Blog Post 21 - Cabo Pulmo
Blog Post 21 – Cabo Pulmo 11/12/15 23:22.82 N 109:25.38 W Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park is located on the east side of the Cape, the bulging south east Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park was designated by UNESCO in 2011 as the world’s best example of the robust recovery of all flora and fauna species after only 10 years of a strict prohibition against anchoring and fishing. Zealous overfishing in the 1970’s and 1980’s had nearly decimated the reef and its inhabitants. The Cabo Pulmo Reef is the only living hard-coral reef system on the west side of North America. The reef is not just beautiful, it is a crucial nursery for more than 80 fish species. In its warm turquoise waters there are extravagant coral and castle like formations, red fans and sponges, docile white sharks and hammerheads, extraordinarily colored reef fish mixed in with deep ocean species. You need a special SEAMARNET permit to enter the reef and must use one of the reefs certified local guides. There are 72 rules that must be followed at all times in order to dive the reef. They include bio-degradable bronzers, oils and sunscreens, no 2 stroke outboard engines 9like ours), no boat cleaning, discharges, repairs or maintenance is allowed. The town of Cabo Pulmo is really a tiny fishing village of about 135 people. It is dominated by the Castro family. As the story goes….. Back in the 1950’s Señora Castro, a single mom with an adopted son, was given 2000 hectares of land by the government to settle there. Her adopted son in turn had a large family of his own whose children and grandchildren now care for and police the reef and enforce the rules. Even though the Mexican Government designated the Pulmo Reef as a National Marine Park in 1994, they have provided no funding whatsoever to maintain it. Juan Castro’s children run the Cabo Pulmo Divers shop that has authorized guides, equipment rentals and runs panga tours out to the reef on a daily basis. There is a small school in town, a couple of tiendas (small markets) and a few simple and moderate rooms and palapas for rent for the mostly divers and backpackers that frequent the reef and the town. It is difficult to get there, most tourists do not have cars, does not have an updated website and does very little advertising. Be that as it may, it is famous in diving and boating circles. While doing research on going there, I had read about it in my cruising guidebook I found many testimonials by divers that had made dives all over the world, saying it was the best diving they had ever done. Some divers return there year after year they love it so much. There is no electricity in the town and no cell service either. They communicated by email only and that is only on sunny days when solar power is available. It is not easy to make reservations. You have to be diligent.
After a delightful afternoon spent on the beach we headed back to town. We were determined to return here as soon as possible to dive the reef. We went out to a nice dinner in town and headed back to the boat. We were exhausted. The next morning we got up and decided to take off and head for Los Frailles. The weather was still bad it was windy and the sea was rough but we were tired of sitting in the marina waiting. There was a huge debate going on in the marina amongst the boaters as to if it was safe to go around the cape. Some people left some stayed behind. Little did we know at the time we took off that hurricane Sandra, the largest and latest hurricane ever to have formed off the coast of Mexico, was on its way. More on our brush with the hurricane in my next post. One last note on Cabo Pulmo. It is not going to be a pristine, out of the way place for long. They are building a paved road for the last 25 kilometers from highway 1. With the paved road will inevitably come the resort developers? The local people fought hard against the road being built but to no avail. Soon the same interests that built Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo will be there. We hope its designation was a National Marine Reserve will protect it.
Figure 1 - Recycling bins in front of the school in the village
Figure 2- Our friends boat in the cove of Los Frailles
Figure 3 - The Cabo Pulmo beach and reef
Figure 4 -The village of Cabo Pulmo
Figure 5 - The elementary school in the village of Cabo Pulmo
Figure 6 - a whale on the fence of the school |
corner of the Baja California peninsula. It is about 75 kilometers by car from San Jose del Cabo. Since we were stuck in the marina waiting for the weather to clear we decided to rent a car and drive there. We rented a Nissan March (the cutest little car ever!) and hit the road first thing in the morning. It was nice to be driving again. The East Cape is dominated by the Sierra Laguna mountain range. The fall season had brought a decent amount of rain to the mountains so they were lush green with lots of flowering plants, grasses and low shrubs. This section of the Trans peninsular Highway 1 is pretty decent, so we made good time for the first 50 kilometers. The last 25 not so much. The road is washboard bumpy with big rocks and holes all over. You have to be careful and the going is slow. 
Remember I mentioned the bad weather we were avoiding? It was cloudy and very windy when we went out there. At the last minute before we left I attempted to send another email to the dive shop to make a reservation. Before I got a response we jumped in the car and headed out there. Unfortunately we were already on the dirt road 10 miles from the town when I got a response from Henry at the dive shop. He said he was sorry, that the shop was closed today because of the weather and that they would not be sending boats to the reef today. Since we were already almost there we continued on to the town. We found another dive shop who said they had already sent their boats out for the day and that they had no spaces available anyway. The lady was really nice and told us that we could still snorkel in the cove just south of the town in the small fishing camp at Los Frailles (the friars). It had a protected anchorage that was not blown out by the wind. We bought some snacks at the tienda next store and headed down the road pretty disappointed. There was no need to be. We drove up over a hill and then down again and came upon the most beautiful little cove with a spectacular beach with clear blue aquamarine water. We quickly parked the car (and almost got stuck in the sand!) and quickly donned our gear and headed for the beach. 
Even though we could not dive the reef we were able to see an incredible amount of reef fish. None of us had ever snorkeled with such a wide variety of fish. We spend about 1 ½ hours snorkeling. Nico and I were a little freaked out that we would see a shark (docile or not they are still sharks!) so we stayed close to Jirig. At one point this female sea lion came really close to us and just started swimming and playing around us and was just intensely checking us out. Not in a threatening way but just in a curious one. Still it freaked us out. It is very disconcerting to be in the water with something so big. We are just going to have to get used to it. We snorkeled until we were exhausted and just when we had had enough we heard Jirig’s name being called. We looked over and anchored right in the bay were our friends Bill and Michelle Holstein. We had met them in the marina in San Jose del Cabo. Their boat was right next to ours. They had left early that morning and had headed to the reef. Bill has a big power boat and travels at about 10 knots so they were able to get to Cabo Pulmo in about 5 hours when it would have taken us about 10. They said they had had a very rough ride so we were glad that we decided to come by car. They invited us to their boat for lunch. We swam out to the boat and feasted on sandwiches and snacks and beer. It was a good thing that we ran into them as I had not planned ahead and brought any food with us. 
