EARTHLESS : OUT OF THIS WORLD
THE CENOTES OF MEXICO
The Cenotes of Mexico are home to the longest underground river system in the world. For millions of years water has tumbled through the underground landscape, largely lost and hidden from view, only to be accessed through remote sinkholes. The ancient Mayans believed these rivers were a gateway to another world and offered human sacrifices in religious rituals. Today humans gather to swim, dive and explore.
CREATED BY A COLOSSAL ASTEROID
The Ring of Cenotes in Mexico was created sixty-six million years ago when a colossal asteroid hit Earth. The impact was so powerful that it left behind a crater 180 kilometers across, liquidised the Earth’s crust and brought about climate change that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Throughout this region rivers now flow, deep underground through limestone rock that has, in places, collapsed to leave these remarkable archaeological formations.
OUT OF THIS WORLD
Each cenote has its own story and looks completely different from the next. At Angelita, for example, the alchemy of ancient decaying trees creates an underwater ‘cloud’. In another secret cenote a huge mammoth tooth rests on the sand as if it had just fallen into the water yesterday. Despite their differences all the cenotes are connected by a mysterious network of rivers that flow deep underground through seemingly watery moonscapes before swelling up into lost, prehistoric lakes.
Backstage video of underwater photographer, Zena Holloway, shooting fashion models in the cenotes of Mexico.
EARTHLESS
Today swimmers, freedivers and tourists gather to momentarily escape gravity. They move freely in weightless space. It’s a parallel atmosphere where they, as aquanauts, glimpse a precious, uninhabited and truly wild environment. Rock formations depict moonscapes and to descend into the deep, blackness of these underwater caves is probably the closest most of us will ever get to becoming ‘earthless’
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