Cabo San Lucas Diving

[Taath]

Hi All,

Looking at taking a week long trip to Cabo San Lucas this year; October 30th through November 7th.

Planning to try and get out to Gordo banks on at least one occasion in hopes of seeing some hammerheads.

Currently looking at three shops and looking for opinions/reviews.

First shop is Nautilus Dive Tech. If I go with this shop, I'd like to take the ANDI Technical Safeair Diver course while I'm there; however, their ANDI instructor is out at the moment, so time will tell. They offer the PADI TecRec stuff too, but for my own reasons I'd prefer to do ANDI, IANTD, or TDI.

Second shop is Dive Cabo, they have pretty good rates and some decent packages to pick from which include local, corridor, gordo, cabo pulmo, and a trip to La Paz for whale sharks. Dive Cabo also offers free nitrox, which would be highly beneficial especially out on the deeper dives at Gordo.

Last shop is Manta Dive. They seem to offer the same services as Dive Cabo, except nitrox is an upcharge.

Also, I'm pretty sure it's worth doing the day trip to Cabo Pulmo based on what I've seen/read. But what about the day trip to La Paz for Whale Sharks? I've never snorkeled with whale sharks, so I figure it would be cool, but is it really worth giving up a dive day?

Thanks all!

 

[Trevor JC Brown]

Whale sharks are definitely worth it. October is the best month for visibility and there is also the opportunity of scuba diving with juvenile sea lions in La Paz. The trips can be combined. There is a sea lion colony in Cabo San Lucas but the one in La Paz is much bigger and has a lot of juveniles which are the most entertaining to dive with.
Cabo Pulmo is also a good idea that time of year.

I would recommend this guy for your diving in Cabo.
Dive Ninja Expeditions
He'll give you straight answers about diving in that area. I know the hammerhead question is always here on scuba board, he will be able to answer it for you.
Additionally, I have personally dove with Nautilus and found their service to be quite good.

 

[Taath]

Whale sharks are definitely worth it. October is the best month for visibility and there is also the opportunity of scuba diving with juvenile sea lions in La Paz. The trips can be combined. There is a sea lion colony in Cabo San Lucas but the one in La Paz is much bigger and has a lot of juveniles which are the most entertaining to dive with.
Cabo Pulmo is also a good idea that time of year.

I would recommend this guy for your diving in Cabo.
Dive Ninja Expeditions
He'll give you straight answers about diving in that area. I know the hammerhead question is always here on scuba board, he will be able to answer it for you.
Additionally, I have personally dove with Nautilus and found their service to be quite good.

Thank you! As a sidemount diver, my confidence is boosted by their website! Didn't see any information about local dive options through them, however, I have e-mailed them to see what we can do.

 

[cruzbound]

We are heading to Cabo next weekend and diving with Manta - they have had very good customer service so far, answering my questions, booking the trips, going the extra mile since there are only two of us and we wanted to take a trip to La Paz (most of the shops want 4 divers)... We only going to be there three days so we couldn't get in everything - we are doing Cabo, the Corridor and La Paz.

We did contact Dive Ninja Expeditions and they had awesome customer service too - they will actually arrange your whole trip for you - from lodging, to diving, to transportation. They provided us a quote and it did seem reasonable, just more than we allocated to spend on this trip so we could not go with them this time but I do have their contact information for the next time we get back to Cabo.

Good luck deciding who to use. We are looking forward to diving with the sea lions in La Paz - since there are no whale sharks at the current time, we get to do two dives in La Paz - looking forward to that.

 

[Laurie S.]

I've dived with Manta three times, and highly recommend them.

 

[jonhall]

Heading there in January.

Based on what I've found so far, Dive Cabo is $10-50 cheaper than Manta depending on the dives/excursions. Both have good reviews from Trip Advisor (didn't really expect anything less.)

For whatever reason, I can only access the home page to Dive Ninja Expeditions. Tried 2 different web browsers but any page other than homepage comes in blank. Found some good reviews on their Facebook page, but no prices.

If you have a car, it might be worthwhile to check with Trevor JC Brown (Baja Connections), who posted above, and see what he would recommend (I'm interested also) as far as the whale shark snorkeling. The way it looks to me, to schedule through Manta is $245 (transportation from Manta facility to and from La Paz, boat, box lunch, soft drinks, National park fees, bottled water and guide - includes sea lion snorkel or $30 more for sea lion dive - a 12 hour day.) Dive Cabo is $195 (transportation, snorkel gear & wetsuit rental, drinks, snacks, lunch and a GoPro video (raw footage) - 10% discount paying cash - 10 hour day.) One of the websites states it is a 2 hour drive one-way to La Paz.

If you were to drive to La Paz, Dive Connections is only $49 plus 16% tax for whale shark snorkel (includes wetsuit, snorkel gear, refreshments) and $110 for whale sharks and sea lions (includes wetsuit, snorkel gear, refreshments, lunch - 8 hour day.)

 

[cruzbound]

Just some additional information to jonhall's post. Dive Cabo does not offer diving in La Paz (unless they have recently changed that) - when I was looking at them back in January this is what they told me. Also Manta also offers a 10% discount for paying cash.

We leave on Saturday to dive with Manta - woo-hoo. Just got our reminder email from them but a little hiccup on the first day on where they have us diving but I am confident we can work it out (sent them an email explaining it is wrong and they need to fix it).

Good luck deciding what you are doing.

 

[jonhall]

Just some additional information to jonhall's post. Dive Cabo does not offer diving in La Paz (unless they have recently changed that) - when I was looking at them back in January this is what they told me. Also Manta also offers a 10% discount for paying cash.

We leave on Saturday to dive with Manta - woo-hoo. Just got our reminder email from them but a little hiccup on the first day on where they have us diving but I am confident we can work it out (sent them an email explaining it is wrong and they need to fix it).

Good luck deciding what you are doing.

Looking forward to a report when you get back! Have a great trip!

 

[Dan]

Definitely you don't want to miss Cabo Pulmo when you go there. I went to Cabo San Lucas once & Cabo Pulmo 3x. Cabo San Lucas was not as good as Cabo Pulmo. You may easily see these fishes (below) in Cabo Pulmo, but I didn't see any of them when I was in Cabo San Lucas:

I highly recommended to stay & dive with Cabo Pulmo

 

[Dan]

This Cabo Pulmo sea lion was playing with me when I went snorkeling in the Cabo Pulmo marine park: