Cenote Jardín del Eden and an Evening in Playa del Carmen
The Cenote Jardín del Eden is a cooling, refreshing and natural pool just outside of Playa del Carmen. It is the perfect slice of peaceful paradise and the ideal place to take a breather. Here you will find our own experiences of this beautiful place.
Dear Travel Diary,
Once again, we found ourselves walking in the hot sun to hop into an even hotter colectivo. What can you do? The value for money is unbeatable, even if it is a bit warm in the colectivo.
This time, instead of taking the colectivo all the way to Akumal, we asked the driver to drop us off a bit early, at the Cenote Jardín de Eden. The colectivo journey was better than usual because we got to ride up front. Up front there is more space but with no seatbelts and a clear view forward, it’s a tiny bit more terrifying too.
Once we got out of the colectivo, we gave ourselves a good layer of sun cream, which we later regretted, I’ll get to why, but this lesson is important, so I’ll give it to you now, don’t wear sun cream to the cenotes! After lathering up, we headed over to the desk to buy our tickets. The usual price is $200 pesos (€8.62) per adult, which is absolutely worth it, but we were able to get a discounted price because the owner of our hostel had some connection with the cenote Jardín del Eden. Nice.
We went through the gate into the cenote area, the scenery around us changed dramatically. We had left the colectivo right on the side of the highway and now we were surrounded by green with sudden flashes of colour where beautiful birds dashed around us.
We eventually came to the main cenote, I (Emily) heard a huge splash and saw this high ledge in the distance. Absolutely not. I’m not a huge fan of heights and by that, I mean I am knee knockingingly petrified of heights. I knew this was going to be one of those things though, one of the things you have to do whether you like it or not, for the experience!
All of a sudden, to our right-hand side, a booming American voice filled the air. “Are you wearing bug repellent cuz if you are I will kick you out, what are your names? Where are you from?” Not the most charming introduction, but this guy turned out to be the, very awesome, owner of the cenote. He really cared about the cenote and the area surrounding it. “You can wash any sunscreen or bug repellent off over there…” he gestured to these tiny sinks… “Yeah they are just sinks, no showers here”.
We scrubbed for a while with the limited water from the sinks. We felt like two giants who had climbed down the beanstalk to take a tiny bath. It was annoying, so I will repeat the lesson again, don’t wear sun cream or bug repellent to the cenote. Luckily there is plenty of shade anyway, and the bugs can’t get you in the water!
There is a good reason for all this. The chemicals in sun cream and bug repellent can be really harmful to the wildlife and the quality of the water, if lots of people are swimming with these chemicals on their skin it can cause a lot of damage. We really understood the owner’s frustration with visitors who come in and ignore this advice. The cenote Jardín del Eden was such a beautiful place for wildlife and to swim, snorkel, and even dive, (yes, it is that deep!). It is so important that there are people in this world who will protect it!
It seems like the awesome conservation efforts here at the cenote have not gone unnoticed with this cenote being a hangout of people from Sea Shepard! Apparently, one of the Sea Shepard team had climbed up a tree, on top of the high ledge and jumped in from there!
After we scrubbed off, we got into the cool water of the cenote, it was perfect. There must have been something about that water because, after about 5 minutes in there, I (Emily) was ready to jump from that ledge! The fall itself took a lot longer than I was expecting (there was a solid two seconds of regret before I hit the water). In the end, I jumped about 5 times, it was such an awesome feeling!
The water of the cenote was crystal clear; we could see the rocks and fish swimming underneath us so clearly. We could even see the people diving with the oxygen tanks over 10 meters beneath us!
The wildlife surrounding the cenote was equally as amazing. We saw huge iguanas just roaming around. One of them had a strange tail and Alex told me that iguanas are amazing because they can drop off a bit of their tail when they feel threatened to help them to flee from a predator.
After a beautiful day of swimming, jumping in, exploring, and a nice bit of relaxing, we decided to head back to Playa del Carmen. There was only one problem, to get the Colectivo back, we would need to cross OVER THE HIGHWAY.
Daunting.
Surprisingly, there was a decent break in the traffic, and we managed to cross over safely. (I guess highway crossings could be another use for the removable iguana tail?) Ouch…
A colectivo arrived within 5 minutes and took us back to Playa del Carmen. What an amazing day. Once we got back to our hostel, we had about 45 minutes to get ready for dinner. We had been invited out with an awesome couple that we met through our diving school. We went out to a restaurant called Zenzi Beach, which is just off 5th avenue in Playa del Carmen. It’s a beautiful restaurant with live music and, of course, it’s right on the beach. We shared an amazing tuna ceviche and some nachos. The food was beyond delicious. We even tried some Mexican Sauvignon Blanc which was fantastic.
After that, we headed over to kind craft ale bar where they had hundreds of different types of beer. They even had some German ones which Alex felt very proud about. The beers were flowing and so was the conversation, it was fantastic to chat with such open-minded people. After a few minutes, some of the couple’s friends arrived to join us at the bar. We were a group of people from different corners of the world; the US, Mexico, Panama, France, and of course Germany and the UK, and yet it felt like we all had so much in common. That’s the really amazing thing about travel, it really highlights the amazing similarities between human beings.
After a fantastic night, we headed home.
We sat for a while with our feet in the pool at the hostel and chatted about the amazing things we had seen in the past few days and what we were most excited about for Tulum. Eventually, we decided to call it a night and headed back to our room, as we did, two security guys arrived. One guy had a huge machete and the other a baseball bat. One came over to us and asked if we had seen some drunk people hanging around as they had had some complaints, there was nobody around, at least since we had been sitting there. We went back into our room somewhat nervously, had someone reported us for being loud? That machete was very large… Luckily that is the last we heard of that one!
We still had a lot of preparation to do, but with so much passion and excitement from the evening we just had, we were beyond excited to visit our next stop in Mexico, Tulum!
If you find yourselves in Playa del Carmen and you are looking for some inspiration for a day trip, check out our Guide to Four Incredible Day Trips From Playa del Carmen.
