Vallarta Blog

In the above picture you can see three boats heading (at full speed) towards a couple of whales.

These pictures where taken on March 29. According to vallartawhales.com the season ends on March 24. The date changes, depending on the source, like on puertovallartatours.net it says the season is until March 31st.

 No matter if the season is on or not, it is not ok for boats to turn towards whales, especially on full speed.

We were sitting on the beach and had noticed the whales before these boats showed up. It looked like two whales playing together and constantly jumping out of the water. Of course they disappeared as soon as the boats in the above picture sped towards them… pretty sad.

In the next picture you can see how close the 3 boats are from the whales. And then people ask themselves how it’s possible that every year there are accidents with whales.

 This combined with some news talking about Vallarta being one of Mexico’s most polluted beaches.. is.. sad.

Please inform yourself well enough to know if you are participating in a real eco friendly tour/ride/adventure or if you are contributing to endangering our whales from being hit or maybe even never come back home to the Bay of Banderas.

One Big Wave of Yoga and Surfing! Vacation with Via Yoga April 18-24, 2008, in Sayulita Mexico

Via Yoga, the company that offers yoga and surfing vacations in Sayulita, Mexico, has a retreat April 18-24 geared at intermediate surfers. Ramp up your surfing skills this week with our highly trained surf instructors. You’ll surf the waves of Sayulita and also enjoy unbeatable surf on two daytrips where you’ll explore the hidden gems of the area.

According to SayulitaLife.com, “Surfers were some of the first foreigners to visit Sayulita in the late 1960’s where they found warm water and consistent waves all year-round. To this day, the Sayulita surfbreaks and waves have fulfilled the tropical surf dreams of beginner to advanced surfers from all over the world.”

Yoga teacher Matt Pesendian has been surfing for 30 years and practicing yoga for 17, so he knows how to prepare yoga students for time on the board. His two daily yoga sessions – one dynamic vinyasa and the other gentle Qigong (Chinese yoga), will strengthen your core for surfing.

Surf instructors are Kate Slater and Murilo Evangelista dos Santos, who live in Sayulita and teach surfing for many of Via Yoga’s vacation weeks. Kate has been vacationing in Sayulita since she was a child, and has lived in Sayulita for almost seven years. She learned to surf in California when she was nine, and since then has dedicated her life to travel and surf. Murilo grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. For the last few years he has taught at a surf school in Brazil for developing surfers and tourists. He moved to Sayulita in 2007.

Trips range from $2495 and up, and include six nights accommodations in a deluxe villa (Villa Amor, www.villaamor.com), two yoga classes per day, daily breakfast, three group dinners, two daytrips, a massage, and roundtrip airport transfers. Airfare is not included.

Via Yoga offers a dozen yoga & surfing trips each year November through May.

Contact: Via Yoga, (800) 642-9025, info@viayoga.com

Vallarta Adventures’ Blog (vallarta-adventures.com/blog) posts say that the 8th season of the popular  HDNET show Get Out! (getoutshow.com) will be entirely filmed in Mexico.

Vallarta Adventures will film two episodes with the Get Out! Show on its Outdoor Adventures, Las Caletas, Jungle Survival, Americas Cup Sailing and many more tours.

Lindsay (Get Out! Host) and the owner of the HD Republic production company said that they were very impressed by Vallarta Adventures professionalism and its capacitated guides. Both of them have enjoyed several different tours and adventures around the world and they said that Vallarta Adventures’ guides are the best they have ever seen.

Vallarta Adventures has been the most popular tour company in Mexico and it’s no surprise that more and more TV shows want to participate and enjoy the services of Vallarta Adventures. Vallarta Adventures has appeared in several public News and Shows like: National Geographic, Hello!, MTV, Televisa, Travel Channel, Frommer’s’, BBC, Discovery Channel, CNN, ESPN, E! Entertainment Television, NBC, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and many more.

If you are a television or media related program, Vallarta Adventures welcomes you to experience the best adventure you have ever imagined. Vallarta Adventures will take great care of you!

Contact  marketing@vallarta-adventures.com

You won’t read about it in any English language papers or websites. It’s bad for business. Our English-language “news”papers cover the news that’s really important: what restaurants have opened, what events are happening this weekend. Pet picnic? check. Art walk? Check. Dead divers? Lo siento, no puedo escribir en ingles!

Uzueta Diving, a new company here in Puerto Vallarta took out a large group of divers for an advanced diving course, deep diving. There were 20 divers in groups of five and they were diving in the Devil’s Canyon, a spot at Los Arcos for beautiful wall diving. It drops to 6,500 feet and is like looking into outer space. They dropped anchor nearby (illegal in Los Arcos, btw, but everyone does it) and used a line to keep the divers together. Four divers got separated.

One diver was found and taken to the hyperbaric chamber for decompression sickness and three others were lost until their bodies were found (and photos posted in the local Spanish papers). It’s thought that they lost their line in the current and then began to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis. Reports have them going anywhere from 150-250 feet down and most likely either suffering from oxygen toxicity or running out of air.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve gathered from reading the local Spanish papers and talking to some of the local divers. It’s very, very sad.

source: divebunny.org

Here is a link to the spanish speaking UNIVERSAL News writing about the incident.
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/464868.html

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UPDATE:

Here some links to the issue:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-incidents/212062-3-missing-deep-dive-incident-mexico.html

On another issue in Cancun, Mexico:

Tourist missing after dive in Mexico

January 02, 2008
Authorities were searching yesterday for a Japanese tourist who went missing on Sunday when she was scuba diving off the Mexican resort island of Cozumel.