On Tuesday we met up with our friend David Aaron, whom we’d met serendipitously last year (he’d admired my custom walking stick when we got on a bus, and then I discovered that my wallet and cell phone had been stolen in the bus station). He took us home to his 138-acre ranch near the little village of Tixcacalkupul. His charming wife Victoria was away when we met David last year, but she was here this time. They have a few sheep, three sweet donkeys, a javelina pig, and chickens. David had bought the ranch because it has a cenote on it, which Vicky had wanted. It’s a huge deep circular pit, with undercut cliff sides, but it’s a dry cenote, with no water.

5. Victoria & David Aaaron

6. OZ with donkey

However, the well on the property seemed to be rather deep as it appeared to open below. Rappelling down into it, David discovered a great underground lake 60 feet below the surface, inside a vast limestone dome with a few stalactites and curtain formations. Vicky got her watery cenote!

7. Jiva, Sundance, Diego and David at the original well

Over a few years, with local help, David built an incredible concrete staircase down into the cenote, with platforms, all illuminated by floodlights. This is what he’d brought us to see on our previous visit, a year ago, when we had met by chance on the bus. When he learned I was a Pagan Wizard, he’d brought us out to his place to swim in his cenote.

8. Deigo going down into David’s Cenote

9. The stairs down into David’s Cenote

10. Stairway down into David’s cenote

So naturally this trip we had to introduce David and our other friends to each other. David and Vicky drove Dona, Jiva and I; and Beth, Diego and Sundance followed in a rental car for the half-hour drive. Everyone hit it off splendidly, and fast friendships were formed. Jiva, Beth, Diego and Sundance were as blown away as Dona and I had been last year, and we swam, sang and chanted while Diego played his flute and Sundance drummed on an innertube. About dusk, the solar-powered lights went out, and we had to ascend in total darkness, with flashlights.

11. Underground lake in David’s cenote

12. Beth, Diego and Sundance in innertubes in David’s cenote.

We returned to Valladolid Tuesday night, checking into the San Clemente hotel as there was no room for another night at the Casa Quetzal.

13. Surrealistic art at Hotel Zentik

14. More surrealistic art at Hotel Zentik

Continued in Yucatán Pilgrimage: Day 4