Location: Cabo San Lucas

Cabo is home to some amazing diving. Most of the diving here is around the Land's End peninsula that pushes out into the sea of cortez. All of the sites around land's end are just a short boat ride from the Cabo marina. The water is clear and there is a huge amount of marine life. My favorite dive here was Land's end, which is the very tip of the peninsula. It's one of the deeper dives here so it's usually done first. Here you will see huge schools of fish, sting rays, as well as mobula rays. Pelican rock is another good dive site and is a little shallower so sometimes it is done as your second dive. Here you will see angel fish, sea horses, schools of bait fish, and the rock itself is covered in nudibranchs. A unique feature you will see while diving in Cabo are sand falls. Sand from the beaches and surrounding desert wash into the ocean and build up on ledges, once enough has built up it begins fall off the ledge into the deeper water and it creates an effect that looks like a water fall. It's cool to see and can be found at numerous sites around the peninsula. There are a number of dive ops to choose from, and most of them do day trips to Cabo Pulmo and the Gordo Banks as well. I would recommend skipping the Gordo Banks and doing Cabo Pulmo if you are looking for a day trip. Gordo Banks rarely has the schooling hammerheads that you are going there in hopes of seeing. It is a blue water dive where if there isn't sharks, which there usually isn't, then you end up just floating around in the water column looking at nothing. On the day I went we didn't see sharks, but we were lucky enough to see a couple of mobula rays, and a large marlin during our safety stop.

Topside: Cabo has great restaurants and is famous for it's night life. It has excellent bars and clubs. Cabo has great beaches as well. Cabo is also world famous for it's sport fishing, and fishing for a day on a panga is a must. There are few places where the fishing is so good for such a cheap price.

Cabo makes a great dive vacation. If you are looking for a good inexpensive dive trip, and are looking to change it from somewhere in the Caribbean, Cabo is a great choice.

Location: HERON ISLAND (Great Barrier Reef)

Heron Island is a small coral island located about 90 km off the coast of Gladstone in Queensland, AUS. The island is amazingly beautiful, and looks like a postcard. The island is also very small, you can walk around the entire island in about 20 minutes. Heron Island is home to one resort, and the University of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef Marine Research Station. I have not stayed at the resort so I cannot comment on the resort itself, but I was lucky enough to stay at the Marine Research station for 2 weeks while I was studying at UQ. The resort is small and so is the marine research station, so you will never have to worry about crowds or busy dive sites. The island is home to 100,000+ nesting sea birds, as well as a nesting site for green and loggerhead turtles between the months of March and October. Whales can be seen moving through the deeper water off the island during the winter months. The island is surrounded by an unbroken picturesque white sand beach and a shallow coral reef shelf.

There are several options for getting to the island. There is a boat that runs from Gladstone a few days a week. There is also a helicopter pad on the island if you wish to use a faster (and much more expensive) travel mode. Sea plane is the other option.

The resort dive operation is the only dive operation open to the public on the island. The diving on Heron Island is absolutely amazing and it's safe to say the island offers some of the best scuba diving experiences in Australia. Most of the dives are relatively shallow, very few are below 20 meters. The reefs around the island are very healthy; I have never seen so much healthy stag coral anywhere else. The reefs have an abundant amount of marine life. I will never forget that I saw my first Manta ray here, as well as my first tiger shark. Turtles, sharks and rays were seen on pretty much every dive I did. White tip sharks, Grey reef sharks, the occasional tiger shark, manta rays, green turtles, logger head turtles, barramundi cod, coral cod, huge numbers of rays, barracuda, sea snakes, countless colorful reef fish, coral trout, octopus, spotted eagle rays etc. are all found at the sites around the island. The currents at some of the sites can be swift, so there are a number of drift dives done around the island. For the non-divers in your group, the shallow reef surrounding the island is also perfect for snorkeling. There is also a channel cut through the reef to allow boat access to the dock. Snorkeling in this trench in the late afternoon after any boat traffic has stopped is great. In this trench in the evening it is common to see large number of white tipped reef sharks prowling the trench, as well as sleeping turtles, and schools of small bait fish. At the end of the trench is a large intact ship wreck, the HMAS Brisbane, that is only partially submerged, most of the wreck is above water. This island truly is a divers paradise, and I cant recommend it enough.

Vanuatu is an amazing island nation in the South Pacific with excellent diving. Located on the island of Espiritu Santo is the SS President Coolidge wreck. The Coolidge is a 653 foot long ship that began its life in 1931 as a luxury ocean liner, and was converted to a troop transport ship in December of 1941. In October of 1942 she hit a friendly mine while navigating the channel between islands. The captain knew the ship would sink and purposely ran the ship ashore to save the ship and crew from going down in deep water. Everyone on board was told to evacuate the ship and to leave everything on board, and that they would return at a safer time to retrieve everything off the ship. Over night the ship listed heavily to one side and slipped down the slope and sank into the channel where it lies today with everything still left inside.

The Coolidge is usually done as a shore dive and is located a surprisingly short distance off shore. There are few dive operations on the island that dive the wreck. The entire wreck is intact and in one piece. The ship sits on its side, on a slope with the bow at 21 meters and the stern at 73 meters. In order to fully enjoy the entire wreck you will need to be trained in tech diving as much of the wreck is below recreational limits. The Coolidge is great for penetration dives and is considered as one of the best wreck dives in the world. The cargo holds are still full of Jeeps, fighter planes, fighter plane drop tanks, and other equipment. The wreck is littered with rifles, gas masks, personal possessions that were left behind, plates, silverware, and countless other things to discover. There is also a lot of live ammunition on and around the wreck. The fuel and propellers were salvaged from the wreck shortly after it sank. There are numerous entry points into the wreck including some cuts into the ships side that were made in the initial salvage operation.

Their are some key dives that should not be missed when diving the Coolidge. The swimming pool towards the stern of the ship is intact and beautifully tiled. A dive to the Engine Room should be done, all the gauges and controls are still in the same position as they were when the ship was ran ashore. A dive to give "The Lady" a kiss is a must, as well as a tradition when diving the Coolidge. The Lady is a porcelain ornamental statue of a woman in a red dress on a unicorn that is found within the wreck around a depth of 39 meters. The Cargo holds are a great dive as they are still full of jeeps, and other war vehicles and equipment. The Cargo holds are also teeming with flashlight fish and make a great night dive as well. If you are trained for it, the stern is a great dive as the name of the ship is still clearly visible painted in white across the stern.

If you love wreck diving, the Coolidge is a must. It's arguably the best WW2 wreck dive outside of Truk Lagoon. Vanuatu is a great place topside as well. Loganville is a small town, and is the main town on the island. The island is still very rural, and most topside activities involve enjoying Santo's natural beauty. Visiting one of the islands fresh water blue holes is a great day trip, as is hiking up to the millennium caves. There is also a huge amount of topside world war two history to see and experience. The people of Vanuatu are very welcoming and friendly. Vanuatu has been named the happiest place on earth multiple years in a row. It has a low crime rate and is very inviting to travelers.