down the slope, paused and looked to the side. Past a restriction the cave opened up. And the water was that electric blue characteristic of a salt water section!! Boom! Mega cool, going, cave tunnel!
A few dives later and the cave continued to grow. It was not an easy cave to explore with the north west to south east orientation typical of cave in the area not being the case here. Pushing through the salt water section the cave became shallower and went south. The southern section is characterised by swiss cheese like velcro rock, a mixing layer between the salt and fresh waters and heavy percolation. Subsequent dives resulted in additional lines short cutting between the main line and the salt water section, creating a nice circuit and a quick and easy route to the southern line. These initial dives were done alone, but as a team project in Muyil was slowing down, ProTec team members joined in the efforts.
Using our trusty Kiss Sidewinder CCRs, Patrick and I pushed some of the lines in the deep salt section. Here we encountered my first no-mount restriction in this configuration. At first it was pretty daunting, but slowly removing the tanks to pass through, supermanning one while Patrick took the other from me worked well. This would not be the first no-mount restriction at Santa Maria! We also pushed my southern line. At each turn this cave surprises the diver! Turning the corner in the swiss cheese rock and suddenly you pop out in a giant, black chamber, or shallow up into rooms covered in amber decorations. Unfortunately, each time we tried to break out or go another direction, the cave shut down.
Jake and I continued the southern line where Patrick and I had finished. Despite Patrick thinking that the cave ended, I wanted to double check… the comment in the survey data read ‘Lost cave. Doesn’t really go’. Lucky we persevered! I looked under an unpromising ledge and the cave continued! Taking it in turns to lay line while the other diver surveyed behind we pushed south. Everything was going great, cave tunnels opening up ahead of us until the cave shut down in a very unpromising corner. There was a small opening that was very uninviting, but we looked through and could see black cave on the other side. While Jake watched I took off both my tanks to squeeze through the no-mount restriction… but chickened out fearing for the safety of my breathing loop on the sharp sides of the opening. I backed out and Jake snaked his way through the restriction. After Jake passed, I followed him through. We went on to lay more line and the cave grew by another 2,000 feet that day to 10,200 feet!
Unfortunately, that was the last big section of going cave. We added more side lines here and there but none of them really went very far. Kim and Jaime both joined for some dives to push and we did manage to push the cave a bit more. Tamara May joined in the project to help document the cave and some bones I discovered. And of course, Joram Mennes captured some amazing images of the cave.
Photos by Joram Mennes.