Posted by SLANG on November 02, 2001 at 12:22:37:
In Reply to: Sea of Cortez trip report posted by Ken Kurtis on November 02, 2001 at 01:23:15:
Nice report Ken. Sorry we missed you. We were scheduled to be in La Paz the weekend Juliette hit, but obviously had to reschedule; so we just got back this past Tuesday.
We only had 2 days of diving and were land based so we didn't catch all those great sites you did. We did, however hit a few of the same highlights: Los Islotes and La Reina. We also hit El Bajito, La Renita and all the way down the backside of Isla Cerralvo to a place they called Punto Lobos. Great place for mobulas. They were shooting out of the water, up to 10 ft. into the air, all around the boat.
At La Reina we had the good fortune to meet up with what sounds like the same manta you saw, the one with the bilateral remoras. He only stayed a little while, but then returned about 5 minutes later with a friend. The second one was mostly black, and was the slightly larger of the two. Always such an impressive sight.
Of course you just can't catch everything. We weren't on the boat to El Bajo where they swear they saw 20+ hammerheads; and even though we cruised right through there that day, the guy on the plane back swears they spent 20 minutes with a whale shark off Lighthouse Rock on Sunday.
This was our first time diving with the Cortez Club - very high marks for James and the rest of the crew. They have really great boats that get you out to the distant sites in a very tolerable amount of time. The conditions were excellent, although we never had anywhere near the viz you did. I don't think we had anything over 60'. Still, it was vintage Sea of Cortez: sunny and hot; 80f water; and that interesting combination of Calif. rock reef formations and tropical fish; and of course the big stuff.
Hope to see you out there.
SLANG