Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · cavern · The Quintana Roo cenotes

🇲🇽 Cenote Angelita

Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico

A sixty-metre shaft with a river of hydrogen sulphide lying across it at thirty metres, complete with dead trees standing up through the cloud.

Dives here
1
Deepest
33.9 m
Water
fresh · halocline at 30 m
First · last
2022
Getting in
Turn off MEX 307 here; the site is about 1.3 km further on an unpaved track. (20.1741, -87.5524)

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Neutral description; photo size matches the file · Dennis Bakhuis
  2. r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis

Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

1 map

Hydrogen sulphide cloud 27–30 m↓27 mStairs↓0 mDebris mound with dead trees↓27 mBottom 56–60 m↓58 mN5 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Point of interest
  • Tree
  • Shoreline
  • Depth band
  • Other area
  • Depth
Site map · 2 objects · max 58 m

Cenote Angelita is an open, round pit about 25–30 m across (cave-ha.com, Mexico Desconocido) and 56–60 m deep, with fresh water to about 30 m, a hydrogen sulphide cloud about 3 m thick at 27–30 m and salt water below, where the chamber widens under the vertical walls (first-hand observation). A mound of collapse debris with dead trees rises from the bottom to about 27 m near the middle and pokes through the cloud. OpenStreetMap has no outline, so the shoreline is a 27 m circle; the entry is by stairs to the water, placed on the north rim only because the access track arrives from the north, and every position is approximate.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

Angelita — little angel — is not a cave. It is an open sinkhole about 60 m deep with no known connection to any other cenote, and that isolation is the whole reason it looks the way it does.

At 30 m there is a layer of hydrogen sulphide, formed where organic matter decomposing at the bottom meets the boundary between the fresh water above and the salt below. Because nothing flows through Angelita, nothing disturbs it, and the layer sits there as a dense, opaque, grey-green cloud with a perfectly flat surface. Dead trees and branches that have fallen in over the years stand up through it. Divers descend to it, hang above it, and it reads as a river with a forest on its bank — until you drop through, and it is pitch dark, acidic and smells of rotten eggs, and the water below is anoxic.

One dive, 21 February 2022, to 33.9 m — so just through the cloud and back.

The workbook keeps the OpenStreetMap position here; OSM node/4412196992 and the Cave Ha marker set disagree about this cenote by 3.7 km.

Image: Angelita Cenote - Tulum (5495663441).jpg — Serge Melki from Indianapolis, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos

Dived here with

Benjamin Erik Kim Saskia

Nearby sites

1 dive at Cenote Angelita

  1. 21 Feb 2022 with Benjamin, Erik, Kim, Saskia cavecaverndeco date21 Feb 2022 depth33.9 m time38 min water25 °C

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)