Back from Cabo Pulmo

Just returned from 3 days diving in Cabo Pulmo w/ Cabo Pulmo Divers.

We stayed in a "luxury casita" which was very nice. Full sized kitchen, living room area, with outdoor patio complete with gas barbeque, hammock and upper observation deck. Entire house solar powered with outdoor private hot shower.

Was very pleased with dive operation. Dove from 20 ft pangas. A little windy the first day yet ocean was like glass the following two days with 100+ ft viz and 87 degree water (82 degrees at 60 ft). Huge amounts of fish life. Schooling amberjacks, grunts, yellow snapper as well as lobster, 3 kinds of morays, octopus, hundreds of porcupine puffers and many others. Not that much hard coral yet fish more than made up for it. Did one night dive which was great. Saw 6 foot groupers sleeping in underwater caves.

Overall, this is a very rustic place which gave it much of its charm. Only one restaurant open at the time (normally are three) plus "La Palapa" on the beach where we had the best shrimp tacos and Pacificos for lunch every day.

Turned out to be a very inexpensive quick trip from the LA area. Can't wait to return.

I'm going to post pictures on James' site (if that's ok with him).

Should the pictures be downsized to 640 pixels?

Feel free to E-mail for specifics if interested.

Thanks,

John

You know what? I've been diving in Cabo three times now (only once at Cabo Pulmo), and I've had a rotten experience every time. For Cabo Pulmo -- we had to take a van two hours from where we were staying, to a remote beach for the launch. The boat was a big canoe, and there were no facilities what-so-ever. Not the best, for a big housing with strobes.

There was algae bloom, the water was cold, and we didn't see much. The dive masters were sort of shoddy, too. We dove with Amigos Del Mar.

I must have just been unlucky.

Eric,

Your experience does sound awful. Before planning the Cabo Pulmo trip, I had read of dive operations driving two hours or so to dive there. That did not sound appealing at all given a major goal of this trip was "to do nothing and relax".

I was very pleased with the hospitality and friendliness of the dive staff. We rolled our gear a couple of hundred yards to the dive shop the first morning. After that, the staff loaded our gear onto a truck, transported it to the beach, and set everything up on the panga each morning. We just met the boat at the beach (a 3 minute walk) each day. We did initially have to get over some trust issues that our stuff was not going to be stolen. There was no rinse bucket on the pangas. I kept my rig under a damp towel between dives and straight to a sink full of fresh water at the end of the dive morning. The casita had plenty of 110v outlets for recharging batteries.

I felt the dive shop went out of their way to make sure we had a good time. The night dive was put together last minute per our request. They then made special arrangements at the "palapa" (the restaurant on the beach which is lunch only) to stay open just for our group (my wife and I and the dive staff) because we expressed that we were getting sick of "Nancy's" (The only restaurant open for dinner while we were there - very good food but not every night!!!).

All in all, good trip. We're experienced travellers (Coz, Belize, GC, BVIs, Hawaii, Fiji, Bahamas, others), and I thought the amount of fish life here was probably the most I'd seen.

Downsides: Very hot outside. The fans in the house made it only "tolerable" during the day. Fine at night. Very limited food options. Only one restaurant for dinner open and only that one and the "palapa" for lunch (although the food on the beach was fantastic and cheap). The casita had a full kitchen with BBQ outside, but we did'nt know to stop at a market on the way. We had no rental car. There was a small store that had only a few staples. Nothing else to do but dive and relax. The dive shop had ocean Kayaks but we were too lazy for that.

I just started printing up and going through my pictures. Hopefully I'll get them posted somewhere soon.

John