"You can go first," he said—something we often say when entering a silty spot with someone unfamiliar with it. In cave diving, we teach that when visibility becomes poor, it’s time to turn around. We’re not supposed to progress into a passage we can't see—when we can’t gather information about our environment, the shape of the cave, or potential hazards, we risk our ability to exit safely. But cave exploration is not the same as the kind of cave diving we teach.
After completing our CCR checks and cross-checking with Jack—"My O2 is ON"—I prepared to descend. My leg cramped from kneeling too long in an awkward position on the uneven bottom of the shallow pond, the only position the pond allowed. Equipped with my secondhand Kiss Sidewinder rebreather—my best friend since 2023—and side by side with my exploration partner, Jack, I leaned forward into the brown mud of the pond. I extended my hand out of the water to follow the line he had tied to a tree the day before. "See you in there," I said. And then I went.
I hit the O2 button, anticipating I wouldn't be able to read my controller during the descent. I was right. As soon as I ducked my head underwater, branches, leaves, and mud swirled into a black silt-out. I felt the ceiling with one hand and pushed myself forward. My left hand followed the line; my right hand felt for the unknown.
I entered a small chamber where I barely fit and lifted my head. For a brief second, I saw the line descending a slope into a black hole. Above me, a tree root swayed side to side before the silt blinded me and I saw a tie-off on the ceiling. This cave had not seen many humans.
I switched hands as a sharp angle pulled the line to the left. "Jack won’t see a thing when he enters," I thought. As I progressed slowly, I hoped this muddy effort was worth it. Little did I know, this entry would become my daily bread, my happy place, my great love, my life’s work—and the feat that made me proud to call myself a Mexican cave explorer.
Jack and I have been walking the jungle, training, surveying, and poking into every hole we found for four years.
Being an Explorer
If you’re an explorer, you will explore.
I’ve seen divers come and go—interested in exploration but unmotivated to search for new caves. It's easy to join someone else's expedition when the groundwork has been done: the terrain walked, the entrances found, the first few meters of line laid.
All those years of walking without finding anything taught us how to read the ground, the water, the vegetation—and how it all reveals different terrain types, depressions, aguadas, and actual caves. But more importantly, it made us worthy of the day we did find a cave. Every drop of sweat, every Chechén wound, every stinky pond that led nowhere—that's what makes us explorers at heart and in practice.
It's All About The Team
Finding a teammate, forming a team, and trusting people—these things sound easy, but they take time, effort, and a bit of luck. It’s not enough to be friends. We also need to align our schedules, agree on financial commitments, be resourceful, share, and put the team first.
I met Jack at a dive shop in the afternoon. His bleached platinum hair and Australian accent didn’t give me any hint of how close we’d become. Being often the only woman in a group of cave divers, it wasn’t obvious that he and I would become exploration partners. But someone suggested we survey a site with exploration potential, and we started diving together on weekends—because he has a “normal” job. His motivation was contagious, and his love for caves unmistakable. We weren’t competitive; we became a team.
As his hair grew out, so did his experience, and I saw a true cave nerd emerge. He was generous with his knowledge and open about his dream to find a virgin cave. He had solid initial training too.
Diving with him was hassle-free and fun. We helped each other, laughed, and got the job done. After our first few dives, I asked him to help me make a memorial for Igor, a mutual friend who passed in Odyssey. Though the three of us never dived together, we shared the same drive. Sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if the three of us had explored Vanilla Farm together.
Vanilla Farm has brought mostly good times, but inevitably some hard days too, especially exploring the downstream passages. We’ve had to make tough decisions to adjust our already tiny team. We don’t like being separated in the water—we dive as a team. When we must split up, I can feel the shift in energy. We’ve had to ask ourselves: are we as strong alone as we are together? More often than not, we would rather change the dive than dive alone. That speaks highly of us as a team.
We split costs, plan our dives, and schedule in advance. If a dive is cancelled, there's no guilt. No negotiation. If we dive, we dive. If we don’t, we don’t. When someone is sick or exhausted, the other balances them out. We call ourselves a team, but sometimes it feels more like a unit. It's hard to imagine diving Vanilla Farm without Jack. This is also hard to explain when other divers offer to join. We love the support but when they suggest we both do separate dives, we aren’t always thrilled. Partly because we now know each other so well, but mostly because we know Vanilla Farm too, so splitting up would mean one of us would not get to see a part of the cave during the process of exploring it, that makes us uncomfortable.
Cave is Currency
The politics of cave exploration are simple but intense: everyone wants to be part of something new. A well-known explorer once told me, “Cave is currency.” People will do anything to grab it.
Managing expectations has been a recurring topic for us. What do we want for our cave? For our team?
Vanilla Farm is a fragile environment. There’s no such thing as zero impact. Even with skill and hundreds of hours on our units, we leave a mark every time we enter. We’re not ready to share the cave widely. We know that once we let a few people in, many more will follow—because it’s new, beautiful, accessible, and virgin.
We’ve mapped 30,000 feet of pristine passages, including unique features like the Coral Road, a chamber where dozens of brain corals hang suspended by finger-thin rock. We are protective. We want to know the cave thoroughly. That’s why we haven’t expanded the team yet. Selfish? Maybe. Protective? Definitely.
When cave divers are unleashed into a pristine cave with a hundred open leads, lines get laid and no passage is spared. Because cave explorers will do anything for a cave.
Being an Instructor in Exploration
A cave diver becomes a cave diver by diving. An instructor becomes a cave instructor by exploring.
Vanilla Farm lets me see my cave again and again. I notice things I did right: a good tie-off, a sharp decision, the right route. I also see the mistakes—bad line under a ledge, swimming too fast, creating a line trap. Everything I teach gets tested here. Mistakes are normal. The ability to recognize, fix, and move on from them—that’s what matters.
When I talk to students about lost line, I emphasize negligence, distraction, complacency. And I admit—I make mistakes too. In a new cave, excitement dulls your senses.
On one dive, we chose not to continue into a passage that wasn’t giving much, I assumed Jack would cut and tie the line, instead he decided to reel it in. I was ahead in a silty area ahead but had some visibility. Then I saw a black hole the size of me to the right just next to an angle on the line we had just laid. I turned vertically to peek inside, placing my light in. Meanwhile, Jack kept reeling in line and moved on past me.
When I turned back, I was a meter from where the line had just been—but it was gone. I was in a cave, alone, several thousand meters from the exit.
I stayed still, reoriented, and looked for Jack. I signaled, covered my light, and finally saw his beam. I swam to him and screamed into my loop, "WTF, Jack?" And he replied, "Where were you?"
And he was right. Self inflicted.
Cave exploration magnifies the risks of cave diving. The rules apply—but new ones must be invented. Adaptation is essential. You’re never fully prepared for what you haven’t experienced. But you can use your knowledge to solve problems. Adapt. Grow. Thrive.
The Cost of Exploration
There’s some glory in being a cave explorer—but little is said about the cost.
Vanilla Farm has required serious financial commitment. As exploration has grown, so has the budget.
We’ve laid an average of 1,300 feet (400 meters) of line per dive. We've used our Kiss Sidewinder CCRs, stage bottles, Seacraft DPVs, porters, lights, video gear, MNemos, and more.
One exploration dive costs around $300 USD and lasts between 5 and 7 hours. We've done over 20 dives in the season 2024/2025. The numbers are shocking when we realize how much we’ve spent—but we make it work. We’re blessed with support from friends, fellow divers, and local dive shops who step up when we hit snags.
I work tirelessly in cave diving training, as a new female cave diving instructor with a new business, making this the most exciting and thrilling part of my life.
Brand support is critical. We use high-end gear made for long-range exploration. We can’t compromise. Maintenance and upgrades are essential. Switching to the Shearwater Petrel 3 has made diving safer, with features like vibration alarms and air integration. The trust I have in the gear is unparalleled, this is something I am able to transmit to my students, having done thousands of dives in hostile environments, I now use this experience for my teachings too.
We’re deeply grateful to those who back us. One day, when Vanilla Farm becomes a staple dive in Quintana Roo, their support will ripple out to the global community of cave divers who come to explore this underground wonder. Just as we honor the pioneers who laid the foundation of Mexican cave exploration—often with basic gear and major logistical hurdles.
One day, a new cave diver will see an arrow that reads JRC TA 2024 and will wonder what that means.
Tamara and Jack place their 50th jump arrow on the last day of their exploration season. A huge feat for a team of two divers who have uncovered over 10km of new virgin cave in Sistema Vanilla Farm.
Being Spoiled
Becoming an explorer these days has its merits, but I stand on the shoulders of giants—as one of my mentors often says.
Explorers before us did equally long dives without rebreathers, scooters, powerful lights, trucks, or electronic survey devices. I bow to them. Every time I swim back from the deepest penetration in Vanilla Farm, I ask myself, "How did they do it?"
We couldn’t have gone this far this fast without technology. Rebreathers, Shearwater controllers, DPVs—they've opened the gates for us. They eliminate many hazards: percolation, swim times, gas limits, decompression stress, time to solve problems or delays.
I often wonder what we could do with a bigger, stronger team, and who is fit for the job.
When I walk the 10-minute path to Vanilla Farm, I think of the horses, the long hikes, the jungle camps of the '80s and '90s—no AC, no laptops, no social media. And then I go back to my air-conditioned room and plan the next dive on my laptop. We have it easy.
I feel small—accomplished, but small. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It would be foolish to waste modern tools or ignore new techniques.
I became an explorer in 2024. Vanilla Farm made me one. But I was always becoming one.
You can’t choose when you find a cave. But looking—truly looking—is what makes you an explorer.
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Written by Tamara Adame
Tamara is a self taught underwater naturalist from Puerto Morelos, Mexico. She has spent most of her life around water and is an Open Water Scuba Instructor and cave diving guide. She holds a BSc in Communication and a Scientific Diving diploma which has allowed her to work in environmental conservation projects and motivated her to launch the Cave Corals Project in 2020.
