This was my third trip to La Paz, Mexico, a quiet town in the middle of Baja California Sur, the peninsula that extends into the pacific starting right South of the border with California all the way to Cabo San Lucas, a famous destination for party goers throughout North America (and probably more). Contrary to Cabo, La Paz is on the Sea of Cortez, the band of sea between Baja and the mainland. It is a well protected area that teems with life. It has been a very popular dive destination for its famous sea lion colony of more than 600 individuals on a very small set of islands, about a two hour boat ride from the city. It is also known for its congregation of whale sharks that come to feed a few miles off the city's marina. More recently, dive operations have started to organize mobula ray night dives, just like Hawaii does with mantas.    

This time over though, the trip was quite different. First we decided to not fly from the US but to take advantage of our proximity with the border to actually *walk* to Mexico and leave from there. This way of traveling, avoiding the busy LAX airport or the expensive SNA, has become very popular with divers who want to go to diving locales in Mexico fast and cheap. With the Cross Border Express (CBX), you park your car on the US side and cross a bridge walking directly into Tijuana airport. The formalities are mostly online and our crossing from parking to our gate took about an hour. It can take way more though, depending on how busy CBX is. We showed up at 7:30am for a 9am departure on a Sunday and we had no problem.    

The other main difference is that we chose to travel mid-November, when the weather is mild and the water still warm. On my first trip in April, I had to wear my 7mm and nights were quite chilly. On my second trip in September, it was hot and humid all day and night and water was almost too warm for a 3mm. November was perfect. I added an old 7mm shorty to my 3mm for the night dive, but the rest of the time I was just fine with my 3mm alone.   

Another big difference was that I had decided to not shoot flash on this trip, just use the light provided by my two 800 lumens video lights attached to my Canon camera with loc-line coolant hoses. The setup is small enough to qualify for "compact" but it's unarguably bigger than my point-and-shoot alone.   

The last and probably most important difference was that contrary to all my previous trips there, the sea lions actually showed up. Big times. On all dives at Los Islotes (4 out of the 10 total on this trip), we had sometimes a dozen sea lions at the same time and there was no real stretch of the dives when there was no pinniped in sight. We all had a lot of interaction with these playful animals, some more than others with a few bites here and there, or a GoPro snatch and grab... All in all, awesome encounters with some very good organization to get the best of the light filtering through the surface in amazing rays as a great bonus.   

On the other dives outside of Los Islotes, we were greeted with an abundance of fish life that I have seen only surpassed in remote areas like the Galapagos. On one dive site, we spent most of our dives hovering in the middle of giant bait balls. It was a blast. Post processing these pictures in black and white gave very interesting results, but that could be the subject of another blog entry... 

So, yeah, I started shooting P mode only, but sea lions are fast, so I defaulted back to Tv 1/125s, cranking it up to 1/1000s for sunrays situations. Lots of video as well on this trip, so instead of just one clip as usual, I had enough good footage to make two this time. Enjoy!
   

                                          

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