Labna Ha

If I have my story right (and mind you, I may not be 100% accurate) a small group of entrepreneurial foreigners bought 124 acres of scrub land in the middle of the Riviera Maya... with the purpose of discovering, exploring and exploiting for tourist trade the caves known to be in the region.

One of many discoveries was the underwater cave system now known as Labna Ha. It is very exclusive; you can only dive there with an owner or a highly trusted representative. There is no underwater photography permitted. Photography above water is permitted but only without a tripod. And I've heard that you may be charged as much as US$150 for one cave dive. The owners now boast that the property was recently appraised at $7 million. With the growing popularity of cave diving and other forms of tourism in this region, I think they were very smart to do what they did.

Today we split into two groups of four; those who'd been to Labna Ha previously went with Pep, one of the owners, to visit side passages off the main line. I was in the group led by Connie as we would do a long penetration along the main line only. We made it 62 minutes into the dive (approximately 3000' or so) before one of the team called on thirds. I was still about twenty minutes from calling thirds myself but that's okay. We ended with 120 minutes total dive time according to my watch -- that's a LONG dive.

Labna Ha is not a big cave in terms of cross-sectional area and there are many tight restrictions where I felt like a rhinoceros trying to walk gingerly through a china shop. I will proudly say that I hardly touched a thing; without a camera I could dedicate all my awareness to maintaining perfect trim. Unfortunately I witnessed periodic damage being done by others on the team (I'm sure I wasn't 100% perfect either) as fins brushed against those delicate formations. Oh well. I have always accepted that it was one of the sad truths about this sport. You cannot make a cave better by diving in it, only worse.

After the dive we were treated to a lunch of barbecue chicken and chorizo, Mayan style. Afterwards we shot down a zip line to a dry cave to tour there. The owners lit it very nicely with coloured lights. Even though we were not allowed tripods, I would set the camera down on the wood walkway to get the 2-3 second exposures needed in that amount of light. The results were spectacular. The photo above is one of the best; be sure to click on it to see it in full size. I uploaded the original JPEG for you to enjoy.

Labna Ha was talked up all week as one of the best caves to visit. Although I saw some really awesome formations, it would not be my #1 choice for a return dive. Not really disappointed, just not as impressed as the hype led me to believe. IMHO it isn't even as fun as Sac Aktun. And in Sac Aktun we're allowed all the photography we can manage!