Pablo and I went to L.A. in May to visit the city and we thought about doing some diving. We spent the two first couple of days visiting the typical hot spots (Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, etc) and walking around. We rented a car and it was the right decision, I had never been in a city as spread as L.A! I liked the beaches, specially the one around the Belmont Pier. So after a few days walking around in the city we needed some air and decided to go diving, the weather was nice and we had seen in the Internet that Catalina Island was very close and it was a cool place to go and had some nice diving... well, we were incautious since it was our first time in that side of the Pacific... The water is cold!!
We booked the ferry and the dive the previous day to the "trip". On Saturday, we went to the The San Pedro terminal and bought the ferry tickets to Catalina at 10:00 and bought the ticket back for 19:00. It is a 30 min ride. The ferry leaves you in the only city of the island, Avalon. You can't go outside the "safe zone" (by that meaning, the streets of the city) to visit the island without a guide or guided tour. There are golf cars all over the place that you can rent to move around the streets. We had booked the the Guided Shore Dive for around 13:00 pm in Catalina Scubaluv Dive Center. Bryan, was our guide and helped us with everything. We rented the equipment and entered the water by some stairs. You can se the point in the map). I rented all the equipment: wetsuit (including a hood), oxygen, etc And there we go! We dive into the kelp forest of the Avalon Underwater Dive Park! There were Garibaldis, Kelp Bass and Yellowtail amberjack. After the dive we changed in a public bathroom right next to the entrance of the dive site... cooooold again! In general the dive was good, personaly didn't like so much the kelp forest, the visibility wasn't so good but it can be fun if you enjoy dodging around as in a labyrinth!
After the dive we had some more free time that we spent visiting the shops around the city. Since we couldn' go outside Avalon without a guided tour we decided to red a bike and just go as far as was permited. Catalina Island is a special place. Some curious data: - Catalina Island is owned in 88% by Philip Wrigley, the founder or the chewing gum company! - The island has a growing population of around 150 American bison since in 1924 fourteen bison were brought to the island for the filming of the movie The Vanishing American and due to cost overruns, the film company decided to leave the bison on the island instead of bringing them back to the mainland! If I were to come back to dive in Catalina I would book an early boat dive to dive in another side of the island.
