Sunday, January 23, 2011

Asteroids, Cenotes & Virgins - the rest of the story.

Rainwater seeped into the cracks in the limestone cap after it was cracked by the asteroid, and, over millions of years, the water carved huge underground caverns and hundreds of miles of channels. The world’s largest underground river system was thus created. In many places, the roof collapsed, allowing the underground water to come to the surface, creating crystal clear ponds of fresh water. These ponds are called cenotes and were considered holy places by the Mayans; the word cenote is derived from the original Mayan name for these ponds.
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The Mayans used to toss the occasional virgin into the cenotes for good luck but history does not reveal the efficaciousness of this practice, which to the best of my knowledge, has been discontinued. My long standing position on this practice is that it was a tragic waste of virgins, definitely not their highest and best use. Besides, I’ve found no objective evidence that virgin-spiced cenotes improved the corn crop or ensured a victory in battle - and really, who wants a bunch of half-rotted virgins floating around in their drinking water? Makes the coffee taste funny.
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These days, cenotes are popular tourist attractions, especially for snorkelers and divers who use them as doorways to the vast underground cavern/channel system. The ponds, some of which are hundreds of feet deep, contain many types of fish and other fresh water critters.
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We visited a cenote, a relatively small and shallow one as it turned out. Trish was prepared to jump in and go for a swim but was put off by the fish and floating debris and large, rough, user-unfriendly rocks on the bottom. I forget to pack my swimsuit, ain’t much of a swimmer anyway.

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