Underground River

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico
May 30, 2021

We walked to Xcaret park with our eyes on the underground river before the crowds hit. We were there at 9:00, bagged our belongings that get transferred to the end of the river, put on our river shoes, a life vest and jumped in.

The water was cool but we got used to it quickly as we doggy paddled onward. Soon we realized it was best to float on our backs and let the buoyancy of our river shoes float to the top and then do a breaststroke paddle. The river has a slight current to it and has a big fat rope on the right so you can pull yourself along which came in handy to pass the slower and /or annoying people who were narrating their adventure. Put the selfie sticks down and enjoy the moment people.

The river is mostly underground consisting of five sections from 200-300 yards to 600 yards at a stretch. You can bail out after each section if you wanted but would still have to walk to the end to get your bag of belongings.

The underground rivers are dark dimly lit and not for those with claustrophobia or fear of piranha.

It was nice and quiet for the most part this early in the morning but as we were walking back we could see the floating flock of humanity building up.

To our surprise at the end of the river we noticed people emerging from two other tributaries. When we first headed into the cave there were three choices of tunnels to take and we took the middle one but we did not noticed any signs… Mexico.

We highly recommend this adventure, relax, float and go with the flow.