San Carlos, Son, MX over Labor Day

Hola!

Beautiful, uneventful drive down on Thursday, the 2nd. Temp was 101 and OMG muggy!!!

Had a storm blow through south of us Thursday night, and it brought up the surf and ruined visability for the Condo Pilar and Condo Delphin on the east side of the bay. The vis was less than a foot for up to 30 meters from the beach, then it went to about 3'. There were gobs and gobs of green seaweed, of that Christmas-tree-angel-hair texture, that made the closest-to-shore distances a fun challenge. Since there wasn't much to see (Dolphins didn't come out Friday morning! :shocked2, I made up and ran a nav course.

Friday was much cooler due to the high cloud cover and lovely breeze.

I'll be going out with El Mar on the Pesquita (sp?) tomorrow, and meeting w/Seaduced and his wife (out of Tucson) on board.

Another tremendous storm Friday night, with a lightening and thunder display to go with it. It rained buckets but was bright and clear the next morning.

Went out on El Mar's Pesquita, a 20-Pax boat, for a two-tank dive at the San Pedro Island. The island is about 12 miles out, and drops out to the ocean floor so there are walls and rockslide areas. There was a nice breeze, so the flies than hang around the pelican poo in the rocks were not bothering as much as usual.

First dive was South point, a most excellent dive. Saw 9-10 eels from about a foot to 7 feet long. Stone fish were everywhere, and one was an exceptional orange color I hadn't seen before. Most were the standard green and gray. There were also a half dozen puffers from 6" about to10" long. Mostly, schools of aquarium fish and some really large angel and bat fish.

My camera battery died . . . Hey, Canon, why don't you give more than 10 minutes warning on a low battery? We were down 51 minutes to a max depth of 81, averaging around 60.

The second drop was the San Pedro Window. This dive was ho hum as there just wasn't much wildlife out there this time. We did have a bull sea lion check us out but it was just a perfunctory look-over. This dive was 55 min to a max of 51, but averaged about 35fsw.

Nitrox is expensive here in San Carlos, with Gary's dive shop the only game in town; he charges $25 per bottle.

I did finally catch up with my Sierra Vista AZ ProTech scuba friends on the Shark Dive II. They are completely full, darn it, and are doing 3-tank dives. Phooey. I love those guys.

An excellent dive day in spite of a few incidents. Everyone was ready to go by five until 8am, except for one pair of snorklers that didn't show until 8:30.

Again, we head out to San Pedro Island, an hour away. We had some thrills on the way out as someone saw a whale breach, but the rest of us just saw him blow. Then a large pod of dolphins decided to play jump the wake, and we were entertained for about another 15 minutes.

Water again was quite clear, 84-86F. Visibility was in the 50+ yard range. We went to the Lighthouse site, which was destroyed some years ago, so it's really the lighthouse base. The same Phoenix folks were on the El Mar boat. El Mar charged $99 for the two tank dive, which is $15 more than the other locals and I didn't see what the extra got you, but it's a good op for all that. They went back out for a night dive but as I had a guest I couldn't leave her again.

I dived the Phx group, buddied with Evan who has a perfectly lovely form and was very attentive. I must unhappily confess I wasn't so good as I would get focused on looking for things and floated into him a few times.

The second dive was back to North Point as the sea was getting a little sporty. There we saw about six more boats -- a very popular spot! My Sierra Vista LDS was there - ProTech Scuba on the Shark Dives II. I couldn't commit early enough so I couldn't go with them and they were doing 3 tank dives.

Again, North Point was teeming with life; eels, stonefish, sea lions, stonefish, puffers, stonefish, . . . did I mention stonefish? Some were lime green . . . really cool. I saw more spotted eels than usual, most excellent!

We had one 'set' of three on the boat, a young man, his girlfriend, and the girlfriend's grandpa. The original story was that grandpa was too tired to swim up-current to our boat, so he climbed on Gary's Dive Shop boat. We had to wait until all their divers were up to collect him from Gary's. It didn't add up -- surely after a rest he could swim over?

When we finally married up, he comes aboard with O2. He had taken off to the 'deep' side to see the big fishes, and the young man said that he just kept going deeper and deeper - he was able to finally catch him at 126fsw and bring him up. The old man went OOG and they shared on the way up. At first, the story was they blew the ascent, but the computer reported no alarms so the young man did well. However, grandpa had tingling in his forearms and fingers so they put him on O2. He was not sent to the chamber.

There was another young lady on her 3rd dive since certification. She decided she wanted to explore, and her dive buddy was lolly-gagging, so she took off on her own. . . . Wow, what are they teaching in OW these days? That particular bunch of the Phoenix folks, not associated with the people with whom I dived, were out partying until 4am the night before. Wow!

Afterwards, my sis and I joined Seaduced and his lovely wife at a friends' house for a BBG . . . bunch of divers and snorklers talking about diving! What a great time!

Beach dive tomorrow . . .

Jax,

So the drive down is pretty easy going even with all the weird stuff going on in MX these days? Reason I ask is that I'm looking to go down to Gary's the first week in November, but was somewhat concerned about all the crud going on south of the border. Did you drive down then?

Thanks,
N2Deep

N2DeepInAz:

Jax,

So the drive down is pretty easy going even with all the weird stuff going on in MX these days? Reason I ask is that I'm looking to go down to Gary's the first week in November, but was somewhat concerned about all the crud going on south of the border. Did you drive down then?

Thanks,
N2Deep

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No prob! You take the frontier route, right? No traffic, and saw federales only once. Now, if you happen to stop in the drug-dealing areas of Nogales, all bets are off!

San Carlos has done an excellent job of fixing up, but they are still working on the bridge near the marina. No traffic issues.

The municiple guy is paying attention to [-]us[/-] you speeders. Pay attention!

As for the downtown Nogales border crossing, my friends with their SENTRI pass report zero problems as well. I'll find out next time, because I just got mine!

Ok, so one last question before I depart...How's the cell phone service in San Carlos for Verizon, if any?

Can't speak for Verizon. Sprint sucks, though.

I have verizon and we go to San Carlos regularly. Phone works fine. I typically turn it off once I leave Nogales. May turn on again around Hermosillo and then back off until San Carlos. If you dont get international plan then they will nail you 99 cents a minute I think. But you can use wireless at Marina Cantina and other places if want to use it to go on line.