The Enigma of Lu’um Balam Cenote: Tragedy and the Mystery of the Air Bell

Incident Location	Diver Full Name
Mexico, Quintana Roo, Cancun, Lu’um Balam Cenote	Dimitri Chernov

Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is one of the world’s best-known vacation destinations. Unfortunately, it is also a place where tourists sometimes die in unexpected and shocking ways. One such tourist was Dimitri Chernov. Chernov visited the coastal city of Cancun in August of 2017, but to the dismay of his friends and family back home in Russia, Chernov never returned. This is the terrifying and tragic story of how Dimitri Chernov met his demise while swimming inside a Cenote, one of Mexico’s most unusual and stunning natural features.

Dimitri Chernov’s Arrival and Motivation

Dimitri Chernov was 31 years old when he arrived in the state of Quintana Roo on Mexico’s eastern coast. Chernov is something of a mysterious figure. Other than the fact that he was 31 years of age in August of 2017 and a temporary resident of Quintana Roo at the time, not much has been made public about what brought him all the way to Mexico, some ten thousand plus kilometers away from his home country of Russia. However, what may have drawn Chernov could have, at least in part, been a love of the outdoors. He chose to travel to an extremely beautiful location famous for its beaches and tropical rainforests.

The Uniqueness and Danger of Cenotes

Another very distinctive feature of the Yucatan Peninsula’s topography is its assortment of cenotes. Cenotes are large underground chambers whose ceilings have collapsed, thus giving the appearance of a huge vertical cave. These vertical caves, almost like holes punched into the surface of the Earth, are scattered throughout the Yucatan Peninsula.

Some estimates put the number as high as 7,000 or more. In addition to being enormously wide, deep, and full of beautiful fauna, cenotes usually also have fresh water inside them, making them popular swimming destinations. This also makes them dangerous, especially for tourists and others not familiar with the area, such as Dimitri Chernov.

The Ill-Fated Trip to Balam Cenote

On August 5th, 2019, Chernov and a friend traveled to a Cenote in Quintana Roo called Balam. Balam was located inside a bio park where private tours were often conducted. The Cenote is well-known for having particularly crystal-clear water, but this can be deceptive.

The underwater space below the surface is nothing short of cavernous and connects to one of the largest underground cave systems in the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re Michael Phelps or David Blaine; you cannot swim fast enough or hold your breath long enough to even begin exploring the extent of what’s below the surface. It is possible that Dimitri Chernov didn’t realize this, or it’s possible he simply made a fatal miscalculation. Either way, what happened on that day, August 5th, would cast a dark shadow over the bio park that would end up never truly going away.

Deviation from Safety Measures

Around 3pm that afternoon, Chernov and his friend entered the cool, clear waters of the Lu’um Balam Cenote. However, as investigators would later determine, Chernov ended up unknowingly deviating from the approved swimming area. Within a matter of seconds, that’s because a channel that was supposed to have been blocked off for safety reasons simply wasn’t there. There were two really good reasons why this area of the Cenote was supposed to be closed off.

The first was that it was dark. Sunlight naturally pours in from the main opening of the Cenote, but only covers the areas directly below. You don’t have to travel too far astray to find yourself in stark darkness because, after all, you are in fact dozens of feet underground. The second reason the area should have been closed off was that it went very far into this rapidly increasing darkness and very, very deep underwater.

The Temptation of the Air Bell

But if that wasn’t dangerous enough, there was arguably a third reason why the area should have been blocked off, and that was to keep thrill-seeking swimmers away from one highly tempting feature of this particular Cenote. This also happens to be the only factor that we can be reasonably sure Dimitri Chernov was aware of prior to entering the Cenote.

Almost mythologically, visitors spoke of an air bell, meaning a chamber with breathable air deep inside this forbidden section of the Cenote. Adventurers seeking to visit this rare, untraveled location deep beneath the Earth needed to swim a colossal distance of 50 meters underwater to reach it.

Chernov’s Fatal Decision

On August 5th, 2019, Dimitri Chernov’s plan was to attempt to reach this legendary air bell. The problem, in addition to this being illegal, was that it is an astronomically risky endeavor. To put it into perspective, reaching the air bell means holding your breath and swimming the length of an Olympic swimming pool. Only instead of swimming across, you have to swim down, and instead of swimming in daylight, you’re swimming in the dark. It is the aquatic equivalent of trying to leap from one skyscraper to another while wearing a blindfold. It is tantalizingly possible in theory, but the potential for disaster is tough to overstate.

Swelling with determination and captivated by visions of what the underground chamber might be like, Dimitri Chernov kept an eye on the rest of the people visiting the Cenote as he took heavy, rhythmic breaths, filling his lungs with oxygen. Then, after one final breath, he slipped his head underwater and began to swim. The question of whether or not Chernov knew he was swimming in a restricted area and to what extent he had deliberately bypassed safety measures would later become a subject of legal debate in Mexico.

The Tragic Outcome

It’s clear that Chernov was trying to reach this fabled air bell and must have realized the risks involved. But it’s also clear that the area wasn’t properly blocked off, meaning not only that Chernov wasn’t stopped from his pursuit, but that he also may well have been under-informed. As the sounds of sun-soaked activity were suddenly muted, Dimitri Chernov inverted his body underwater and began swimming the breaststroke, propelling himself as steadily and as quickly as he could.

For the average healthy young adult to swim a distance of 50 meters using the breaststroke, it might reasonably take about 60 seconds. Most adults can hold their breath for longer than that without passing out. But without training, it isn’t necessarily easy, especially if you’re swimming hard and expending tons of extra energy.

Chernov continued to swim down the poorly lit underwater world. He tried like hell to keep his mind focused without letting the rapidly depleting oxygen in his lungs cause him to panic. What happened next is hauntingly uncertain.

Some sources report that Dimitri Chernov did, in fact, reach an air bell some 50 meters below the surface, while others claim he did not find any air bell, seemingly implying that there is no air bell to find and the whole thing is just a dangerous legend. What all sources seem to agree on is that after reaching the 50-meter point where he believed the air bell was, Chernov did something startling. He continued to swim even deeper into the Cenote.

Chernov drowned, alone, well over a hundred feet below the surface of the Lu’um Balam Cenote. Attempts to recover his body proved difficult, to put it mildly. Rescue workers had to make several attempts, all trying to enter the underwater chamber the same way Chernov did before realizing the only way to extract his body was by drilling holes in the bedrock. This would allow personnel to access Chernov’s body from a different angle. However, it proved costly, time-consuming, and incredibly elaborate.

The news of Chernov’s tragic and horrifying death quickly cast a dark spell over the remainder of that summer in Mexico’s tropical paradise. Chernov wasn’t the only tourist to die in the Yucatan Peninsula that summer either. The Yucatan Times reported later that August that a total of nine tourists had died so far that season, though Chernov’s was the only death unequivocally due to unnatural causes.

Unanswered Questions

Local authorities also came under fire for the fact that Chernov was able to access this supposedly off-limits area of the Cenote. Local publications such as the periodical Notikaribe said that the bio-park might be held liable for Chernov’s death. Today, the Lu’um Balam bio-park is permanently closed amid tragedy, legal woes, and the rest. The fundamental mystery appears to remain unsolved. Is there an air bell underneath the Lu’um Balam Cenote or not? Perhaps the risks of finding out are simply too great, and now that the park is closed, we may never know for sure.

Before your next dive, consider insurance – it’s like having a dive buddy for unexpected challenges. Dive safe, dive covered. Explore options here

FAQ