The Sacred Waters of the Riviera Maya

The natural wonders of the state of Yucatán are innumerable and some of the most important and unusual are the cenotes, or sinkholes. In the Yucatán there are over 3000 cenotes, with only 1400 actually studied and registered. The Mayas called them dzonot, which the conquering Spaniards translated as cenote. Geraldo Díaz Alpuche was a military commander in the 16th century who was greatly impressed with these underground caverns and pools, and he tried to explain the meaning of the word cenote in the Spanish language as meaning “deep thing”. The Motul dictionary, a dictionary of Mayan hieroglyphics, defines dzonot as “abysmal and deep”.