About 1.5 hours away by boat from Cabo San Lucas and 5 miles off-shore from Punta Gorda on the East Cape are the famous Gordo Banks. The top of this seamount forms a plateau at approximately 120 feet with the width of about 2 football fields. The average depth of this dive is between 100 and 140 feet, but the seamount drops deep into the abyss. The main attraction of this site are the stunning yet shy hammerhead sharks. Its not unusual to see large schools of more than 100 hammerhead sharks roaming around. Their well built bodies and weird appearance make this encounter an unforgettable one. On our way out, we saw manta rays, wahoos, yellowtails, tunas and dolphins, plus a lone sea turtle lounging on the surface of the abyss. The top reef of Gordo Banks is covered in black coral bushes and large schools of snappers and sea bass hover above the large coral boulders.
We were looking forward to this trip from the minute it was suggested at our dive shop. And it did not disappoint. It was a fairly long boat trip out, about an hour and a half, and we saw various forms of life (when we weren’t napping). We arrived at Gordo Banks, and were surrounded by dozens of fishermen looking for big game fish. And they scored.
Our first dive proved mostly uneventful. Once we got through the layers of jellyfish, there were groupers, snappers, and what looked like wahoo. We descended down to about 125 feet, and tooled around quickly looking for hammerheads. We saw one lone hammerhead before ascending.
We had an hour surface interval, and then jumped in for dive two. We went down the same descent line, saw the same initial pelagics, and then swam out into the blue. Probably 10 minutes into the dive, our divemaster took off like a shot, banging his tank loudly. Dashing behind him, we saw a school of at least 50 hammerheads. I tried to snap off a bunch of pictures, but don’t know how successful I was thanks to the absolute blue brightness of the waters. We shall see.
The rest stop was in the middle of jellyfish, but this time I wasn’t the one stung, poor Wayne was after playing with one in particular that rolled itself up and smacked him over the lip.
The ride back was long, nearly three hours, and we rinsed gear, settled up our bill, and took off to get ready for our sunset cruise. If you ever have the chance to do one of these in Cabo, we both highly recommend Cabo Rey. Very professional, nice food, comfortable accommodations. It was a very nice way to end our stay in Cabo.
