Diving Baja

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!

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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:

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and this is one of the restaurants:

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More pictures from our trip here

San Jose del Cabo

A few weeks ago we went to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico with our good friends Howard and Aty.  We stayed at Club Solaris, an all inclusive, time share resort in San Jose del Cabo where they had some coupons.

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I was suspicious of all inclusive and time share but it turned out to be great.  Howard and I dove with Sea Lions, we all went on a humor safari and a snorkeling cruise.  We ate a delicious meal in a beautiful setting at Tequila in San Jose Del Cabo which is a lovely town.

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on the last day we saw a Mexican Independence Day Parade that was marvelous.

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We saw a whale.

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Party Animals

One of my tasks was to find five things about Mexico that are better than the USA.  I did find them and you can read all five here.

More Photos on Flickr

Tecate Map Exhibit

I just got some pictures from the opening of the Changing Boundaries map exhibit in Tecate.  The opening reception was very nicely done the food and the drink were excellent and plentiful.  And the exhibit looks wonderful.

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Simon shows where Santa Fe is

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Magda, Lupita and Simon

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Zella is second from the left.

Zella Ibanez who is married to Hernan, the handsome man in the hat to her left, was the prime mover on the event.  Magda and Lupita did all of the detail work to make it happen.  I was able to bask in the reflected glory.

Life is Good!

Bahia de Los Angeles the Back Story

I’ve written four prior posts about the trip Howard and I took to Bahia de Los Angeles and if your a glutton for punishment or really want to learn about this marvelous place you can find links to all of them here.

But not everything I find interesting fits into four neat categories.  These are the other impressions:

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Lots of bird.  Especially “endangered” brown pelicans

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Beautiful desert-scapes.  This one is La Ventana.  The Window

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Roadside Art

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Cats in town.

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The dive shop

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Barone the boat captain caught a yellowtail.

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A blue footed booby.  Lots of birds.

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Excellent companions.  Barone, Howard and Ricardo

Diving in Bahia de Los Angeles

We went on three dives with Ricardo Arce the owner of Ricardo’s Diving Tours.

email: ricardoarcen@hotmail.com

Telephone: 011 52 (200)124-9262

He is a great dive master and I recommend you contact him for your trip to Bahia.

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We saw a million (or more) fish

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This was not a coral reef but the bay was teeming with life.

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Including lots of what we think of as reef fish.

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Visibility was about 40 ft

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This is a creature that seems to be somewhere between a starfish and a crinoid.  We saw it clinging to the little bits of coral that grow in the bay.

The water was about 80 F most of the time but there were serious thermo-clines where the temperature dropped into the low 70’s.  These are the first underwater photos I have ever taken.  I used an Olympus camera and housing I borrowed from Mark Z.  I wanted it to document that we actually did swim with the whale sharks.  And it worked (see the whale shark blog post)

See all of the Bahia de Los Angeles photos on Flickr

All of my Bahia de Los Angeles posts

Tecate Map Exhibit Opens Tonight

After a busy week of preparation the Tecate opening of the Changing Boundaries map exhibit is tonight.  I spent Wednesday in Tecate getting the maps hung and the exhibit looks great.  One of the wonderful things about maps is that they are art, they tell history and they transmit information.  All in an accessible format.

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Read more about the exhibit on the Changing Boundaries web site.

Continue reading “Tecate Map Exhibit Opens Tonight”

Bahia de Los Angeles

Like any self respecting port town Bahia de Los Angeles, where Howard and I went diving last week, has:

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a Museum

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some public art

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some hotels

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a good restaurant

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a downtown

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and a dock.

The only difference is a matter of scale.  For instance the commercial dock is a semi trailer full of ice buying squid from the fishermen in pongas, the restaurant is the best in town because it is air conditioned and in the town itself only the main roads are paved or graded.

In defense of Bahia de Los Angeles.  It is beautiful, all of the people are friendly and they have whale sharks.

Life is good

The Bahia de Los Angeles Album on Flickr

All of my Bahia Blog Posts

A Cactus Forest

It is about a nine hour drive from the border to Bahia de Los Angeles.  About a third of the trip is along the fertile coastal plain with farms, vineyard and tourism industries.  Then you go inland and about a third of the trip is through what can only be described as a Cactus Forest.  It was remarkable.

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There were lots of cacti that looked like Saguaros

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and some that looked like telephone poles with paint brushes on top.

Nurit tells me that they are Boojum Trees.

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and some that looked like large but scrawny Jade Plants

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Did I mention the very large Saguaros?

The other third of the trip was through very dry scrubby desert like the California desert on the way to Las Vegas.  The Cactus Forest alone made the trip worthwhile.  But we also had great diving with Ricardo, the town of Bahia de Los Angeles,  swimming with the Whale Sharks and the military check points.  And I should also mention driving with Howard for twenty hours and all of the great, nonlinear ideas we had.

See the Bahia de Los Angeles trip album on Flickr.

All five of my Bahia Blogs