On Wednesday MJ and I went on a 2-tank dive trip. We dove with Scuba Steve out of Nuevo Vallarta. Scuba Steve is a PADI certified shop running out of the Paradise Villa Hotel. We went out to the Los Arcos dive site, just south of Puerto Vallarta. Both dives were reef dives.
The first dive was along an underwater wall. The top of the wall was around 70-80 feet. The wall dropped to a depth of 1600 feet. Our max depth was 80 feet with a total duration of 35 minutes. We saw a bunch of moray eels, zebra eels, angel fish, puffer fish and many of the typical reef fish. Due to the max depth we reached, we did a 3 minute safety stop at 20 feet to help our bodies off gas excess nitrogen. I believe this dive was one of MJ’s deepest dives to date.
I used a GoPro Hero4 to capture the video and pictures. On the first dive I used a red color correcting filter to compensate for the loss of light underwater. During the first dive I realized that there was considerable green in the water. So on the second dive I used a magenta color correcting filter which compensates for both the loss of reds and the excess green color.
First Dive Video:
The second dive went to a max depth of 60 feet and a duration of 45 minutes. We came across a pipe fish, a spotted eagle ray, and an octopus. While we were at a depth of 50 feet and motor boat passed directly over our heads. The octopus was a rather large one, about 12 inches across.
Second Dive Video:
On this trip I am realizing my daughter is really fearless when it comes to activities. Instead of waiting for the guy to approach us with the Iguana, she approached him to hold it. I blinked my eyes and she has the animal on her shoulder.
On Tuesday we took a power catamaran to Yelapa. Yelapa is a small village that can be accessed only by boat. The two main jobs that support the village is the daytime tourism and fishing.
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Yelapa is in a cove off the main bay of Vallarta. The town is built into the hillside. The roads are way to small for cars. The principle means for transporting bulk items through town is with mules or ATV’s. The 2 modern conveniences that were noticeable was electricity and satellite dishes..JPG)
We walked through the town, up the hill to a waterfall. The water was cold and fresh. After walking through town it was a welcomed relief!
Mucho Mojitos Bad!
Last year Jill really wanted to learn to surf however she got sun poisoning and could not be out in the sun the last few days of vacation.
On Sunday, literally 30 feet from our beach chairs there was para-sailing. We watched a few people take off and land. I had the thought of having Jill and MJ go para-sailing. Before I could say anything Cathy turned to me and asked about Jill going.
As Jill took the sky, I went to find MJ in another private cabana. I pointed to the para-sail and said “That’s your sister. How would you like to go para-sailing?”. “Oh cool, Sure I like to go!” was his response.
So it took MJ all of one day to relax into vacation mode.
Summer vacation is here!
They build 2 motorized bicycles.
They spent about 4 hours on each bike installing the engine, sprocket, gas tank and controls. The rear wheel sprocket and engine sprocket were a bit of a pain to line up. They also had to fiddle with the brake controls so the clutch control worked.
