We had just departed "Hidden Worlds", and in less than one minute, the jungle was everywhere. As our roadwarrior-esque portage truck clawed it's way over the broken limestone path it occurred to me that it's bold lettering "El Animal" was fitting. The trip was the shortest of the lot, to a place they called "Hilarios Well". After dropping through a hole in the jungle floor next to...whatdya know?...a wellhouse. The constant green wallpaper of jungle changed to that of dimly lit grey rock. But as my eyes adjusted, ripples and reflections were all around me. It was the water table, maybe 18 feet below the jungle floor! And this was unlike any other well I'd seen.

Almost immediately I switched to tank air and dropped below that dark, rippling surface. My guide Pierre led the way like an avatar, navigating the constrictions in three dimensions. The stalactites were like huge upper teeth, in a prehistoric sort of way, and the stalagmites often reached up to join them, sometimes leaving only a couple feet between to slip through, only these were feet underwater! On the tighter passages, the stalagmite would have to slip between my legs, two choices of approach, if I flew in too high, I could knock my head, too low and I'd get intimate with a phallic rock...ok the middle it was...only it wasn't as easy as it looked.

I followed, trying to repeat his smooth flightpath through the liquid filled rooms. It's the vertical adjustments that were the most difficult, like flying through the jaws of a subterranean creature. This was a tight cave, and required small movements, I had to act more like a pufferfish than a dolphin. After some time, the thrill of a few well choreographed corners surged through my body. I could learn a lot from Pierre and his natural style, it came so easy to him.

The view around each and every corner was amazing. The decorations were very dense, curtains and veils to swim under, jaws to swim though, S turn hallways to wind down. This was the most up close and personal I had EVER seen a cave, more stunning than tv and magazines, as real as day...only it was eternal night, and I was flying in three dimensions.

Then there's this long and narrow angled gap which I couldn't navigate smoothly until I shifted my frame of reference and oriented my new "up" to the angled and descending ceiling. I continued on, with that new attitude, the ceiling looked flat. We were going deeper through this long slot and I was listing like a sick fish, but I wasn't going to scrape up against that angled ceiling, and worse yet, pick up silt from the floor, not again. Creating a siltout is a bad idea in caves, especially in small spaces which you must come back through to get to the world of light...and air.

We were officially off the standard tour. This wasn't exactly the sightseeing leg, and I became less concerned with running the camera and more concerned with swimming and breathing smoothly. It was odd, seeing my every breath float away from me and roll all the way across the ceiling in silver bubbles.

I could see Pierre waiting ahead...er ah, below and to the side, and followed him into the room. It felt good to come out the other end of that mysteryhouse passageway, however I also couldn't help but feel that we just swam into the creature's belly.

This was the farthest point in that we would go, it was a room big enough to swim small circles in full gear. But Pierre was fading, and he was my way back out. I sped up until I bumped him, but my vision still seemed so very blurred. Each movement stirred up swirls in the water, pretty soon the entire room looked like half-set jello. I was experiencing that magic zone where the salt water table of the nearby ocean was infiltrating underneath the fresh water table of the Yucatan Peninsula...the Halocline.

I'd experienced it in a milder forms in the open ocean, where a fresh water creek drains into a saltwater bay, but this was inside a small room, in a cave, accessed from a well, under the jungle! The Halocline produced an optical illusion, one that was not on a two dimensional piece of paper in front me, but swirling all around. The top half of the room was cool fresh water, as I became more negatively buoyant and dropped, I crossed the salt water barrier which was very warm and moving at a different current than the top half. As the layers become stirred, the lensy swirls and stringy streamers turn to all out blurry water. I was transfixed by playing with it, but it was time to leave. The trip out was just that...a trip.

Hidden Worlds dive operation ( http://www.hiddenworlds.com.mx ) is featured in the IMAX movie, "Amazing Caves". Equipment and access were provided to the author by the owner Buddy Quattelbaum, special thanks to Kevin, Brian and Micheline.