Freaking out and being blown away

Photo: Magnus Åkerblom-Wiker

"Little Alice fell down the hole, bumped her head and bruised her soul." 

I had calmed everybody down around this diving trip to the Mexican fresh water caves, since I really thought we would swim around the caverns always seeing the entrance and the daylight. I had seen pictures with sunlight filtered through the stalactites in the caverns. Awesome pictures. Stunning! And I was looking forward. The cenotes are like big sink holes in the jungle, connected to complex underground cave systems, where the light only sometimes gets in and where you for sure need to swim your way out.

And we jumped into the sinkhole in the middle of the jungle and the water was as clear as air. It was fresh, chilly and beautiful. But the idea of descending there, to swim out into the caverns just freaked me out. I guess that is why you have a guide with you who finds the way. However, he asked us to let him know before we panicked. Somehow a contradiction...  We descended a few meters down and I just felt this enormous resistance against leaving the daylight. The guide was already on his way into the caverns and I pulled his fin. We went up to the surface and he said: "Talk to me". So I talked. Quite a lot. And he explained it a little more. And I thought of the pictures and I knew it would be worth it.

"I can't explain myself, I am afraid, sir, because I am not myself, you see."

Photo: Magnus Åkerblom-Wiker

Well, sometimes you just have to freak out a little. Especially when you don't know what to expect. So we went down again. It was very dark. But getting a squeeze on my arm every now and then made me feel less lonely down there and the darkness not so very scary. And we stopped to watch the scenery that was truly amazing. I started to calm down and felt very brave until I realised we had five more days of diving, two dives per day. And I freaked out again. Without surfacing, though, which had been impossible anyway. I thought a little about death. And about the first people discovering the caves not knowing where all the tunnels would lead. How adventurous they were. And mad.

"We are all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." "How do you know I am mad", said Alice? 
"You must be", said the Cheshire cat, "otherwise you wouldn't be here".

Eventually we surfaced in one of the caverns. It looked like a big underground dome, where we could stay for a while. "It is incredible", I said. "Incredibly good or incredibly bad", the guide asked. Somehow a bit too detailed, I explained my full thought process about death, madness and how extraordinary beautiful it all was. But I guess there are worse places being vulnerable and open hearted than on the surface of an underground cavern in the middle of the Mexican jungle.

The guide prepared us for the last dark swim and suggested us to turn the torches off to see the daylight through the cave system. And I really wanted to question the part with switching the torches off, but for whatever reason I kept quiet. We went down and back through the caverns towards the sink hole where we started. And there, when we were swimming through the last tunnel and turned off the lights, I saw the daylight slowly filling the cavern, filtered through the underground formations. And I thought to myself that this is something completely unique and indeed a privilege. The Mayans viewed the cenotes as holy and the ambience is very spiritual. We surfaced. I laughed. Partially relieved, partially blown away by it all.

"But I nearly forgot, you must close your eyes. Otherwise... you won't see anything."

Quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.
All the Alice stories.