Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · cave · The Quintana Roo cenotes

🇲🇽 Cenote Chan Hol

Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico · part of Sistema Toh Ha

An entrance to Sistema Toh Ha, and the cave that produced the Chan Hol skeletons — among the oldest human remains found anywhere in the Americas.

Dives here
7
Deepest
11.7 m
Water
fresh
First · last
2022 · 2026
Getting in
Turn off MEX 307 here; the site is about 0.6 km further on an unpaved track. (20.1520, -87.5720)
Also known as
Chan Hool

Revision 1 · changed 10 Oct 2026

History
  1. 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

33 m32 mCenote Chan HolXibalba line↓10.1 mThe Professor loopConnection to Ba'ab Zooz 110 m↓5.8 mMr Furry Balls↓6.1 m270 mWiesn line 250 m↓6.7 mLure line 290 mSueco section 360 m↓7.6 mMajor restriction380 m380 m480 mShimano line 510 m↓9.8 mMajor restrictionConnection to Chu-An 560 m↓7.9 m220 m370 m↓2.1 mTexas skull line 410 m↓11.3 mPlain line↓8.8 mForza line↓4.9 mForward line↓9.1 mConnection to Toh Ha↓9.4 mCave continues 850 m740 mN50 m
  • Entrance
  • T
  • Restriction
  • End of line
  • Shoreline
  • Depth
  • Along the line
Stick map · 156 stations · 3299 m of line · max 11.3 m

Traced from the AMCS/QRSS Cenote Chan Hol survey (Nadia Berni, 2009; mexicancaves.org/maps/1733.pdf, AMCS Activities Newsletter 34). That map draws passage walls, not guidelines, so the lines here follow the passage centrelines and are approximate; the real permanent lines weave between the many columns. Line names, depths (feet converted to metres) and the two major restrictions are from the survey; end labels give the shortest distance along the drawn lines from the cenote, not surveyed line length. Many small loops and side leads of the maze are left out, and the cenote lat/lon is the rounded Wikipedia point, so the placement on the locator map is approximate. The Chan Hol skeleton sites (about 530 m, 1141 m and 1240 m in, at ~8 m) are not placed because the source does not show where they are.

Chan Hol was connected to Sistema Toh Ha in March 2007.

It is best known outside diving for the Chan Hol skeletons. Several sets of Late Pleistocene human remains have come out of this cave, including Chan Hol 2 and Chan Hol 3, and they belong to the same story as the Eve of Naharón: people living in and around dry caves in the Yucatán more than ten thousand years ago, before rising sea level flooded the passages and sealed everything in. The finds have been central to the argument about when and by what route the Americas were first settled — and, less happily, Chan Hol 2 was largely looted from the cave before it could be properly studied.

Shallow diving: seven dives between February 2022 and February 2026, maximum depth 11.7 m, and one of them ran 212 minutes — three and a half hours in the water, which tells you what kind of cave it is.

Dived here with

Arend Benjamin Erik Kim

Nearby sites

7 dives at Cenote Chan Hol

Dives per year

Water temperature by month

Mean water temperature in °C; an empty month had no dives.

Mean water temperature per month at Cenote Chan Hol
MonthMeanDives
Januaryno dives0
February25.0 °C4
March25.0 °C3
Aprilno dives0
Mayno dives0
Juneno dives0
Julyno dives0
Augustno dives0
Septemberno dives0
Octoberno dives0
Novemberno dives0
Decemberno dives0
  1. 17 Feb 2026 with Arend, Erik cave date17 Feb 2026 depth11.5 m time212 min water25 °C
  2. 6 Mar 2025 with Kim cave date6 Mar 2025 depth10.6 m time70 min water25 °C
  3. 6 Mar 2025 with Kim cave date6 Mar 2025 depth8.8 m time31 min water25 °C
  4. 6 Mar 2025 with Kim cave date6 Mar 2025 depth10.7 m time65 min water25 °C
  5. 18 Feb 2022 with Benjamin, Erik cavestage date18 Feb 2022 depth11.7 m time197 min water25 °C
  6. 15 Feb 2022 with Kim cave date15 Feb 2022 depth7.1 m time50 min water25 °C
  7. 15 Feb 2022 with Kim cave date15 Feb 2022 depth10.5 m time73 min water25 °C

Sources