Private Jeep Tour: Cenotes Aerolito & Chempita with El Cedral History

Overview

Visit two named cenotes — Aerolito and Chempita — plus the historic town of El Cedral, home to the island's first church, on this private Jeep tour rounded out with a tasting of more than ten tequilas, chocolate, cacao, and regional honey.

A cenote is a natural sinkhole formed where a cave ceiling has collapsed, opening a window to the water below — cenotes were the Maya's only source of fresh water in the jungle and are considered sacred. This private tour visits two of Cozumel's real cenotes, Aerolito and Chempita, plus El Cedral, the town central to the island's post-conquest history and home to its first church, along with a tasting of more than ten different tequilas, plus chocolate, cacao, and regional honey.

Highlights

• Cenote Aerolito One of two named freshwater cenotes visited on this tour.
• Cenote Chempita A second, distinct cenote swim stop.
• El Cedral Cozumel's historic first town, with its original church.
• Multi-Tequila Tasting A tasting of more than ten different tequilas, plus chocolate and honey.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

Visit two named cenotes — Aerolito and Chempita — plus the historic town of El Cedral, home to the island's first church, on this private Jeep tour rounded out with a tasting of more than ten tequilas, chocolate, cacao, and regional honey. A cenote is a natural sinkhole formed where a cave ceiling has collapsed, opening a window to the water below — cenotes were the Maya's only source of fresh water in the jungle and are considered sacred. This private tour visits two of Cozumel's real cenotes, Aerolito and Chempita, plus El Cedral, the town central to the island's post-conquest history and home to its first church, along with a tasting of more than ten different tequilas, plus chocolate, cacao, and regional honey.

Long before El Cedral became known as Cozumel's first post-conquest town, the same ground held one of the island's oldest Maya structures — a small temple platform local researchers date to around AD 800, during the Maya Classic period, well over a thousand years before Spanish ships ever anchored offshore. Some accounts describe it as a fertility shrine, though like much of Cozumel's archaeology, its exact original purpose is more inferred than definitively documented. The settlement that grew up around those ruins centuries later — populated from 1848 onward by refugees of the Caste War of Yucatán — gave El Cedral its better-known layer of history and its modest church, still considered the island's oldest.

The cenote stops are where this particular Jeep route earns its name. Chempita (sometimes called Cenote Jade, for the green tint its water takes on from sediment at the bottom) sits in the island's central-southern interior near El Cedral and has been kept in its natural, undeveloped state by the same local family for generations — a genuinely quieter alternative to Cozumel's better-known swimming spots. Aerolito, the second stop, is a different kind of formation entirely: a brackish cave system north of Parque Chankanaab where fresh water from the island's aquifer meets seawater along a visible halocline, one of 18 deep cenotes recorded on an island with roughly 250 shallower ones besides.

Cozumel has no rivers of its own — its flat, porous limestone meant cenotes like these were the Maya's only dependable source of fresh water, part of why they were treated as sacred rather than merely useful. The day wraps with a seated tasting of more than ten tequilas alongside cacao and regional honey, a chance to sit still after a morning spent moving between jungle, cave, and colonial-era history.