Ik Kil

Ik Kil is a large open cenote near the town of Piste in Yucatan state, Mexico, only a short distance from the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza, whose builders and later inhabitants likely used cenotes of this kind for water and ceremonial purposes. The sinkhole formed when the roof of a limestone cavern collapsed, exposing a nearly circular pool roughly 60 meters across whose water surface sits about 26 meters below the surrounding ground level, with sheer rock walls draped in hanging vines and small waterfalls trickling in from vegetation growing at the rim. The cenote is fed by the Yucatan Peninsula's extensive groundwater network of the kind Sistema Sac Actun, already documented in this section, exemplifies at far greater scale, and its water reaches depths of around 40 meters. Long a locally known feature, Ik Kil was developed as part of Ik Kil Park in the early 2000s and has since become one of the most visited single cenotes on the peninsula, popular for swimming beneath its dramatic overhanging cliff walls. This entity documents Ik Kil specifically as a geological formation, an open collapse cenote near Chichen Itza formed in Yucatan limestone bedrock.