Rocio Del Mar Liveaboard
ROCIO DEL MAR SOCORRO REIVEW
This was one of my best-ever experiences. If you like big pelagics and zillions of fish just hanging out in the blue, this is the trip for you. While Rocio Del Mar is not a glitzy as some liveaboards I've been on, it's perfectly suited to this type of trip, the crew are delightful, the food fabulous and the diving absolutely stunning.
GETTING THERE AND BACK
My trip was arranged through a dive travel agent, and I flew from Los Angeles to Cabo San Lucas where I met up with other dive friends. There was a convenient bus service from the airport and we were able to board Rocio Del Mar as soon as we arrived in Cabo, just before it sailed. Although some of our group chose to stay on after our return to port, it was possible to fly out to LA the same afternoon. The crew made us very welcome when we arrived on board and gave us a thorough safety briefing, including instruction in how to use the CB radios that would be attached to each of our BCDs. Soon after we left port it was too rough to do much other than turn up for meals and hope the 36 hour voyage to Soccorro would be over soon. The return trip isn't nearly so rough.
THE BOAT
Rocio Del Mar has four levels, with the kitchen and dining room down in the hull and cabins and recreation space on the upper decks. Unusual, but it makes sense because you spend less time in the dining room than elsewhere and, since the bottom of the boat is the most stable part, plates and glasses are less likely to skid off the table. Cabins have big windows and their own showers and toilets. We were very thankful that there were no top bunks to roll out of.
THE FOOD
The daily fare is three beautifully presented meals with a Mexican influence, morning and afternoon teas with hot bakes, cocktail snacks, wine with dinner, tea, coffee, soft drinks and biscuits always available and conscientious provision for special diets...this part of the trip really was five star plus.
THE COMPANY
Social harmony is pretty important when you spend a week or two in the close confines of a liveaboard, and our party of 19 guests was pretty varied. The crew of Rocio Del Mar are not only utterly charming, they are also very skilful at managing social situations. They ensured that some major differences in attitude and approach were kept well under control and there was nothing more than a bit of mumbling and avoidance when it could have been so much worse.
THE DIVE ROUTINE
The wonderful, kind and helpful crew are used to mature-age customers (who else has the time and money to do liveaboard trips to remote places?) and, while extremely conscious of dive safety, took every opportunity to make things easy. Divers gear up on the dive deck then descend a few steps to a wide dive platform at the rear of the boat. From there they step into Zodiacs, and there are always plenty of crew standing by to grab arms, pass cameras and other gear and even to lift equipment onto backs if necessary. Getting out of the water is just as easy, with the option of removing both weight belt and tank in the water before climbing the ladder into the Zodiac if preferred. We dived in loose groups of about six, each with its own guide. Warm showers and good spots for drying wet suits were available on the dive deck.
DIVES AND MARINE LIFE
Our first dive was on the second morning near the extraordinary, barren volcanic cone of San Benedicto and we did three longish dives a day for the rest of the trip (night diving is not permitted in this part of the world). Apart from a few enormous lobsters and morays, the odd patch of colour on a rock and a few pretty little fish, there wasn't a great deal to see on the reefs and walls. Best to concentrate on the blue and the surface where the real action is. Every day around San Benedicto and Soccorro Islands we saw mantas, hammerheads, white tip, silver tip and Galapagos sharks, huge schools of big and small fish and even dolphins. If we had spent the whole week diving around those islands the trip would have been well worth doing, but bonus calm weather permitted a crossing to magical Roca Partida, surely one of the world's best dive sites. A tiny dot in the middle of nowhere, Roca Partida is a twin-peaked rock about 100 metres long and 40 metres high, gleaming white with guano from many roosting seabirds.
Below the surface you realize it is actually the summit of a giant sea mount that rises steeply from the depths thousands of metres below. Myriads of large and small fish, huge schools of jacks and at least six species of shark circle the rock face, with occasional breeding humpbacks. It is literally a mid-ocean pelagic meeting place. We were blessed with two days of rare calm weather with our own humpback mother and calf frolicking in the glassy sea. We snorkelled with them during our surface intervals and they even buzzed us underwater on some of our dives. Ten dives on this one site were not nearly enough for me, I could have done another 20 amid this endless, mesmerising parade of fabulous marine life. Definitely diving to dream about.
