travel JOURNALS

La Paz, Mexico, 1998

Sarah, Laura, Adam, Ashley, Susan and I went to La Paz, Baja California, Mexico for a week of scuba diving and chasing sharks. It was a great trip, the weather was hot, the water was wonderful, and we saw over 20 hammerhead sharks.

Encounter With A Shark by Susan.)

...it's dark and cold and alien as you descend beyond 70 feet into the bottomless watery midnight. When the bottom is too far down to be seen, it feels like there _isn't_ one, as if you could fall and fall and fall into the darkness and never be found. Slivers of light, like millions of cerulean moons, twinkle down dimly from above, where the darkness gradates up into shimmering brilliance toward the surface. Your mask prevents any peripheral views of the other divers around you or behind you... you know they're back there, but you may as well be the only person in the world. You aren't snorkelling, darling; you're scuba diving; and you're in Hammerhead territory. Hundreds of them are out there, and you are looking for them. Of course being predators of the highest caliber and jam-packed with sensors for detecting prey, they know _exactly_ where you are. Fortunately they are slightly wary of you, as opposed to being fond of your flavor. Since you've never actually seen one of these things in person, never really had the urge in fact, you're a little uncertain what to look for, and surely, of what will happen if you do see one. You keep feeling a little like an idiot, like standing in the middle of the 101 freeway at a sharp bend, looking for semis. When, after a half-hour of exhaustive finning into emptiness, one 6-foot freakish alien shovelheaded monster quite suddenly emerges from about 20 feet away exactly at your level and glides directly at you, swinging its bizarre snout back and forth like radar, your brain starts stuttering into a whirlwind of unfinished thoughts of the possible outcome of the next 10 seconds. But it quietly bends into a turn, passing on your left without more than a glance at your irrelevant figure. You spin around, to see your 4 closest friends experience the same exhiliarating experience, wondering what their thoughts are, if they're afraid, whether rightly so; and then the shark is gone into the chalky dimness. And that's it, your first hammerhead experience, and you're back to finning into the expanse with nothing but your thoughts to keep you company, your own bubbles the only sound, your regulator feeding you all the air you need, the weight of the water both oppressive and calming as it forces your movements into slow, graceful sweeps and arcs. The only thing that's changed is now you know _exactly_ what you're looking for.

We also made friends with a 600-lb bull sea lion (speaking of creatures that can tear you into bits), swam through a school of hundreds of barracuda and petted moray eels.

Since diving is such an intense activity, we made sure to keep on a strict schedule during our trip. Our days went something like this:

7 am - Get up
7:30 - Board the dive boat
7:30 to 6:00 - Eat, nap, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, start drinking (in that order)
6:30pm - Back to the hotel and shower
7:30 - Go out and drink some more
Repeat daily.

It's a tough life, but someone has to do it ;)

(Click on any photo for a larger version.)