La Paz

Rio Rita, August 1997, Fred and Karen, Oxnard, CA. "Water 83 degrees, viz 30 to 80 feet. Had to dive with a buddy. Crew awesome: Jose and Alfredo great (sexy, cute couple). Three days of diving just right for long weekend. Manta chose to swim with our group. We do wonderful ballet rolls with them, not touching. Another group tried to ride them and they did not want that. So they left came to us -- 2 dives, 2 full hours of joy!"

San Benedicto & Socorro Islands

Solmar V, January 1997, Fred R. Silvester, Salt Lake City, UT. "Put our names on the wait list for the New Year's week trip to San Benedicto and Socorro Islands; due to cancellations, we got the last room. The 22­hour crossing to San Benedicto was uneventful. The first two dives at the Anchorage, the afternoon we arrived, around lava piles under the boat, numerous mantas swam around and with us. The following morning, we moved to The Boiler on the west side of San Benedicto. anchoring a 100 yards from a small sea mount that comes within 15 feet of the surface and ran a stem line to the mount. In blue water over a 150 foot bottom between the boat and sea mound as many as a dozen giant pacific mantas, some with wing spans of 20 feet, played with the divers. They congregated when divers were in the water. One morning my wife and I were first in the water and, though no mantas were present when were entered, within five minutes a number of them were playing in the bubbles and swimming with us. In Yap the rule was no touching. At San Benedicto, the mantas broke that rule. The mantas loved a light clasper caress. (For divers under 17, ask your parents what this means). . . . The boat ventured to a small island south and west of the main islands, Roca Partida. Big fish action was electric. Schools of Galapagos sharks, silvertips, hammerheads. All big. Green morays in every crack, giant hawkfish, schools of Moorish idols, piles of barber butterflyfish. Drifting for the 15 foot safety stop, we encountered schools of skip jacks, horse eye jacks and Creole wrasses, with the occasional wahoo, tuna and amberjack happening by. . . . The boat has a beautiful salon, small, but nice rooms with ensuite shower and head, and a nice dive deck with camera table. The rooms have portholes at waterline (no Peter Hughes picture windows here) and a sun deck. The boat was converted from a long range fishing boat and while it has two compressors it has no air bank therefore the sun worshipers had to deal with the sound of two compressors running between dives. Divemasters are great; diving is for adults with computers, i.e. open diving on most sites with inflatables in the water at all time. Food was mediocre, at best, most of the guests left the boat the final night for dinner in Cabo San Lucas, even though diner was offered aboard. Hope the upcoming expansion to Clarion Island proves as exciting as the other destinations."

Copyright 1998 by DSDL, Inc., publishers of Undercurrent. All rights reserved. No portions of this report may be reproduced in any way, including photocopying and electronic data storage, without prior written permission from the publisher. For more information, contact DSDL, Inc., P.O. Box 1658, Sausalito, CA 94966.