Elephants spray tourists with water in celebration of the Songkran water festival in Thailand's Ayutthaya province, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Bangkok, April 9, 2014. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EFE)

Giraffes doing the splits to get a drink of water from the watering hole at the Zimanga Private Game Reserve in South Africa on March 31, 2022. (Photo by Hendri Venter/Animal News Agency)

A cenote is a natural phenomenon, a sinkhole in the Earth’s surface. The Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico has an estimated 7,000 cenotes because it is primarily made up of porous limestone. For millions of years, rainfall slowly ate away at the limestone and a huge system of underground caves and caverns was formed. Many filled with water from rain or from the underground water table. When the roof of a water filled cave collapses, a cenote is born. The water found in a cenote may be fresh water, salt water, or both. Structurally it may be completely open, like a lake, almost completely closed with just a small opening at the top, or somewhere in between.

A woman sells Cuban Communist Party (PCC) official newspaper Granma with a picture of former Cuba's President Fidel Castro at the front page, at the main touristic road in Havana, Cuba, September 14, 2016. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

Iraqi army soldiers attempt to move their truck stuck in the mud near the village of Al-Boutha al-Sharqiyah, west of Mosul, on December 2, 2016, during a broad offencive by Iraq forces to retake the main hub city from Islamic State group jihadists. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)

Demonstrators who blocked a main road with their vehicle to demand fuel near President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's residence, argue with a police officer, during the country's economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka on June 29, 2022. (Photo by Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)

Performers in costume wait to take part in the carnival on the main Parade day of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London on August 29, 2022. London's Notting Hill carnival celebrates Caribbean culture, at a carnival considered the largest street demonstration in Europe. (Photo by Susannah Ireland/AFP Photo)

Early-risers take part in an exercise program at dawn in Bug Light Park, Wednesday, September 20, 2023, in South Portland, Maine. Most of the state is enjoying a pleasant, dry stretch of weather that should last through Saturday. (Phoot by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)