Tulum Underwater
Cave diving adventures in Mexico
Face down in a mound of sand, deep inside an underwater cave, he takes a breath. Nothing. His regulator is stuck solid.
That’s how the cave diving story usually begins. Or ends.
Everywhere you go in Tulum, there’s a flooded cave passage beneath your feet. Walk into the jungle with a couple of scuba tanks, climb into a hole in the ground, and you can swim where nobody has been since the ice caps melted.
On his first cenote dive, Toby crashed into the ceiling, snapped off two stalactites and thought he was going to drown. He’s been going back ever since.
Tulum Underwater follows him beyond the tourist lines, into caves so fragile that one misplaced fin kick turns crystal-clear water into a smoke cloud. Each chapter takes one of Sheck Exley’s ten rules for cave diving. Break all the rules you want above ground. In the underwater world, the rules get you home.
Above ground, life is no simpler. A daughter arrives. A relationship ends. While the divers are busy spanking cave, developers are building a city, and the Maya Train starts pouring concrete over the jungle. And when Toby stumbles on a virgin cenote and names it after his daughter, he wants one thing: to connect her cave to the rest of the system before someone else does.