Trip Report: Los Cabos / Cabo San Lucas

[Qix]

Howdy,

I'm working on a fancier personal website for scuba stuff, trip reports, etc. When I have it finished I post the link here for a more detailed report.

Was down diving out of Cabo San Lucas over the past week. Given the tourist feel and all the people on the water near Land's End I was still impressed with the diving.

I believe I did 10 dives over 5 days. The typical water temp on the surface was between 70F-72F. There was a thermocline somewhere in the 60'-80' range where the temperature dipped into the mid-high 60's.

Viz up above was probably in the 35'-50' range on the surface and really opened up down below.

I was wearing single 7mm backzip wetsuit, hood and boots. Gloves weren't needed. Stayed plenty warm. A 5/3 or a 3/2 with a good vest probably would have been good too. Some of the ladies wearing 3/2's were noticeably cold. And there was a guy from Canada who did 2 dives in just his swimsuit (friggin' nuts)!

Most of the dives were right around Land's End, The Sand Falls, Pelican Rock, etc. Lots of people in the vicinity including snorkelers, glass bottom boats, party boats and kayakers (okay the kayakers were cool). However it didn't seem to affect what we were seeing.

Spotted the largest turtle I've ever seen so far. Not sure what kind? Spotted a very nice sized Octopus that stuck around for photos/video. A few eels, countless small grouper and a few big ones. And generally just 1000's of fish everywhere. Quite different than the Carribean. We saw plenty of seal lions on the surface and they went swimming (and barking) right above us several times but given our depth and the viz, no pictures or video to prove it.

If you want to practice u/w photography just charter the boat to do two dives around Pelican Rock. The depth doesn't exceed 20' so the red filter can be flipped away. It seemed like there was more life on that small rock and it's coral than a entire reef dive in Bonaire.

The favorite dive was "Gordo Banks". All the shops said it was off season so we found a small outfit (Professional Dive Services) to run us out there. In hindsight they weren't extremely professional but they got us there and back safely and it was a fun day.

Our first dive was to 145'-150' just off the edge of the pinnacle. Saw this gigantic stingray and I swear you couldn't look in any direction without seeing 5000 fish. The water was just thick with life, many small jellyfish and other critters. No one was stung, we were all covered pretty good. We ended that dive doing deco just drifting with the current away from the rock out over blue water.

Our second dive was planned for 120' so we did a 3hr surface interfaval in the row boat (er uh I mean dive boat!) While we were all sleeping to the 3-4 waves we heard whales breach. A female humpback and her calf were coming thru. The DM had the boat captain race ahead while we dug out snorkels and the video camera. The ride was too rough to get video of them on the surface. We can with about 10o feet of them just as the breached so we jumped in and all we saw was a big plum of bubbles. So close, but the adrenaline was cranking. My kind of surface interval.

The second dive at Gordo Banks was better. We spent just a few minutes at 120' right above the rock and then moved up from there but managed to keep ourselves above it. The same thing, countless first everywhere. One very nice Manta Ray swam through. I had the camcorder on about 8x optical to catch him given the distance. The shot still turned out okay.

Our last dive day was going to be a chartered drive/dive to Cabo Pulmo but the shop canceled it which sucked.

For this trip we just stayed at a cheap hotel a few blocks off the main drag. Tried all the obvious bars, with Cabo Wabo being a favorite of mine. Lots of great restaurants both upscale around the marina and out in town.

One person in our group went fishing on two different days and really enjoyed it.

This was really a touristy type destination. Clearly diving is not the main draw to this destination. Typical boat rides out to the site were less than 15 minutes.  And the boats weren't that big. However I think I met more new friends on those short boat rides than I have everywhere else I have dove.

My only concern for newer divers is that several of our dives were dives to 120' or so along the rock wall to start out with. When the boat got back and we invited other divers to join us for lunch each day you could tell that for many this was their deepest dive.

One person in group was taking 35mm stills underwater and I was shooting a HDV camcorder. I'll try get some pictures up on my website if anyone is interested.

[Puck]

Thanks for the report.  GReat information, and I look forward to the pictures and additional info on your site.

[Shooter]

8) Thanks for the awesome trip report.   8)I have often considered going to Los cabos for fishing trips, but since I started diving they've been somewhat on the back burner.  Very much look forward to seeing your pictures that you're going to post. After reading your post I almost forgot how cold it is outside today!