FairyBasset
Contributor
Hi,
I had a lot of help from Scubaboarders for my Baja trip, so paying back with an update of my travels!
After much research and with much help from kind people, I realized in Baja there is no real way to get around without a car. Everywhere else in Mexico you can take buses and collectivos, but this simply isn't the case in Baja. You need a car. So I picked one up at the airport and left on my Baja adventure.
First stop was Cerritos beach near Todos Santos. Hard to find as there are no signposts! To get there I drove down the highway, through the stunning cactus desert. The highway runs along the coast where I saw two grey whales clearing their blowholes. I was so excited, I nearly crashed the car!! What a great start to an adventure.
Stayed in Villas Cerritos, which was a really good budget option (so far as you can class anything a budget option in Baja), walking distance to the beach, huge and comfortable rooms. Cerritos is for surfing and swimming, not diving.Therefore, I decided I should have a surfing lesson. After 15 minutes I wished I had a helmet plus my tank and reg. I now know, I am so NOT a surfer and so I moved on to La Paz to get back under water, as any normal person should.
In La Paz I stayed in Hotel la Perla, which was kind of awful, but was equally functional. I wouldn't stay here again, however, it was centrally located on the malecon, so I sucked it up. Went out on a day trip with the guys from Club Cantamar to Espiritu Santo and Los Islotes. The sea lions were spectacular and so playful. This was one of the most fun things I have ever done. I loved it! We then snorkeled in La Paz with whalesharks. It was my first time up close and personal, so I am sure you will understand exactly how excited I was. It was so wonderful.
In la Paz I also took time to drive north to Balandra beach (only because my dives got cancelled that day!). It is really the only beach up there worth going to and it is gorgeous. You can rent kayaks there and get some great beach food.
I then went down to Cabo Pulmo. The drive was amazing. The whole way there I saw millions of butterflies. It was so unusual. I stopped in San Bartolo and stocked up on some delicious sweet treats, that all the shops stock there. Local delicacies like cajeta caramels, sweet empanadas, fresh coconut candy. Hmmmm. I had to give most of it away, or I wouldn't have fitted into my dive gear after finishing it all!
In Cabo Pulmo I stayed in the delightful, friendly Baja Bungalows. Loved it and would highly recommend the pretty casitas. I dived with Ricardo at Cabo Pulmo Watersports.
The other guys in Baja Bungalows dived with Thierry, who you can easily find here on ScubaBoard. I think both are excellent options for guides. Definitely they know the reefs better than companies coming up from CSL or down from La Paz for the day. Thierry is very helpful if you have questions about CP, where to stay etc.
We dived in a huge school of jacks... it was about 400m wide and 10 m deep in fish, so I mean there are hundreds of thousands of Jacks and enormous groupers in this school. It is spectacular and blocks out the sunlight. It's like a limited viz and overhead environment dive!! (but it's just fish creating that environment)!
90 minute surface interval. Why? Because we had two humpback whales coming up and swimming round us for that long. The three of us in the boat were like school kids, we were so excited!
Next dive was along a reef with an outstanding number of species of fish. Beautiful big golden groupers, leather sea bass, grunts, angel fish, other reef fish etc. Fantastic to see such a healthy reef. The water was pretty chilly at 25 degrees centigrade. Would recommend a 5 mil and hood.
Wished I had stayed longer in Cabo Pulmo, but needed to get back to CSL before the next part of my adventure... Socorro islands on the Rocio del mar. Will give an update on that when I get back!
The diving in Baja, as you will often read here on SB, is not Caribbean diving. It's low viz in nutrient rich, cooler water, which means there is amazing fish and pelagic life. Divers who are knowledgable about these facts will love the variety of species and the chance to see big animals. Divers who like warm water with 100m of viz will think it is not good diving. It is, however, EXCELLENT diving, just maybe not everyone's taste.
I will definitely come back to dive Baja again. Maybe next time in a January, when I would try to get up to Mag Bay or San Ignacio to see more whales. I would also spend more time in Cabo Pulmo. And I wouldn't waste another peso on a stupid surf lesson, when I could spend that cash on compressed air.
If you go to Baja, I hope you enjoy the above and under water as much as I did.
I had a lot of help from Scubaboarders for my Baja trip, so paying back with an update of my travels!
After much research and with much help from kind people, I realized in Baja there is no real way to get around without a car. Everywhere else in Mexico you can take buses and collectivos, but this simply isn't the case in Baja. You need a car. So I picked one up at the airport and left on my Baja adventure.
First stop was Cerritos beach near Todos Santos. Hard to find as there are no signposts! To get there I drove down the highway, through the stunning cactus desert. The highway runs along the coast where I saw two grey whales clearing their blowholes. I was so excited, I nearly crashed the car!! What a great start to an adventure.
Stayed in Villas Cerritos, which was a really good budget option (so far as you can class anything a budget option in Baja), walking distance to the beach, huge and comfortable rooms. Cerritos is for surfing and swimming, not diving.Therefore, I decided I should have a surfing lesson. After 15 minutes I wished I had a helmet plus my tank and reg. I now know, I am so NOT a surfer and so I moved on to La Paz to get back under water, as any normal person should.
In La Paz I stayed in Hotel la Perla, which was kind of awful, but was equally functional. I wouldn't stay here again, however, it was centrally located on the malecon, so I sucked it up. Went out on a day trip with the guys from Club Cantamar to Espiritu Santo and Los Islotes. The sea lions were spectacular and so playful. This was one of the most fun things I have ever done. I loved it! We then snorkeled in La Paz with whalesharks. It was my first time up close and personal, so I am sure you will understand exactly how excited I was. It was so wonderful.
In la Paz I also took time to drive north to Balandra beach (only because my dives got cancelled that day!). It is really the only beach up there worth going to and it is gorgeous. You can rent kayaks there and get some great beach food.
I then went down to Cabo Pulmo. The drive was amazing. The whole way there I saw millions of butterflies. It was so unusual. I stopped in San Bartolo and stocked up on some delicious sweet treats, that all the shops stock there. Local delicacies like cajeta caramels, sweet empanadas, fresh coconut candy. Hmmmm. I had to give most of it away, or I wouldn't have fitted into my dive gear after finishing it all!
In Cabo Pulmo I stayed in the delightful, friendly Baja Bungalows. Loved it and would highly recommend the pretty casitas. I dived with Ricardo at Cabo Pulmo Watersports.
The other guys in Baja Bungalows dived with Thierry, who you can easily find here on ScubaBoard. I think both are excellent options for guides. Definitely they know the reefs better than companies coming up from CSL or down from La Paz for the day. Thierry is very helpful if you have questions about CP, where to stay etc.
We dived in a huge school of jacks... it was about 400m wide and 10 m deep in fish, so I mean there are hundreds of thousands of Jacks and enormous groupers in this school. It is spectacular and blocks out the sunlight. It's like a limited viz and overhead environment dive!! (but it's just fish creating that environment)!
90 minute surface interval. Why? Because we had two humpback whales coming up and swimming round us for that long. The three of us in the boat were like school kids, we were so excited!
Next dive was along a reef with an outstanding number of species of fish. Beautiful big golden groupers, leather sea bass, grunts, angel fish, other reef fish etc. Fantastic to see such a healthy reef. The water was pretty chilly at 25 degrees centigrade. Would recommend a 5 mil and hood.
Wished I had stayed longer in Cabo Pulmo, but needed to get back to CSL before the next part of my adventure... Socorro islands on the Rocio del mar. Will give an update on that when I get back!
The diving in Baja, as you will often read here on SB, is not Caribbean diving. It's low viz in nutrient rich, cooler water, which means there is amazing fish and pelagic life. Divers who are knowledgable about these facts will love the variety of species and the chance to see big animals. Divers who like warm water with 100m of viz will think it is not good diving. It is, however, EXCELLENT diving, just maybe not everyone's taste.
I will definitely come back to dive Baja again. Maybe next time in a January, when I would try to get up to Mag Bay or San Ignacio to see more whales. I would also spend more time in Cabo Pulmo. And I wouldn't waste another peso on a stupid surf lesson, when I could spend that cash on compressed air.
If you go to Baja, I hope you enjoy the above and under water as much as I did.
