The Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá

At the great Maya city of Chichén Itzá is a huge natural sinkhole, the Sacred Cenote, that was a doorway to the underworld and the rain god Chaac. For centuries the Maya threw offerings into its green water, gold, jade, copal, and the bones dredged up when it was dived in the 1900s show they threw people too, in times of drought. It is real, and it is only one of thousands of cenotes that pock the Yucatán, the flooded caves that were the peninsula’s only fresh water and its most sacred places. Awe, not a dare.