One of the best places for diving and spending some awesome vacations with friends and family. Most of Los Cabos’ beaches are great for strolling and sandcastle-building, not for swimming. That’s because the surf is often rough with a strong undertow and currents. Most bathers at Los Cabos’ resorts enjoy their ocean views from the pool.
The best beach to have some fun is Cabo San Lucas’ Playa Medano, a two-mile strand with relatively calm waters. Popular resorts line this beach, and cruise daytrippers come in droves, so the shores can be crowded. The beach that’s a bit more calm is Playa Palmilla, near the One and Only Palmilla Resort. Depending on the season, we’ve managed to get in the water almost to our waists, but the undertow can be strong. Pools are the safest places to swim in Los Cabos, especially for children.
Established in 1995, this marine park, situated 40 miles north of San Jose del Cabo, contains the only hard coral reef in the Sea of Cortes, as well as the wreck of a Mexican fishing vessel that went down in 1939. The 14 dive sites as well as Mermaid’s Cove, an excellent snorkeling spot are less visited than the sites closer to Cabo. Turtles also nest on the beaches, and a sea lion colony likes the offshore rocks.
The most noted of Cabos diving in the Sea of Cortez are the ‘Sandfalls’ and ‘Land’s End’ dive sites. Underwater sand waterfalls is the best way to describe the natural wonder that is the Sand Falls. Alongside the rocky cliffs in Cabo Bay, a sand chute collapses into a rocky cleft moving sand cascades down the chute creating amazing falls off the vertical granite wall like Niagara Falls, but with sand. Thick with gorgonians and sea fans, diving here ranges from depths of 80-130 plus feet and is suitable for intermediate divers. Schools of goat fish, puffers, eels, parrot fish and angels among lobsters, jacks, rays and reef sharks can be spotted here in abundance.
This unique dive site offers the opportunity to dive a canyon next to the seal lion colony allowing you to get up close and personal with the resident seals. Marauding schools of gamefish brought in by large schools of baitfish such as sardines and greenjacks are a quite the sight here. The gentle giants- whale sharks and manta rays are also common sighting here.
A 2 hour drive from Cabo San Lucas is the very remote but stunning Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park. The unique living coral reef on the western side of North America and int he Sea of Cortez, it’s not to be missed. A great dive spot for all levels of divers, Cabo Pulmo’s nutrient rich waters draw marine life in numbers you cannot fathom. The abundant coral growth on the rocky reefs provides shelter and food for countless reef fish. Dive sites range between 30-70 feet and have a year round visibility of 80-120 ft.
There are two wrecks to explore in Cabo Pulmo. The first a freighter named ‘Colima’ which ran aground and sank in 30-40 feet of water during a fierce 1939 storm strewing its debris on the ocean floor and the other wreck, a large tuna boat which went down in 1978. The second wreck finds itself in about 50 feet of water. Both the wrecks make for some excellent underwater photography opportunities.
With these World-class dive spots, Los Cabos has truly the best to offer inScuba diving. The chance to dive with enormous schools of reef fish found nowhere else in the world and known for encounters with large pelagics such as the whaleshark and giant mantas make this a must-dive destination on our list of dive destinations.
