La Paz

After a three hour bus ride from Cabo San Lucas on the 31st October we arrived in La Paz. Shaun chose the hotel as it was his birthday. Once we had checked in we both realised how bad this place really was (see pictures below). This place certainly could have done with a paint job and a good wash down. This has to be the worst place that we have ever stayed in! What a birthday treat!? We were both grateful that we had only paid for one night so we could check out the following day.

On top of the delightful hotel we both fell ill with travellers belly. As a result we spent three days close to a toilet in the hotel. At least we had upgraded to something with aircon and cable T.V. By the 3rd we were both feeling a lot better and ready for our diving trip. The first dive site was El Bajo, where you can see schooling hammerheads. This is a deep dive (30-40m) so we could only stay down for 20/25 mins. We had no luck on the first dive so moved on to see the sea lions. This was a fantastic dive, one of the best we have done! The adult sea lions would swim around you as if you weren't there but the babies were really playful. We spent about 40 mins hanging around a cave were they were playing with us and got some fantastic video footage. One pup seemed to take a particular liking to my fin and had a good chew. The other group that had stayed on at El Bajo told us that they had managed to see 60-70 hammerhead sharks on their second dive so the second day we decided to go back.

The second day's diving we decided to do a three tank dive to increase our chances of seeing the hammerheads. We were lucky enough to see 5-6 on the first dive, although due to a particularly bad mask that kept fogging up Shaun only saw about 2 of them. We had hoped to do another dive here but due to bad winds and sea conditions we had to move on. The second dive was at a ship wreck from WWII and the third was on a reef. There were a lot of jelly fish and we both finished our diving with a number of red rashes over our body.

We had no luck finding the whale shark but we are hoping to have more luck in Belize. We did however find some dolphins and a fin whale. We jumped in to try and swim with the dolphins however they were too quick for us.

After 4 days of eating and drinking nothing but bread an water our bodies were now ready for food. We celebrated with Chicken and Mash potato. You wouldn't believe how good it tasted!

For some good video and photos of our diving in La Paz, click on the link below:
http://shaunandjo.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album02&page=6