New Adventures of DJ and Cheri: Diving in the Southern Baja

The best snorkeling and diving is up in Cabo Pulmo, home to the only living coral reef on the west coast of Mexico. You can drive 10 minutes north to get there, or you can use the aluminum boats or sea kayaks at Villa Los Frailes. We had some great snorkeling at Mermaid Bay (Playa La Serrita on the map). This bay was about a 15 minute boat ride from the villa. There we observed eel, turtles, various puffer fish, schools of Barracuda, and numerous other kinds of tropical fish. Visibility was about 50 ft. Water temperature was probably about 77 degrees. It was perfect with a 3mm wet suit, but you could get by with nothing. About half way between Cabo Pulmo and Villa Los Frailes is a sea lion colony. We took the aluminum boat their twice, once for snorkeling, and once for diving. The sea lions are extremely friendly. They seem excited when you come to swim with them. They are swimming all around you, blowing bubbles and barking in your face. Stay upwind of their rock if possible, because they smell pretty bad. We also dove El Isoltes off of the aluminum boat. This was a very nice dive, teaming with marine life. The usual tropicals were there, as were several large eels and an impressive vertical wall of coral. I highly recommend this dive. Just go down to about 70 feet and slowly circle your way back up to the surface. It couldn't be easier to navigate. Below are some pictures from the dives at the sea lion colony and Los Isoltes.

In addition to diving on our own, there are three dive shops in Cabo Pulmo that you can choose from if guided diving is more your cup of tea. All the diving is from pangas which are basic fiberglass boats with outboard motors. Cabo Pulmo Beach Resort has a dive shop. This is where we rented our tanks from. Rafael was extremely helpful telling us where to dive and anything else you needed to know about the area. Unfortunately we didn't get the opportunity to dive with them. Our one experience with boat diving was with Cabo Pulmo Divers. We booked a two tank morning dive on a moderately windy day. The guide was sick, so we opted to just dive on our own with pre-dive briefings. The seas were very rough. Our first dive was at El Bajo De Los Meros. This reef is the most northeasterly dive on the map above. Is a reef at a depth of about 65'. It's about 35' wide and 300' long. There are several cracks, crevices and overhangs that support all sorts of marine life and coral. There were huge grouper and pargo hanging out on the fringes of the reef. The highlight was probably the schools of porcupine puffers. I have never seen porcupine puffers in schools out in the open like this. They were everywhere, and they were just hovering in place, right out in the open. Visibility was only about 30 ft. The swells got the best of us on our surface interval, and we weren't feeling too good before the 2nd dive. The 2nd dive was at El Cantil. This reef structure was more varied than our first dive, with small canyons everywhere. The coral on this dive was more impressive than at El Bajo. Unfortunately, the air was not too good. We both felt a little nauseous about 15 minutes into the dive and decided to go up a little early with about 1200 lbs left over. We didn't feel too good the whole way in to shore. The people at Cabo Pulmo Divers were very nice, but the bad air wasn't very pleasant. Give Cabo Pulmo Beach Resort a try. The other dive shop was Pepe's Dive Shop. They are supposedly top notch, unfortunately Pepe was out of town during our stay.