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After my appalling Spanish grade had driven me onto a language exchange in Tulum, I found myself increasingly grateful for the single F that blotted the series of As on my report card. At 17 years old, despite it being my first time away from home, I had settled in all too comfortably living with a Mexican family, flitting between Spanish classes and exploring with the children of the family; the best of bad influences. My head was still groggy with sleep when Carmen knocked on my door. It took me a moment to recognise the semi-familiar surroundings of what had recently become my bedroom since moving thousands of miles away from home. Poking her head round the door, Carmen looked unimpressed to see me still in bed. “Move your ass, Mary. I promise you this one is worth dragging yourself out of bed for.” A vivacious combination of smiles and sass topped with bouncing curls, Carmen had taken great delight in my spending the summer with her family and had quickly become an intrepid tour guide. Her brother Raúl, two years older, two years too set in his ways, had taken less of a shine to my arrival refusing to speak to me in English, when he wasn’t refusing to speak to me full stop. He sat opposite me at the table as I shoveled down my breakfast. His scowling features could have been unfurled into one of the most ruggedly handsome faces I had ever seen, but in my month living with his family I was yet to see him smile. Widely renowned for its laid-back, jungle-meets-beach vibe, Tulum itself is split into two parts; playa y pueblo - beach and old town, with just a short bike ride between them. Despite the white sands being a veritable haven to the tanned and toned, I found that its charm lay far from the luxury beach hotels but in its deep rooted history with mayan ruins dotting the town’s horizon. Leaving our Cinta in the old town, the three of us were soon out of Tulum, wheels beating the tarmac, scrubland on either side of the road and the hot mexican sun beating down with the scent of caribbean sea in the air and Carmen’s constant chatter in my ears. After 20 minutes or so, Raúl led the way down a dirt track leading to an enclosure in the jungle fronted by a cliff face with a rickety staircase meandering lazily up its facade. Leaving our bikes at the foot of the staircase, we ascended the scraggy cliff face and, in slow english, Raúl spoke for the first time that day. “This is a cenote… it means ‘water well’ in Mayan- that’s the name of our people. It’s like a cave pool. Our ancient ancestors believed that the rain god Chaak lived in these wells. I think there are even some farmers who still pray to him when they’re really desperate for rain!” By the time Raul had finished, we’d almost reached the summit of the staircase and could finally see the expanse of water stretching out below us. The term ‘cave pool’ hardly did it justice. The cenote was a vault-like cavern centred around a pool of the crystalline water. A myriad of greens and blues intermittently disturbed by pockets of lilies floating on the surface, and the ripples from the occasional vigorous turtle. The pool tapered off at one end where the water narrowed into darkness hinting at the labyrinth of caves below. A dewy scent clung to the air from the moss that crept up the cave walls, a subtle reminder to respect the fragility of the cenote’s biodiversity while enjoying the tranquility it inspired. Letting out a shriek, Carmen threw herself from the wooden platform into the water 20 metres below. Raúl turned to me and said ‘te confías en mí?’. Piecing together my broken Spanish to reply to his question, I was unsure what to answer. Did I trust him? I looked from his smiling face to his outstretched hand, took it and, together, we leapt.