A couple of weeks ago I took off for Cabo San Lucas, a small  highly Americanized tourist town at the tip of the Baja peninsula in Mexico.  That was my fourth time there and I wanted to dive again, despite a very  average experience a few years back the first time I came down there.

This time my buddy and I picked Manta Scuba Diving and we did not  regret it.

The dive operation was well run, prices were still quite high  but we were able to personalize our two tank trip with one dive on the Corridor  and one dive in the Land's End area.

I had never dove the Corridor before so it  was interesting.

The conditions were far from optimal with strong surge and  cold water (even by California's standard). But it was still a cool dive, with  plenty of critters and a nice school of Mobula Rays (some sort of miniature  mantas) swimming over us. Land's End was pretty cool too, we dove Pelican Rock.  We did not have to go very deep down the base of the pinnacle as all the action  was between 50 and 20ft. Free swimming moray eels, guitarfish, another giant  school of mobulas, colorful frogfish, California scorpionfish and more, all  that within a few dozen feet from each other!

Back home, conditions  last week-end were finally favorable to diving!

Under a cloudy sky, a group of  half a dozen divers from the fearless South Orange County Dive Club, braved a  3ft surf for two dives. A few tuna crabs were still on the beach, remnants of the recent massive washout.

The first dive was not that bad, considering the 5ft viz  and green murky water. Right after we went down, my buddies saw a giant black sea  bass. All I saw was them high-fiving underwater but they had footage to prove  the encounter... For my part, I still found a lot of critters: eels,  hornsharks, lobsters, and a ton of Spanish shawls. Must be mating season. The  second dive sucked. The only good news is that the terrible sargassum is  finally dying off. Now if the kelp could grow even faster, we may stand a chance  to get our kelp forest back!