Our first dive consisted of diving out further than at Los Arcos and at the Marine Park, which was sorta disappointing compared to what we were about to see.

Once the boat pulled up, the kids decided to sit this dive out due to Karl being a little sea sick. So, it would be just me and the hubs.

You didn't have to tell me twice, I double back flipped and stuck my landing into the water. First off the boat this time!!! The hubby followed. 

Back into the freezing cold water. UGH! Gosh it was cold. It was somewhat deep in this area, so of course all you could see was the green. We swam under the ropes and headed toward the arch. The roped off area is so that boats cannot go into that area because that's where the snorkelers area is located. 

As we swam, the water got warmer, then colder, then warmer, the colder. I'm not gonna lie, I found a way to warm myself up every time I got cold...I'll let you use your imagination on that one. I showed no shame in it either! Just saying...

So I will show you what kind of pictures you get in this type of water. No color correction done. They are horrid. 

These are a few that I color corrected. Not the best...

The instructor was making bubble rings with his hands. Oh how I wished Sakari was here. She likes to do this.

Three Banded Butterfly fish:

This picture I was trying to get a photo of an eel that was hiding in the rocks. It was a Zebra Moray Eel (Another first for me). It was so pretty with the black and white stripes! I only wished that it would have came out enough to get a better picture. Can you see it to the left of the purple coral?

Then before long, we were at the rocks by the arch and IT WAS SUPER CLEAR!!! And it was WARM!!! Things got a lot more colorful in area's as well. However, you won't find all the pretty colors and coral you will find in the Caribbean.

Giant Damselfish:

Spottail Grunt:

LOOK AT THIS!!! Another new fish for us!  A Barberfish! It is a type of Butterfly fish. 

I managed to catch an adult CORTEZ RAINBOW FISH!! (toward the bottom of the picture) So pretty! Of course...another first for us. 

A bunch of baby (initial phase) CHAMELEON WRASSE. (Another first). They are a pretty pink in color. 

The one color you did see a lot of is RED! (And purple)

PUFFERFISH

Finally a close up of the pretty RAZOR SURGEONFISH. You can now see the blade like spine at the tail. These are used for defense and are as sharp as a surgeons scalpel, which is why they are named surgeonfish. 

They usually swim in groups and there were A LOT of them. They were so pretty to watch. 

GIANT DAMSELFISH (I still cannot believe just how big these things are! I didn't even know they existed). 

MEXICAN HOGFISH:

Then I spotted some ORANGE CUP CORAL. I get so excited when I see these because I've been told they are hard and rare to find (although they were not open or "blooming" like a flower). Also, right beside it was a black and white spotted fish (hard to see because of all the sediment floating around) and I have no idea what it was. 

KING ANGELFISH:

And another one:

BARBERFISH:

I have located YELLOW!

Here's another first for us...and it was a beauty!!! Just look at the markings on it.

CORTEZ ANGELFISH: 

KING ANGELFISH:

GROUPER

The amount of fish in this area was just amazing! So many of them. I was really wishing that I had made Sakari come with us. Karl would have gotten over her leaving him. She was really missing out! Not to mention...all the new fish we seen here as well.

Now I want to say that we went under the arch rock, that is where we found the most fish. I honestly couldn't believe how much warmer it was under that area as well. Plus, the pictures turned out so much better too. It was so weird. Inside this cave area, the temps were 74.4° and it was usually between 8.2' to 12' deep in that area.

Then I seen my first SPOTTED BOXFISH! Oh my gosh so pretty and cute!

A little Boxfish facts for you:

They protect themselves with a deadly poison on their skin when they feel threatened by a predator.

They lay lots of eggs and can lay every day for 1 month

They blow the sand in search for prey

There are 23 species of boxfish: These spotted boxfish are located in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico...which is why we have not seen them before. 

They are slow swimmers and like to hover

They can grow to 18" long

They live for around 4 years on average

We seen quite a few of these too!

BANDED BUTTERFLY FISH:

There was an area that was like a swim through and the water was rushing in and it swayed back and forth. It was a little difficult to swim over to the other side, but in this area were quite a few of what I thought were Trumpet Fish at first.  They were pretty big. But I believe they ended up being PIPEFISH.

Ok, that black and white spotted boxfish I just showed you....well it's time to meet the male version of it. Absolutely gorgeous with the black and white spots on the top, blue and black spots along the side, and also orange mixed around the edges. We would see several of them during this dive.

Ready for something new yet? I was....so we found a WHITE SPOTTED PUFFERFISH now. There were a lot in the area.

LOOK!!! It's Gill from Finding Nemo!! OMGosh....another new fish for us. 

MOORISH IDOL:

The Moorish Idol got their name from The Moors who thought they brought happiness. They have a maximum length of a little over 9".

Their extremely long dorsal fins actually shorten with age.

They can be found alone or in groups but most juveniles are more likely to swim in schools together.

Adults mate for life.

They are found from the Gulf of California down to Peru (and also other places like Japan, Hawaii and Africa).

They eat sponges, tunicates, invertebrates and algae.

And most of all I loved them!!!! When I got back to the boat and showed Sakari my pictures she yells "You found Gill" Yep, I bet you now wished you had went with us.

Here we have a SPOTFIN PORCUPINEFISH. A little different than the Long spine porcupinefish that you normally see. They have spots without the large spots.

SPOTTED BOXFISH

WHITE SPOTTED PUFFERFISH

Look at the guy on the left bottom corner photo bombing my picture of the SPOTTED BOXFISH

Ok, I'll get a picture of you too!

Ok, here's what I'm talking about with the Pufferfish. A lot of them would have very long skinny bodies. It looked weird. They reminded me of a tadpole.

 Wow this area was loaded with the Orange Cup Coral. I had really wished that Sakari would have been with us because she would have been getting all the macro shots of them. Her photography always turns out so good.

Then I spotted this large beauty: BLUE TRIGGERFISH

PANAMA PORKFISH:

SPOTTED BOXFISH 

Well lookie there...I found another ZEBRA EEL! It had some friends (SPOTTED PUFFERS) with it. 

This Damsel was getting in my way with everything I tried to take a picture of. First the eel and now it was blocking me trying to get a picture of these two Starry Groupers. Damsels are such a pain in the arse but I'm giving it a hall pass since the Damsels here in the Mexican Riviera are so pretty.

At least I managed to get a picture of this one as we headed back. 

Now that was a lot of BANDED BUTTERLY FISH! I have never seen them grouped together like this before. Usually you will find two to three of them swimming along, but this many???

As we headed back, the water got colder and greener. I was reminded that I was probably on the verge of hypothermia at this point, but I didn't care after everything we had just seen down there. I probably could have spent another 30 minutes down there and still been excited to see the same fish over and over. I will say that I did miss something.... the hubby told me him and the instructor found (in the video I will be doing) but I was busy off in my own little world. 

So my first picture that I took when we started this dive compared to the last picture I took before we surfaced...which was this picture:

We were down there around 37+ minutes. Not long enough AT ALL. Seriously...we could have stayed down so much longer. I REALLY wished that this would have been the only place they took us to and let us do 2 dives there. This should have been the place they took Karl to. If he's anything like me, seeing all the fish and unique things you would never get to see by snorkeling might have calmed him down enough to do the swim (or at least a little longer). I honestly don't even understand why they took us to the other dive area. There really wasn't much to see there and nothing that was like WOW (other than us saying we seen something new that we have never seen before).  Like this dive site was AMAZING! If I go back to PV, I would do it all again in a heartbeat! AND request that we ONLY go to this area.

So once we surfaced Sakari was above to take our picture. She had said that since she was staying on the boat with Karl, "they" might get in and him try to snorkel. I told her if she did, take the other camera with her and see if she could get it to turn on and take some pictures of us diving below. When I ask her if she got in, she said "yes, only for a minute...I had to use the bathroom" 🤣 But he did not get in nor did they snorkel.

So here's where things went downhill. She took the picture of me and the hubby. I climbed back onto the boat.

I look down and see the hubby. He didn't really have the excitement on his face of someone that just had an amazing dive and seen things we've never seen before as he did a few minutes ago. I had no idea what is going on.

He sat on the steps. He brings his hands up in the water and he's starring. Do you notice anything?

Do you see around his wrist the little black things that are fanned out? Well, our GoPro has a built in stand. You just flip them over and 3 little flaps come out and you can sit the GoPro down to take videos. Well....THAT'S ALL THAT'S AROUND HIS WRIST!! WHERE IS MY GOPRO???? OMG!! He's looking all over the place and looking really worried. He's showing our instructor. 

He climbs out of the water and onto the boat in shame. He knows how much this GoPro means to me. It has all of our video on it...other that what was taken with the camera's. I wasn't sure if it had downloaded to our GoPro account or not yet. I was devastated. 

So after showing our dive instructor what had happened and explaining that the GoPro is somewhere in the area (he had hoped) and attached to a very long stick, the instructor said he would look around the area for it. Now the hubby had absolutely no idea at what point he no longer had it on his arm. I know that when I swim with it (or the camera's) I never let go of it. It never dangles from my arm trusting the arm brace. I'm always holding onto it even when swimming. I'm also constantly checking to make sure everything is still tightly screwed.  

The last video he had taken was all the way over by the rock/cave area with the abundance amount of fish. However, I do know that I seen him with it when we stopped to take a picture together (when I effectively cut his head out of the picture and didn't know it in the picture above). So, that meant it had to be fairly close to us? But, that water was really moving back and forth so there was no telling. 

Our instructor went down and I can tell you he was moving at a very fast pace. We could see his bubbles at the surface and we watched him go a pretty far distance and he was circling around, to the left, by the rocks, to the right and then through the middle and circled around again. When I seen him go around that second time, my heart sunk. I was losing hope. 

We could see him heading back toward the boat. The bubbles were getting closer and closer. He popped his head up. I held my breath. Then up came the GoPro on the stick. WHEW!!! OMG!! It was like Christmas to me! You would have thought I won a brand new car! I'm pretty sure I squealed and maybe even shed a tear.

He said it was "All the way over there!" as he pointed over to the rock mountain and to the right....but we weren't even over in the area he pointed to so we were very lucky he had found it because the water had carried it that far. 

It was time to head back now. The hubby and I couldn't stop talking about all the fish we had seen and showing pictures to Sakari and Karl. I really really wished she would have foregone her loving, caring status for at least this one time and been a mean girl and came with us. It was by far the best scuba I could have imagined!!!

On the ride back, we spotted a whale again. However, it went under and we never did see it come back up so that I could get a picture of it. 

I have a video from our dive that I'd like to share. You will be amazed at the amount of fish...like seriously amazed. (My pictures don't begin to show the amount of fish) I've never experienced this many fish before on a dive. At one point, the instructor took the GoPro and filmed the hubby alongside of all the fish. The instructor was so excited at the amount of fish that was seen today (watch his hand signals). He said he doesn't think he's ever seen this many there on any one dive before. It blew his mind. Make sure to have the video set to 4k for best quality.

Notice what the hubby seen and filmed that I did not get a picture of? The spotted eagle ray!! I totally missed it. I think I was just so fascinated with all the various types of puffers in the area. 

Also, you see how green the water is when we started? That's exactly what the water looked like. Then it cleared up once we got over by the rocks. Just an all around amazing dive!!!

I almost forgot, on the way back into the marina, they fed us subs and ....peanuts. LOL Sakari said "This is the best thing I've had all week"....her number one fast food restaurant is Subway and she had really been missing it...so this would have to do for now.

We returned back to the dive shop after docking and they offered to get us a taxi back if we wanted. We were really unsure what we wanted to do at this point (or what was around the area). 

I went in to have our dive book filled out that we keep for reference.