Hello:
First of all, La Paz, Mexico is a wonderful. The people are friendly and very helpful.
We did not stay at Club Cantamar, we stayed on the north end of town at El Moro. The people at El Moro were the best! Carlos and Natalie and Jesus, at the front desk were very helpful in suggeting places to eat, things to do, calling cabs and helping us get to the airport, since Club Cantamar decided that, even though they had our airline schedule from our travel agent and I personnally handed them a copy of our airline schedule and we paid to have them drive us, they forgot to put us on the schedule to pick us up.
The diving was great! We were told viz was much better then the weeks before. El Bajo was the coldest. Had temp's in the 70's and viz was maybe 20 feet. Water was green. Felt just like diving in the Great Lakes. The other sites were warmer and viz was better. Some sites had strong currents. One dive was aborted when my husband and I jumped in and were immediately swept to the tag line at the back. Getting all the way to the bow line was not going to happen.
Okay, now on to the diving operation. The best way to decribe Baja Diving at Club Cantamar was disorganized. There were only two boats and about 30 divers/snorklers and every morning it was the same thing. The dive masters had no idea which boat they were on or even if they were going out. They would get on a boat to help you and then told to get off and stay behind! We never got out on time, something always came up: Needed to fuel up the boats, nice to walk on the deck and step in diesel fuel; needed to get the food, can't find the dive master and/or captain. etc.
Another thing that was very annoying was running errands for the dive operation.Yup, we had to adjust our dive itinerary in order to pick up a couple who could not take staying on the live-aboard another day. (that's a whole different story). We needed to be in their area at a certain time. Also, we had to tow a small boat out to a TV/reasearch crew. That was just too funny. The tow rope broke three times before they decided that maybe this was not a good idea and someone should just drive the boat. We were not happy that our diving was dictacted by the dive operations errands.
Next, the boats. The Realidad was slowwwww.. By the time we left the dock, usually around 8:50 instead of 8:30 and got back, it was after 5:00! Then we had to clean our gear and wait for a drive back to our hotel (another fun issue). We were getting back around 6:00. Made for a long day. Fortunately, we did get moved to the slighly faster Siempre Si. If you are looking fast boats, they aren't here. They had water, with floaties and pop. Between the first and second dive we had fruit and cookies. Between the second and third dive was lunch. Note: Eat your potato chips below deck unless you want to lose them. The food was okay. When you are hungry, you'll eat anything. There was usually plenty until the last day. Only one boat went out with a larger amount of people and I think that was not taken into account. Ran out of pop and there was not enough food for seconds.
Sorry this is long. I just want to quickly mention the dive masters/guides.
The captains were great! Jose was a nice guy. He can really drive a boat! Got us right with the dolphins for some nice pictures. Also a pretty good cook.
Now, hang on to your seats, one of the dive guides actually grabbed a porcupine fish and made it puff up! Then he let it go and grabbed another one! He started to violently rub it! The poor little fish looked terrified. He finally let it go and the fish could barley move it was so shaken up! He would grab the coral and try to grab animals out of their homes. We knew he was doing this so we could get pictures, but we were so disgusted that there was no way we would ever condone his doing this for the sake of pictures. We took off and left him hoping that, without a captive audience, he would stop. Nope, he proceeded to WALK on the reef! Yup, stood right up on it and walked!
The rest of the dive masters were okay. Some very helpful and some just did their job.
I know this is long. If you want more info, let me know.
