The Baja Peninsula is an 800-mile peninsula of desert, beaches and plateaus that stretches all the way from the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana to the famous rock outcrop known as Land's End. It splits the Eastern Pacific from the Gulf of California (aka the Sea of Cortez) and creates countless diving opportunities on both its Pacific and Gulf coasts.

But for every mile you travel south, into Baja Sur, the sea becomes more tropical, the tourist infrastructure more developed and the opportunities to swim among whale sharks, hammerheads, sea lions and giant Pacific manta rays more concentrated. At the tip of the peninsula, you'll also find the Eastern Pacific's northernmost true coral reef, and passage to the remote Socorro Islands, an affordable world-class live-aboard destination reminiscent of the Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island.
The Sea of Cortez is often compared to the Grand Canyon of Arizona, except with more water in it!!! Once outside of the towns of Los Cabos and La Paz it is a true wilderness, not unlike the Sinai twenty years ago.
The Sea of Cortez is not easy, clear water, coral covered Caribbean diving. Currents are changeable; visibility can be low or it can exceed 100 feet; temperatures seasonally swing by maybe 20 degrees. Come in August and you will need your thinnest wetsuit, come in March and a drysuit would not go amiss. But the rewards are the opportunity to dive with big schools of fish, sea lions, mantas, huge groupers, hammerhead sharks and seasonally, whale sharks and whales.

Los Cabos Dive Sites
The Point
Depth: 65 feet.
Like the period in an exclamation point, this cylindrical rock column is the very tip of the Land's End peninsula. Washed in tidal surge and Pacific swells, the currents can be challenging, but it's a great place to spot rays--mantas and the tiny sand-dwelling bull's-eye stingrays. Have your guider show you to the lair of Anaconda, a monstrous resident moray eel. Watch the sea above you for dive-bombing sea lions.

Anegada Rock (aka Pelican Point)
Depth: 20 to 130-plus feet.
Beginners can stay on the sandy shelf as they marvel at the large schools of grunts and scissortail snapper (aka brown chromis) that congregate around the sea fan-covered rock. Experienced divers can follow the reef slope down the vertical drop-off in hopes of seeing passing manta or eagle rays.

Sand Falls
Depth: 90 to 130-plus feet.
Next to Anegada Rock, a sand chute collapses into a rocky cleft. In strong surge, the moving sand cascades down the chute and falls off the vertical granite wall like a desert Niagara Falls, an impressive display first documented by no less an explorer than the late Jacques Cousteau.

Eastern Cape
Gorda Banks
Depth: 130-plus feet.
On calm days, the water's surface over this deep seamount boils with schools of horse-eye jacks and grunts feeding at the surface. The current-swept seamount tops out at 100 feet and the visibility never gets above 60 feet, making this a site best suited for experienced divers. The payoff? It's a great place to see the occasional whale shark, hammerhead or passing school of tuna. Even if the big fish never show, you'll be engulfed by massive schools of horse-eye jacks.

Blowhole
Depth: 60 to 130-plus feet.
This near-shore reef of rocky canyons concentrates plankton and draws in manta rays. Cautious divers can use the rocky formations to hide their bubbles and sneak up on marine life ranging from sea turtles and big sea bass to snapper, king and Cortez angelfish, and Moorish idols.

Cabo Pulmo
Depth: 25 to 60 feet.
There are at least four separate dive sites on the only hard coral reef found off the west coast of North America. You'll use every second of your extended bottom time to marvel at the colours: coral clusters in green and gold, sea fans in red and purple. It's also a very fishy reef with dense and diverse congregations of tropical fish and the pelagic species that hunt them.

La Paz Dive Sites
El Bajo
Depth: 50 to 130-plus feet.
This famous seamount is a large rock dome topped by three pinnacles. Most divers head straight for the north pinnacle where you can find schooling hammerhead sharks. The drill: drop down 50 to 60 feet and swim radials out from the anchor. Chances are you'll find the sharks, but they may decide to take the morning off and dip below the thermocline to camp out on the rock and sand bottom at 130 feet.

Los Islotes
Depth: 30 to 80 feet.
The guided tour takes you through a beautiful tunnel decked out in cup corals, encrusting sponges and coralline algae. The passage cuts through the island and serves as a sea lion express route. Outside the tunnel, take a right and follow the sloping boulder terrain (watch your gauges: it gets deep out here) to the far end of the small island where big schools of barracuda or jacks can be found. You end the dive in the shallow lagoon of the sea lion colony watching pups at play as the adults lounge in the sun.

Salvatierra
Depth: 60 feet.
One of the few wreck dives in the Sea of Cortez, this former truck and car ferry sank in 1975. It's largely intact and home to a wide variety of big fish, including large snapper, balloonfish and two-foot-long yellowtail surgeonfish. Follow a dense hedgerow of yellow-polyp black coral down the port side to the twin props and rudders that explode with cup corals and encrusting sponges. The wreck is also home to sea turtles and lots of gold-spotted jewel moray eels.

Swan Reef
Depth: 30 feet..
A great way to off-gas after a full day of diving, this seemingly endless ridge of rocky reef meanders through the sand at the mouth of La Paz Bay. Loaded with tropical fish, including schools of scissortail snapper, it also boasts patches of healthy finger corals. Look inside the fingers for small crabs and colourful hawkfish. The surrounding sand sprouts cornrows of Cortez garden eels.

Loreto Dive Sites
La Renita
Depth: 30 to 60 feet.
It's a long boat ride (20 miles) to this remote sweet spot off Monserrate Island, but the payoff is dense swarms of reef fish from chromis to snapper, everywhere, all at once. The pristine, rarely dived site is shallow so you'll have plenty of bottom time to enjoy the show.

Punta Coyote
Depth: 15 to 100 feet.
Located off the north tip of Danzante Island, just outside the Bay of Loreto, this submerged boulder garden satisfies everyone from snorkeers to advanced divers. The shallow rocks are awash with sea fans and schools of tropical fish. Go deep and you'll find giant hawkfish clinging to vertical ledges and patches of black corals starting in 80 feet.

Piedra Blanca
Depth: 30 to 100-plus feet.
This well-weathered lava flow extends 250 yards into the water from Coronado Island and drops vertically on both sides to about 80 feet. Have the panga drop you down current so you can ride the wind along the walls that sprout glowing bushes of yellow-polyp black corals. At the point, you can escape the current by ducking into a sheltered sand bowl that's silly with snapper, guineafowl pufferfish and the biggest yellowtail surgeonfish and bicolour parrotfish you'll ever see.

Punta Lobos
Depth: 20 to 60 feet.
Another weathered Coronado lava flow, this one flattens out to provide a home for a year-round colony of sea lions. You could spend an entire dive watching the furry pups at play, but then you'd miss all the tropical fish action.

La Paret (aka The Abyss)
Depth: 15 to 130-plus feet.
The sheer topside cliffs of western Carmen Island plunge straight into the water, flatten out to form a brief shelf in 15 feet, then drop thousands of feet on a near-vertical slope. The wall is cracked with ledges and overhangs that shelter grunts, snapper and sergeant majors. The best stuff is between 80 and 100 feet where it's easy to lose yourself in the hunt for giant hawkfish, moray eels and the neon glow of yellow-polyp black coral. You should always keep one eye on the deep, however, for anything and everything pelagic. I was lucky enough to witness a school of 100 or more mobula rays (smaller cousins of the manta ray) swim by here--not once, but twice on one dive.

The Pinnacles
Depth: 30 to 70 feet.
A nice mid-depth second tank dive with a 70-foot maximum depth, these three rocky pinnacles are within easy swimming distance of one another. They swarm with schools of tropical fish, big snapper, sea bass, grunts and bicolour parrotfish. Despite its shallow depth, this site is also reputed to be a good place to see dolphins and the occasional whale shark.

Shrimp Rock
Depth: 10 to 80 feet.
Request this dive when the current is not running, or risk being blown off the site entirely. Located off the southern tip of Danzante Island, the tip of this small seamount rises to twin spiky peaks, and the entire dome is small enough to circumnavigate on a single tank.

Weather
Hot, hot, hot. Geographers say the Baja Peninsula is a subtropical desert (meaning it gets occasional deluges), but one look at the arid rock and cactus scrub and you might as well be in a Roadrunner cartoon. Temperatures can soar to a parched 110F in summer, but the average is more like 95F. In the winter, expect daytime highs in the low 70Fs. The sky is usually cloudless and the sun intense, so don't forget to use plenty of sunscreen with a minimum SPF of 15.

Water Conditions
There is year-round diving in the Sea of Cortez off Baja Sur, but the best time is late June to early November. The absolute best months are September and October, when the seas are flat, visibility peaks at 60 feet or more and surface temperatures hit a toasty 85F. It's still cold enough below the thermocline that most divers opt for full 3mm wetsuits.
In winter, surface water temperatures drop to 65 to 70F, so you'll need a 5mm or 6mm full wetsuit with hood and gloves. Seas can kick up to two to three feet, and vis drops to an average of 30 to 50 feet due to plankton blooms. On the plus side, gray whales and occasionally blue whales move into the sea in winter to feed and mate, increasing your chance of an encounter with Seņor Big.

The Socorro Islands
The wild, wild Eastern Pacific. Officially known as the Islas Revillagigedos, this chain of four volcanic islands (Socorro, San Benedicto, Roca Partida and Clarion) requires a 24-hour cruise from Cabo San Lucas. The islands are awash with nutrient-rich upwellings that attract a complete food chain of Eastern Pacific marine life.
Conditions, while unpredictable this far out, are generally best from November to early June. Even in calm seasons, surface currents can reach two knots and divers should expect periods of strong surge on some dives. However, you can usually find a lee somewhere along the rocky underwater terrain of giant boulders, pinnacles and lava flows. Visibility ranges from 35 to 100 feet, depending on the extent of upwellings. Water temperatures are normally in the mid-70Fs, but can drop into the upper 60Fs or rise into the low 80Fs. Divers usually enter the water directly from the live-aboard, but inflatable zodiacs are used on some dives.
Marine Life-Giant Pacific manta rays-with wingspans in the 12- to 20-foot range-are the big attraction, but the water also teems with some of the ocean's top predators: tuna, sailfish, marlin, silky sharks, white-tip reef sharks, Galapagos sharks, silvertip sharks, dusky sharks, tiger sharks and schooling hammerheads by the hundreds. Occasionally, a plankton-feeding whale shark may join the mix.
Pacific manta rays are virtually guaranteed at San Benedicto sites like the Anchorage, or the Boiler in the late morning and early afternoon when rays gather at cleaning stations to be cleaned of parasites by resident barberfish, and king and clarion angelfish. If mantas become routine, there's always the chance of spotting resident bottlenose dolphins or several hundred humpback whales, which visit from February through April.

Getting There:

There are international airports at La Paz and at Cabo San Lucas, but no direct flights from the U.K. The easiest arrangement is probably to fly to Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix or Mexico City and then take a flight into either of the Mexican airports. British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Iberia and many other airlines operate into these destinations daily. Aerocalifornia and Aero Mexico both operate several flights a day into Baja. Cabo San Lucas is a two hour drive on good roads from La Paz.

When to Go:

The Sea of Cortez can be visited year around but the diving is best July through September because the sea is warm and clear in the summer. In the winter you would need a drysuit and their will be a plankton bloom. However, it is these conditions that bring the huge concentrations of whales. So, if you want to snorkel with whales come January through March. If you want to dive, come in the summer. There is always something big to dive with in the Sea of Cortez. The Socorro Islands are best visited in the winter months when the sea is calmer.

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