In 18 days I will be diving with the Codger Divers in Cozumel.
I’ll even have my own equipment. (hopefully) explanation to follow.
I am hoping for a sighting of the rare and endangered red sea horse.
blowing bubble with Brock Siegel
Whittaker Chambers
Last week Howard R. and I went to Bahia de los Angeles for a diving adventure and we had one. The drive down was amazing. It has rained in the cactus forest and even the Boojem trees are green.
The town isn’t much but the people are wonderful the Hotel is clean and the diving is excellent.
The Mini-Mall in Bahia
Hotel and Restaurant Costa del Sol http://www.bahiadelosangeles.info/costa-del-sol.htm
Diving and Snorkeling Ricardo’s Diving Tours http://www.bahiadelosangeles.info/ricardo-arce.htm
My YouTube video of the Whale Sharks:
We ran into a very interesting group of people on this trip. Hans Bertsch who wrote the book Sea of Cortez Marine Invertebrates was at the Costa del Sol with his side man Brian C. I bought a copy of his book and he signed it for me. The video above was made possible by the fortunate confluence of my camera with it’s simple underwater housing and two young French men who could swim really fast and wanted to take a video.
We also met some people from San Diego, Hector and Andreas, who shared their fishing bounty with us. Finally we spent an evening with my neighbor from Pasadena, Janice M., who cooked us a great meal and introduced us to the wonderful Carolina who built and operates the museum in Bahia.
Great Trip!
Sea lions that is.
Last November Howard and I went diving at Cabo Pulmo with Adriana of Saba Diving and a family from Canada. The Dad, Michael, was taking underwater photos and I made him promise to send me some. A month later he did but I missed the email with the link until last week when I was sorting old emails. There are some great photos and the spectacular video you see above. Howard is the diver at the beginning of the video and I’m the one at the end.
The other photos are on Flickr Here
So this is not my final post about the great diving trip to Fiji. I’m still going to do a post about my trip to the Coral Coast and another one about life and politics in Fiji. But this is the one with the long promised diving photos:
Rock and I sans regs
A clown fish in an anemone
Some other very beautiful fish
One of the Sharks
The group photo at the awards banquet
On the dive boat
There are more photos on Flickr click here
Thanks to Sean B and Gene B for letting me use their underwater photos. To see even better underwater photos and videos friend Frank McGinley on Facebook
This year the elusive Red Sea Horse was found and photographed by Sean Burke. Betsy King and Sylvia Burke share the honor as co-discoverers.
The Red Sea Horse sighting in Fiji
The ruse was perfectly created by Simon’s great planting of the horse, Gene B’s excited discovery and Solo the divemaster’s figuring out what was going on and playing along. Codger Dive Trips are a time when we can all be in 8th grade again
Sunset at Wananavu
The tree in Rakiraki
The Fiji coast from the dive boat
Mike got ill enough to need to go to the clinic in Rakiraki the nearby market town. There is no tourism industry nearby so I am stuck buying postcards at the resort gift shop. Not a great selection and more than a dollar (US) each. The diving is very good and the company is great.
Yesterday we saw a 5′ reef shark and a school of barracuda. The reef is fascination. Crinoids and anemones with clown fish are the outstanding residents. Pictures to follow.
This one is from Bill B. one of the Codger Divers:
This is a beautiful resort.
Wananavu Resort at sunrise
Ra Divers dive boat
They named the special drink of the day Mr B’s Downfall in my honor.
Underwater photos to follow.
Arriving at the Wananavu Resort.
I sang with the welcome committee.
Many more details to follow.
More to follow.
Howard and I did five dives in the Cabo San Lucas area. Our dive master, organizer and driver was Adriana Manjarrez a young woman from Mexico City who has set up as a private diving service. Her Company is Saba Diving. Highly recommended!
The first day we did two shore dives at Bahia Santa Maria on the coast between San Jose and Cabo San Lucas. The water was warm and the visibility was near 100 ft.
See underwater pictures of what we saw.
The second day we drove to Cabo Pulmo, about two hours toward La Paz and did three dives. All of them were great. On the first dive we went looking for white tip sharks. We didn’t see them but we did see a school of Manta Rays. There were perhaps fifty of them about two feet across all swimming together. It was awesome.
The second dive was one of the most spectacular dives I have ever had. We dove with sea lions. They played near us looked us in the eye and swam so fast it made our heads spin. A big male examined us carefully and decided that we weren’t a threat so he hung face down in the water and just watched.
I’d love to go back to Cabo Pulmo and spend a few days visiting all of the sites there. This is the harbor:
and this is one of the restaurants:
