What Dos Ojos is
Parque Dos Ojos sits about twenty kilometres north of Tulum, off Highway 307, down a track through the jungle. The two “eyes” are two large sinkholes a short walk apart, connected underwater by a passage of roughly four hundred metres. Between them they form one of the most photographed cavern systems in the world, and they are the reason a great many people become cave divers.
What matters for a visitor who is not a diver is that the cavern section — the part near the surface where daylight still reaches — is snorkellable. You swim it with a mask and a life jacket, over water clear enough that the sense of depth disappears entirely, past stalactites and columns and shafts of light. No certification, no tank, no training.
Two sinkholes, two different swims
The first is the brighter and busier of the two, with the wooden deck and the easiest entry. The second is darker and quieter, and most people who visit both say the second is the one they remember. Where you have the time, do both rather than spending it all at the first.
The wider park contains more than the two eyes. Cenote Nicte Ha, Cenote Jaguar and El Pit — the last a serious deep dive rather than a snorkel — are part of the same system, though the tours here visit the main cenotes rather than touring the park.
Hours and admission
Published hours mostly agree on daily 8:00am to 5:00pm, though one source gives a 9:00am opening and another reports a last entry as early as 3:00pm. If you are going independently, treat the afternoon as unreliable and arrive in the morning.
Admission does not agree at all. Recent reporting gives 400 pesos per person; other accounts give 350 and 200. It is cash, and paying in pesos rather than dollars is cheaper. As with every cenote on this coast the trend is steeply upward, and any figure you read online is a lower bound rather than a quote. On every tour here, admission is included in the fare.
Why the tours here are worth comparing carefully
They all pair Dos Ojos with Gran Cenote, which makes them the best way on this coast to swim a great cavern and a great open cenote in one day. They differ in a way the prices do not make obvious.
One allocates three hours at each cenote — six hours in the water, more than any other tour on this site — and runs eleven to twelve hours in total. The other two allocate two and a half hours at Dos Ojos and one at Gran Cenote, and add a guided visit to the Tulum ruins in the time saved. Neither is better; they are different days, and the water time is the thing to compare rather than the fare.
The third point is departure. Two of these tours are the same operator running the same four stops, one from Tulum and one from Cancun, and the Cancun version costs more and takes longer for an identical itinerary. If you can reach Tulum, take the Tulum departure. The same pattern runs through the whole catalogue — see costs, fees and timing.
The fee nobody mentions
Two of these tours collect a Tulum-area tax on the day, quoted at US$10 per person on one listing and US$17 on another, and one of those two contradicts itself about whether the archaeological site admission is included at all. Cenote admission is not in dispute — that is covered. It is the ruins portion that moves.
Going independently
It is doable and it is a longer trip than Gran Cenote. Colectivos run along Highway 307 and will drop you at the park entrance, but from the drop-off it is roughly two kilometres of dirt road to the cenote itself, in full sun. A taxi from Tulum costs roughly 200 to 300 pesos each way and drivers rarely wait. Parking on site is free if you drive. Toilets, changing rooms, showers and two restaurants are on site.
If you want the cavern without the walk and without the guesswork about the gate price, the tours above include admission, transport and a guide, and pair it with the one cenote in Tulum that is its equal. For how the cenotes here differ from one another, see the cenotes around Tulum, one by one.
