September 12

The team practices their repelling skills

Elusive Cenote Camilo with crystal clear water

Cenote Las Grutas located near Cenote Vaca Ha






If At First You Don’t Succeed . . .

Tuesday, September 12, 2000
On Monday, our intrepid explorers set out on their own early in the morning in search of the elusive Cenote Camilo. By early afternoon, it was obvious that they were not heading in the right direction. They did, however, discover another small but promising cenote deep in the jungle. It was decided to enlist the direct help of Don Camilo on Tuesday. The team then spent the rest of the afternoon in preperation for things they might encounter – like the need to repell into a site. We used the a balcony on the third floor of the resort, and repelled down the side of the building.

We headed out at about 0830 on Tuesday morning to pick up Don Camilo and then onto the trail that we had been following the two previous days. Since Don Camilo is over 60 years old and speaks a mix of Spanish and Mayan, we relied heavily on our driver, Roger, to translate for us. We headed into the jungle on a slow and steady pace until Don Camilo suggested that we blaze a new trail off to our left about 75 yards into the jungle. We paralelled the existing trail we had been following the last two days until we came to the cenote. The team was quite pleased and cleared a path directly back to the main trail for easier access. We will go back tomorrow and do a preliminary dive to check out the conditions of the cenote and determine what additional equipment we may need.

After the success of finding the first cenote, we decided to test our luck on another (This one had a trail directly to it but no one had been back to it in some time). Cenote Las Grutas had been located before and is behind Vaca Ha on Don Camilo’s property. We hiked back about 20 minutes along a barbed wire fence and cleared the path to the cenote. We will probably look at this site in a couple of days. Things are looking better . . .

So far, so good on the updates. We are looking for your questions and comments – send them to the trilobite.



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