Close your eyes. You listen not anything but silence and the faint sound of trickling water in the background. Imagine you are 80 toes under floor with your eyes open inside the pitch black. You are one with Mother Earth. You are somewhere alongside an 800 meter stretch of a 14 kilometer underground river that originates within the indoors of the peninsula and empties into the sea. The lighting fixtures come again on. Look up and see lots of jagged-edged stalactites pointing towards your head just like the tips of poison Mayan arrows. It looks like you are both on another planet or on the set of a blockbuster Hollywood movie. This is Rio Secreto.

Good friends of ours, Jim and Janet, won free passes to Rio Secreto whilst Jim changed into volunteering at Mayakoba. We had been talking about us all going for months, but should in no way appear to coordinate our schedules. Then unluckily due to clinical troubles Jim and Janet may want to not use the tickets and gifted them to us. Not trying the passes to visit waste due to the fact that they expire this winter, we arranged a ride this beyond Friday.

We genuinely did now not understand an awful lot about Rio Secreto apart from it became some other cave/underground journey, and that the likes of Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel and different well-known figures had visited the eco-park. Despite our loss of familiarity we had been sport for every other wild enjoy.

Our day commenced like some other Friday in latest reminiscence: we packed the automobile with buddies, drove to the park and proceeded over extremely bumpy roads numerous miles into the jungle to the entrance to the cave. At the park we were furnished with complimentary wetsuits, life jackets, water footwear and helmets with lights. Then we walked a few hundred feet returned into the jungle to what looked like another cave we’ve visible on the peninsula.

We have been quickly amazed at how distinct Rio Secreto is from other caves we’ve got been in. Rio Secreto is like stalactites on steroids. I actually have by no means visible so many in a single region. Then the cave is absolutely dark – there’s no artificial lighting fixtures, other than the light to your head, and no different corporations – just you, your manual, and your group of up to ten or so humans, wandering thru an underground river eighty feet underneath the floor. The path become pretty treatcherous: up and down, inside and out of water every now and then above your head, crouching down to suit under low underpasses. Luckily the terrain become no longer slippery. It is definitely now not for the faint of coronary heart or for everybody with fitness troubles. This is maximum simply for people with an adventurous spirit.

At one factor we entered a cavern that was filled with giant coral formations which had been so large, I felt like a spec drifting among a reef inside the sea. This turned into all ocean in some unspecified time in the future tens of millions of years in the past. We trekked along this river for approximately 1.5 hours, exploring only a minute a part of this gigantic subterranean aquatic dual carriageway. I can say we have by no means experienced such an wonderful cave gadget to this point in our time in Playa del Carmen.

What’s placing is that Rio Secreto was discovered only four years in the past while this 80 12 months vintage guy noticed water vapor growing from the floor. He commenced to dig, found the river, after which mapped the first kilometer himself, earlier than opening the river to the general public 2 brief years ago. To keep the system they’ve 3 excursions which cowl distinctive routes alongside the river, and alternate them over the years, shutting one off and commencing others to prevent wear. Lack of lighting fixtures facilitates save you the increase of algae and maintain the real underground enjoy. By arranging small tours at 9am and 1pm, they stagger the river’s traffic aiding in making you sense like you and your organization are by myself inside the river, as opposed to running into different people multiple instances.