Cenotes and the Chicxulub Meteor Crash

Last night, Miriam ran into our hotel room at Dolores Alba in Merida with her eyes sparkling.

“Guess who I just talked to?” she said.

I couldn’t begin to imagine. By her demeanor, Arnold Schwartzenegger or a rock star came to mind – not very likely, though, in a moderately priced Yucatecan hotel.

“I give up,” I said.

“Kristine and Santiago! They’re staying here at Dolores Alba!”

It made sense that Miriam would be so happy to see the two of them. We always enjoy their company. If you remember, we had recently stayed at Kristine and Santiago’s Flycatcher Inn in the Mayan village of Santa Elena for a couple of days. I now recalled that Santiago had said that they were coming to Merida to visit their daughter and also to shop.

The next morning, after Miriam and John had left for their flights from Cancun to the U.S., I happened upon Kristine and Santiago while they were eating their breakfasts at Dolores Alba in the outdoor inner courtyard.

We had only parted two days ago, but we had so much to say to each other. The topics of conversation went from Hunbatz Men to the origin of the red soil of the Yucatan to the many underground cave systems.

Kristine said, “Have you ever noticed that most of the cenotes are in a semi-circle across the top of the Yucatan Peninsula?”

OK, I thought, it makes sense that she would think of cenotes after discussing underground cave systems since cenotes are openings or sinkholes in the limestone surface of the Yucatan that expose the underlying underground water system.

I thought about what Kristine had said. Were the cenotes in a semi-circular pattern? As a matter of fact, I had noticed the curious fact that on my map of the northern Yucatan Peninsula, the cenotes are clustered and in only certain areas. Now that she mentioned it, I realized that they did form a large semi-circle from north of Uxmal in the west to Tulum in the east.

“Now that I think of it,” I said, “they are in a semi-circular pattern.”

“That’s because the cenotes were formed when the Chicxulub Metero hit,” she said. “I found a map online that shows that the crater is located partly in the Gulf of Mexico and partly on the land.

Here’s a link to the map, which is third image down, on this page on the Flycatcher Inn’s web site: http://www.flycatcherinn.com/mchicxulub.htm

I know that my guidebook says that cenotes form when the surface limestone collapses revealing the underground river below it. Then, the guidebook goes on to say that visitors to the Yucatan need not worry that the collapse of a sinkhole will occur while they are there because these sinkhole collapses occur very infrequently.

However, Kristine was proposing that cenotes were created long, long ago – in fact, 65 million years ago – when the Chicxulub meteor impacted the earth lifting huge coral formations out of the sea to form the Yucatan Peninsula. How intriguing!

With the mention of cenotes, I regretted that although we had visited Cenote Zaci in Valladolid, we had not swam in its waters. Zaci looked so much bigger than I had expected and also its water looked so very, very dark.

All the photos I’ve seen of cenotes look so inviting with their turquoise waters lit by a beam of sunlight shining in through the hole in the earth above the water.

We learned from that visit to Zaci that you need to visit a cenote when the sun is overhead such as around noon hour. I’ve also read that the water can be 500 feet deep. No wonder the black water looked so uninviting.

Now that I knew of the possibility that the cenotes had resulted from the Chicxulub Meteor impact, I felt we simply had to visit some cenotes when we returned to the Yucatan.

Obviously, there is so much more to explore in the Yucatan. But, that will have to wait for future visits.

I’m finishing the chronicles of this visit on my laptop 38,000 feet up in the sky sandwiched between two Spanish-speaking people on this flight from Merida to Mexico City to Los Angeles. I am surrounded by Mayas and Aztecs, many of them, American citizens.

Because John mentioned, during a conversation last night, that someone told him that you can tell how much Spanish a man has in him by whether he shaves or not, I’m looking very closely at the men’s faces to see if there’s any evidence of a beard. The man sitting beside me, who I spent some time with at the beginning of the flight jockeying for space on the arm rest between us, is smooth faced. He looks round-faced and therefore is likely Maya.

Most of the people on the plane with me are of Mexican origin. The gringos like me stick out like white carnations in a bouquet of red and bronze flowers.

It’s time to put the computer away. The pilot’s voice over the loudspeaker says we are making our approach to the airport.

I am sad to say that my wonderful time in the Yucatan is truly over.

Carol Chapman

Copyright (c) 2009 Carol Chapman