From: jms@mrsvax.mis.arizona.edu (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem)
Newsgroups: rec.scuba
Subject: Trip Report: Himalaya Beach (near San Carlos), Mexico
Date: 28 Sep 92 23:50:00 GMT
Reply-To: jms@arizona.edu
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Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department
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Hi.  Just got back from a quick dive trip to Himalaya Beach, and thought
some of you might be interested in the status down there.

Himalaya Beach is a camping spot large enough for about 100 people.  It's a
huge bay, with shallow waters on out to the sea.  Lots of dive shops in
town run trips down there; for much of the year, it's great camping.  

Himalaya is just north of San Carlos; it's 335 miles from Tucson.  The last
17 are the hard ones; you turn off of the main highway onto a smaller
highway, and then onto a dirt road which takes you past farms and ranches
out to the beach.  If you have any clearance on your car, you can make it
(we did it in a heavily loaded Volvo wagon) without problems.  The road
from Nogales, Mexico highway 15 is one of the major North/South corridors,
stretching all the way to Mexico City, and is 4 lanes (2 each direction)
all the way to Guaymas.  

This weekend, water temperature was 85 to 89.  Air temperature was warm
during the days near 100, with cool nights and light breezes down to high
60s or low 70s.  

As you might expect, such warm water means that the pelagics which are so
famous in the area weren't to be found.  However, we did see plenty of
octopus, small mantas, trigger fish, nesting sargeant majors, barracuda,
morays, stonefish, angels, damsels, and other typical fish of the area. 
There are about a dozen good dive sites within a 30-minute inflatable ride
from the beach.  You can also get to San Pedro Nolasco, which is about 20
miles away, but only if you've got a fast boat (and a lot of gas, I
suppose).  The best dives of the trip were ones we made to White Rock.  As
the name suggests, this is one of many guano-covered rocks.  Guano comes
from birds, birds eat fish, and fish is what divers want, so White Rock
turns out to be a great dive.  At off-shore rocks like these, there are
lots of sea lions, which can be fun to play with (if you watch for the
territorial males).

We went with Captain Dave's shop, a reasonably new one in town.  Dave is
running very low cost trips---$40 less than the competition.  However,8 he
hasn't been doing it for very long, so there are rough edges here and
there.  Food was plentiful, but average.  For example, they brought ice
cream, which promptly melted, but no fresh fruit.  The boat situation was a
little hokey; I think that the $150/diver we gave Dave didn't leave much
left over to pay the boat owners/dive masters.  That meant that each dive
master took his friends on his boat, and while you could switch boats, it
wasn't as comfortable as it could have been.  The scheduling of the boats
was also a little haphazard.   However, there were plenty of tanks, and you
could do beach diving whenever you wanted.   Plus, the staff was very
accomodating--when we were beach diving and missed dinner, they stayed
around and made us some later. 

Nevertheless, we got in 9 dives (4 on Friday, 3 on Saturday, and 2 on
Sunday before we left at noon), and could have taken more, if we hadn't run
out of energy.  

Bottom line: a good trip, and excellent value for the money.  If you go by
yourself, you can get tanks filled for about a 2 hour drive, or go with a
shop and dive all you like!

Joel M Snyder, 1103 E Spring Street, Tucson, AZ, 85719 
Phone: 602.882.4094 (voice) .4095 (FAX) .4093 (data)
BITNET: jms@Arizona  Internet: jms@arizona.edu  SPAN: 47541::telcom::jms
UH-OH!!  I think KEN is OVER-DUE on his R.V. PAYMENTS and HE'S
 having a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN too!!  Ha ha.
Newsgroups: rec.scuba