Cozumel, Mexico: Off-road driving to Jade Caverns

The off-road dune buggy drive and Jade Caverns: a full and fun day with a bit of everything.

We booked this shore excursion through Royal Caribbean and it offered great value for the price. The tour tried to cram in as much stuff as it could in a few hours: from holding alligators, to jumping into a cenote, to driving a dune buggy through different terrain.

Once a bus brought us on-site, we were given a safety briefing and instructions on how the vehicles operated. They fitted us with helmets, and gave us bandannas to wrap around our noses and mouths. Then, they gave us the opportunity to hold some animals they kept: they had an eagle, a snake, an alligator and a parrot. Definitely not something we were expecting! We were then taken to the dune buggies, which did not look to be in great shape! However, they were all functional and we were on our way.

The roads were very, very bumpy! The vehicles did not provide any shock absorption whatsoever, and the roads were made a big rocks. Fortunately, it wasn’t so bumpy as to make it not fun–we definitely had fun. We first drove for a good 15 minutes before arriving to Jade Caverns. There, we disembarked and jumped into the cenote. It was a fun pit stop. After drying up for a couple of minutes, we were on our way again on the dune buggies. We drove for what must have been at least another half hour, after which we had another stop to hike a bit in the jungle. After that, we were back on the vehicles for about another half hour, during which, in addition to the many curves and straightaways, there was one big jump, and another spot with deep mud. You can see some of our (very shaky) video below:

The jump was quite a lot of fun. Although it may not seem that big in the video, in real life it definitely gave us a rush. We also lost control after landing and managed to crash into a thorny bush / tree from which I emerged bleeding and scratched up. Fortunately it wasn’t so bad. The best part was when we sped through a pit of mud. The only downside was that we had to throw our shoes away after that.

The off-road driving and Jade Caverns excursion was definitely a lot of fun. We highly recommend it! One tiny negative: the photos we bought from them were very low resolution unfortunately.