Playa del Carmen and Cenote Casa Tortuga

The next day, Tuesday, I went to visit Cenote Casa Tortuga. The trip got off to a rocky start when the local transport driver didn't quite understand where I wanted to go and told me to get off one stop before my destination. With no other option I was left stranded there until I found other transport, but after 15 minutes another van showed up and took me to my destination for an extra 50 pesos.

The cenote is in the middle of a forest through which a river runs, which in some areas is open to the sky and in others runs underground. I got a guided tour of the different cenotes in the park and the chance to enter 2 of these caves, one of them with the ceiling in some places less than 50 cm from my head and with bats on the ceilings that stayed calm while I passed.

I even took a risk and brought my phone in the waterproof pouch I'd brought, and everything went fine. But in the Philippines I lost a phone with this trick, when the pouch started letting water in.

There I got to know some Mexicans and a couple, an Argentine man and a Colombian woman, with whom I had lunch in the park and spent the rest of the afternoon, and who ended up bringing me back to Playa del Carmen in the end.

On my last night in Playa del Carmen I ran into some of the travellers from the night before again on the hostel rooftop, and we chatted and swapped travel stories while drinking a few beers.