Dive site · cave · The Quintana Roo cenotes
🇲🇽 Cenote Xulo
Muyil, Quintana Roo, Mexico · part of Sistema Caterpillar
One of four entrances to Sistema Caterpillar at Muyil, with a halocline so sharp that the cave changes colour as you pass through it.
- Dives here
- 2
- Deepest
- 24.8 m
- Water
- fresh · halocline
- First · last
- 2022 · 2026
- Position
- 20.0616, -87.6275
- Getting in
- Turn west off MEX 307 here (km marker 202.9, 26 km south of Tulum); the site is about 0.6 km further on an unpaved track. (20.0585, -87.6320)
- Entry
- 400.00 MXN (2026)
Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026
History
- r2 18 Oct 2026 Neutral geo_source · Dennis Bakhuis
- 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
- Entrance
- T
- Jump
- Restriction
- End of line
- Shoreline
- Jump (no line)
- Unsurveyed
- Along the line
Traced from Dennis's own hand sketch of the lines, made after the 2018 dives and photographed in October 2026. Not to scale: nothing on the sketch was measured, the scale is nominal (about 0.5 m per sketch pixel) and the sheet's orientation is unknown, so north is arbitrary. Arrows on the sketch point the way out. A short bar beside a line is the start of a side line that was not drawn; a gap between lines is a jump. The three circuits near the entrance and the loop near the far end are each one line with both ends jumping off the main line. ][ marks a restriction: beyond the one at the north end of the east loop the cave goes on no-mount only, and the S at its south end is a sidemount restriction. The line to the west is the start of the traverse towards Cenote Caterpillar (about 1 km, sidemount only), with the Pluto–Neptune line (ES 18) off it. Near the far end an east–west line crosses the main line without joining it. This replaces the 2026-09 schematic drawn from written descriptions.
About 200 m off the highway south-west of Tulum, near Muyil. Xulo is one of four cenotes belonging to Sistema Caterpillar, which has 13 452 m of surveyed passage; 1 372 m of it is reached from this entrance, and it connects to Cenote Caterpillar.
Tunnel A runs through a pronounced halocline: hazy and brown-tinted in the fresh water above, clear below. Passing through it is like surfacing into a different cave.
Two dives, February 2022 and February 2026 — the second of them 192 minutes, to 24.8 m.
The map is traced from a hand sketch of the lines made after the 2018 dives: the main line with three short circuits near the entrance, the loop and the east–west line at the far end, the jump to the Caterpillar traverse with the Pluto–Neptune line off it, and the east loop that ends in a no-mount restriction. Nothing on it was measured, so it is not to scale and its orientation is a guess.
What it cost
| When | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Feb 2026 | 400.00 MXN | Entrance fee. |
| 1 Mar 2025 | 350.00 MXN | Entrance fee. |
| 1 Jan 2018 | 200.00 MXN | Entrance fee as noted on the 2018 line sketch; the day is not known. |
Dived here with
Nearby sites
2 dives at Cenote Xulo
Dives per year
- 20 Feb 2026 with Hanna date20 Feb 2026 depth24.8 m time192 min water25 °C
- 21 Feb 2022 with Erik date21 Feb 2022 depth24.6 m time77 min water25 °C
Sources
- First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)