On Monday, I took a trip out to Las Caletas, which is a private beach hideaway exclusively owned by Vallarta Adventures so no other tour company was allowed to dock there. I also went with the family here on Thursday, but today, it was just me.
This boat (a big catamaran) ride was much more of a production... we left from Nuevo Vallarta where I was literally the only person on a huge 250 person boat. Went to another dock at Nuevo to pick up more people and then went to Puerto Magico (where I was yesterday) to pick up a ton more people, filling up the boat.
The ride to Las Caletas was probably about an hour from there, with the staff entertaining us the whole way. As soon as we disembarked from the boat, Joaquim (the divemaster) and I started getting ready on the dock and then jumped onto another smaller skiff to go to the dive site around the corner from the dock. Turns out I was the only diver today. He suggested we skip wetsuits since the water was very warm (high of 92 degrees!) and he was right. There were a few chilly spots but it was nice not having to deal with a wetsuit.
He is clearly accustomed to doing dives for fairly beginners but I told him I was good to do something a bit more adventorous. He seemed nervous but I guess just wanted to try out my skills first since he didn't say anything in response to that but we wound up going to 95 feet. I got a "Low NDL" alert on my dive computer and noticed it was at 3.
For the second dive, we did just went off the dock. Was very shallow at the beginning and we passed a group doing their Discover class. Went along the beach floor and then found two ship wrecks of small boats that I wasn't expecting.
Finally saw a turtle! Apparently they're fairly rare to see here. The divemaster Joaquim got right up on the turtle and was even rubbing his back, which I don't think was a good idea. The turtle didn't seem to mind, but obviously the laws (or lack thereof) here are very different than Hawaii with not being able to get near the turtles at all. I would much prefer we gave them space.
This boat (a big catamaran) ride was much more of a production... we left from Nuevo Vallarta where I was literally the only person on a huge 250 person boat. Went to another dock at Nuevo to pick up more people and then went to Puerto Magico (where I was yesterday) to pick up a ton more people, filling up the boat.
The ride to Las Caletas was probably about an hour from there, with the staff entertaining us the whole way. As soon as we disembarked from the boat, Joaquim (the divemaster) and I started getting ready on the dock and then jumped onto another smaller skiff to go to the dive site around the corner from the dock. Turns out I was the only diver today. He suggested we skip wetsuits since the water was very warm (high of 92 degrees!) and he was right. There were a few chilly spots but it was nice not having to deal with a wetsuit.
He is clearly accustomed to doing dives for fairly beginners but I told him I was good to do something a bit more adventorous. He seemed nervous but I guess just wanted to try out my skills first since he didn't say anything in response to that but we wound up going to 95 feet. I got a "Low NDL" alert on my dive computer and noticed it was at 3.
For the second dive, we did just went off the dock. Was very shallow at the beginning and we passed a group doing their Discover class. Went along the beach floor and then found two ship wrecks of small boats that I wasn't expecting.
Finally saw a turtle! Apparently they're fairly rare to see here. The divemaster Joaquim got right up on the turtle and was even rubbing his back, which I don't think was a good idea. The turtle didn't seem to mind, but obviously the laws (or lack thereof) here are very different than Hawaii with not being able to get near the turtles at all. I would much prefer we gave them space.