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SANDY EGGO

San Diego is a MAJOR diving town, everything from spearfishing tournaments to night "bug" hunts to SEALS learning underwater mayhem. But so far as snorkel depth goes, it's not really a pulsar on anybody's map. But there are a few bright spots. Read more?

SMUGGLE STRUGGLE
Who needs a Cigarette boat for running it in, when you've got your trusty snorkel rig? No problemo?
Read On, MacDuff

LOCAL WEATHER

The best thing about S.D. weather is THERE ISN'T ANY!!! One of the great climates in the world, certainly the U.S. Checkhere for a daily forecast. Or here for weather, traffic and ocean conditions. And since it's Southern California, here's a surf report (with a TIDETABLE good for a lot of the SoCal coast!) and even a SurfCam to watch the waves.

SAN DIEGO LINKS
Links of interest to free divers, snorkelers, and visitors in general. Just click here.

SANDY EGGO
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San Diego is a MAJOR diving town, everything from spearfishing tournaments to night "bug" hunts to SEALS learning underwater mayhem. But so far as snorkel depth goes, it's not really a pulsar on anybody's map. San Diego's mostly about beaches, and beaches aren't such good free-diving places. Too many surfers, if no other reason. There is also a lot of kelp cluttering up the works on places like Point Loma, and if kelp is a nuisance to scubers, it can be a fatal distraction to us freebies. And for another thing, the water is pretty cold most of the year. I mean for SoCal and all. But we mentioned bright spots. One of which, though not a diving location, is Scripps Institute. Their aquarium and library and such are just the place to bone up on what exactly you are seeing down there. Not to mention it's near the famous, clothing-optional (if not actually frowned on) Blacks Beach. A very different venue for viewing and learning about marine life is, of course, Sea World, located near Ocean Beach. Take 28A bus to Scripps and La Jolla, 9 Bus to Sea World. But seriously: the two best diving spots are La Jolla, especially The Cove, and Ocean Beach/Sunset Cliffs. And, at Pacific Beach's "Plunge" ( a huge indoor pool--rare in this sunny town) you can sharpen your skills, deepen your breathhold, and enjoy something even rarer: indoor underwater action of the world's coolest sport, Underwater Hockey. The local club's website is here.
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"DAGO" LINX
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DIVING INTEREST Dive Bums Of the Scuba variety, but great info--the Fish Identification list alone..... San Diego Underwater Photography Society Pros from Dover. Check this out. Paul Hughes Photography Gallery More great photos, local and worldwide Rocks, Rips, & Reefs Seminar Avoidance of the "Three 'Rs" in S.D. County, by experts Surfrider Foundation Of interest to ANYBODY who wants to keep the oceans clean, healthy and accessible. Local Underwater Hockey Club With homepage by S.D. UWH docent, Mark Nakamura GENERAL SAN DIEGO "El Gallo" Comments VIgnettes on San Diego, including Ocean Beach. San Diego Lots of city Information City of San Diego "Official" City Info San Diego Visitor's bureau San Diego For Visitors Yeah, it kind of is San Diego links AOL Search San Diego links From Yahoo Tijuana links From Yahoo Baja links From Sirius Nearby attractions San Diego Reader Online Pathetic paper, good source of classified ads and entertainment listings. San Diego Bus/Trolley System The trolley is a COOL way to get around. San Diego's Oceans Divers, take note San Diego Beaches According to the life guards Beaches and Outdoor San Diego Useful San Diego Information San Diego Beach Life Magazine Glossy beach mag with pics. San Diego Beaches Noticing a pattern here? Surfing In San Diego LA JOLLA (Back to La Jolla) La Jolla. Com The basic boogie-woogie Underwater Map of Cove Divers' map shows reefs, etc. Cool!! La Jolla Online Camera and Surf Report La Jolla Photo Tour La Jolla Beach Guide OCEAN BEACH (Back to Ocean Beach) Ocean Beach Page Quick glimpse at this odd little community Spiers' Ocean Beach Another attempt to capture O.B. OB Surf Shop Gnarly threads and wax, right on Newport Ave Newport Hostel A cool old international hostel right on Newport Ave. Ocean Beach Motel Right at the foot of Newport--you can crawl to the ocean from here. BLACKS BEACH (Back to Blacks Beach) Blacks Beach Digest Private site, so to speak, gives lowdown Lloyds Page Nudist page detailing joys of Blacks

ALL OVER LA JOLLA
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SHORE SCENE Shore Scene Getting There Dive Spots La Jolla is a ghetto for the rich, a golden froth of privilege slathered over an intensely beautiful stretch of coast that is called "The American Riviera" without irony. It has the artists, the snooty restaurants and inspots, the shopping, the Euro-style hotels. So you can kill an afternoon there is you have the money. Build good will with a few La Jolla jokes. But the coastline here is no joke, it's bloody gorgeous. "The Cove" is a sort of centerpiece to it all, and what a piece of work it is. A field lined with bizarre, distorted trees straight out of "The Hobbit" drops off to the surf in a dramatic cliffs and footpaths. The protected Cove itself has a cozy mini-beach lined with stone arches and tide pools. Off shore is a buoy--goal of the La Jolla Rough Water swimming race, local equivalent of the New York Marathon. Flowers and vines cascade down from above, wrapping the most-painted beach in the Americas with a shawl of rock garden. Continuing south, past cute gazebos, lawn bowling clubs, and such, there is a stairway down to Shell Beach, a nice, tranquil stretch of sand with a nice view of the seals and Children's Pool The Pool is actually a curved jetty built out into the raw reach of the Pacific surf to provide a sheltered beach for kids to swim. It's silted up with sand, making for more beach and less shelter, but it doesn't matter because ever since the seals moved in on the action, there is no swimming there anymore. In recent years, the seals have extended their social club to the beach at the Children's Pool, which is wonderful for camera-toting tourists who want a photo op with their brats pestering a genunie Marine Mammal, but a drag for people who want to swim there, such as children. Nobody is allowed to chase the seals off, due to the odd logic that has also vacated San Francisco's Fishermans Wharf--namely that if people make something that wild animals like to hang out on, then they can't be disturbed because it would interfere with their natural lifestyle and habitat. So the seals lie in the sun shooting the shit and rubbing on sunblock, getting their pictures took. Your chances of getting close to seals here is excellent. It's a good idea to keep in mind, by the way, that seals are big, wild animals that could rip your butt to shreds in a hot minute it they felt like it, and you probably don't know what affects the way they feel. But it's an attraction. Seals look a lot less graceful and romantic when beached, by the way. This is also one of the more likely areas in San Diego to spot dolphins. South of the Pool are more pockets of beach, and more slabs of wave-bashed rock with tidepools, arches, narrow crevices and other delights. Behind the Art Museum (immediately recognizable because it's the only ugly, badly designed object in sight for miles) is a playground of reddish rock that extends southwards towards the surfing havens of Windansea and Bird Rock. IN THE WATER Shore Scene Getting There Dive Spots Heading north out of the cove, around the cliffs is the way to go. It's an uneventful swim at first, warming up amid lots of waving kelp, and lots of Garibaldis. These bright orange, hand-sized fish add a splash of color, but don't even think about touching one: they've the California State Fish and legally protected. Not that you'd want to, they're so pert and pretty. I'm just saying: Don't molest the Garibaldi. It would make a good bumper sticker. Around the last point before the cliffs cut back to the Shores, things get interesting. The whole cliff is honey-combed with caves you can swim into. Is that cool enough for you? The first of the caves cuts right under the outcropping where there are often kids jumping into the ocean from fifty feet up, and comes out on a rocky beach between the cliff and the Cove. Since waves run through the cave from the cliff side, going through the other way can get bruising and isn't as much fun anyway. What's fun is letting the waves carry you inside the big, echoing domes. They are divided into rooms and tunnels, and the water level changes unpredictably. You COULD get trapped in a chamber, mashed right up against the roof--but for how long? The place is a hoot. I'll never forget the first time I discovered these caves. It was so unexpected, so romantic and fascinating, that I spend an hour in the first few caves, swooping around, climbing rocks, surfing into cavities and passageways. Then I swam into one that had a dock in it: a disreputable wooden dock leading back to a tunnel lit by dim lights. I was totally floored. You know how many movies and serials I saw as a kid, where the whole thing breaks when the good guy finds the tunnel with the dock down in the cave? It was Indiana Jones Meets the Nazi Cannibal Smuggler Emperor. And no clue what it was all about. I jumped up on the dock, took off my fins and started up the tunnel, which was dank, crudely chisled, and dimly lit: the perfect movie set all the way up. And at the top? You guessed it: a treasure room full of chained nude maidens, heroin shipments, and an army of invaders putting on their game faces. Nah, nothing that obvious, just a shell shop. Right, a little shop selling sea shells to tourists and anticlimaxes to all comers. Plus trips down the tunnel for a buck a throw. They got pretty sniffy when I showed up dripping wet, but what can you expect when you have a tunnel to a cavern dock in your basement? They're lucky I wasn't a team of crimson pirates with teeth full of cutlasses and hearts set on booty. So it's a fun swim and can be as challenging as water conditions or your imagination want to dictate. But so can the route to the south of the Cove, which leads along past the park, a series of sculptured rock shelves poking out into heavy surf--the whole stretch full of possibilities to get in and out of the water, to zoom into pools and arches, to get badly battered. Again, depending on surf conditions this can range from kind of fun to totally exhilarating, probably to "Out of Your Mind." Past the park, with its fissures and offshore reefs and cute gazebos, is Shell Beach, an often-overlooked little stretch of sand that is an excellent place to enter the water (especially if the Cove lifeguards are in one of their "it's too dangerous to leave the roped area" moods). Between Shell Beach and the Children's Pool are a series of reefs, shelves and protruding rocks that have always been the hangout for Sea Lions and Harbor Seals. They lie on the rocks and are a sure sighting in the shallow, wave-blitzed passages in between. Swimming along the wall of the Children's Pool can be interesting (walking on top of it in a storm can also be interesting, handrail or no) and a good place to investigate the effects of motion against simple surfaces. I've spent a lot of time surfing into this wall underwater and made some unexpected discoveries about the nature of motion, and stress resulting from collisions of irresistible forces with immovable objects. Southward is more of the same--fingers of rock, tide pools, wild waves, reefs, until you surf on in to Windansea. Walking one way and swimming the other is not at all a bad idea--this is a world-class beautiful place to do both. HOW TO GET THERE Shore Scene Getting There Dive Spots It's easy to get to La Jolla, just impossible to park there. Driving in from Interstate 5 is weird, because there's a hill just east of town, so you end having to thread down from La Jolla shores, or taking the Grand-Garnet exit, driving west to the Crystal Pier, turning left (north) and winding along the beaches through Pacific Beach ("Baja La Jolla") which can be scenic, but also a clogged mess. Best bet is getting there early or taking public transportation. The 28A bus runs from Broadway in downtown San Diego or can be caught anywhere along Mission Boulevard, from the Roller Coaster on north. Get off on Silverado or tell driver you want the Cove.

DOWN AT THE SUNSET CLIFFS
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SHORE SCENE Shore Scene Getting There Dive Spots Ocean Beach (affectionately "OB", as in "US out of OB") is one of those places that "never left the Sixties", but managed to pick up on the best of subsequent decades. It's Alternative with a capital "A". Laid back beach town, biker chic, surfer, hippie, punk, artists, reggae, folk--that sort of stuff. Just step in The Black and look around, you'll get it. There are a lot of coffee houses and restaurants ranging from cheap tacos to great seafood--even a fine little cafe way out on the Pier--and MUCHO bars. You can get anything from reggae/blues/hippie joints where Jewel used to wait tables to biker dives to places Jimmy Buffett would fit right in. Then there's the pier, the main surfin' beach, Dog Beach wrapping around up the river, and the Cliffs. A large hippie/flippie, homeless/hapless, freaker/tweaker population, which has led to the area being a famous mecca for Dumpster Diving. OCEAN BEACH ROCK GARDENS Shore Scene Getting There Dive Spots South from the Ocean Beach Pier to the tidepools on the tip of Point Loma is one of the most beautiful areas in San Diego. Most of it is too steep to build, so it's natural and accessible. Just past the Pier, the beach turns into a series of tidepools, cliffs poking out into spectacular surf, and little pocket beaches between the outcroppings. There are tunnels and caves and carved stone, stoned hippie musicians at dusk, a few VERY crazy surfers, often beautiful people with not much on, and some major magic. The water looks very inviting to mask up and jump in, but nobody does. This area offers a long buffet of delights. There are pools located several meters above the sea level, depending on tides, that only big waves pour into. Do you have the timing and balls to try to surge into them? The narrow slots into the beaches make for some powerful flows. There are offshore stacks and pillars that might be climbable. You'd be nuts to try this stuff. There is a good path leading along most of the OB beaches and rocks, then a few tricky portages, and some places you need to go up the stairs and continue along the street to Sunset Cliffs. SUNSET CLIFFS Here the street is high above the water, with several parking pull-outs offering a view of...you guessed it. There are few beaches here (and none that would be safe to try to get to from land, as I recall) and the cliffs are high, smooth, and perforated with arches and caves. You can walk right down to the water from some of the pull-outs. There are many places of varying degrees of sanity for getting in, fewer where you can easily get out. The red cliffs, often looking like Henry Moore sculptures, are complex, with semi-sheltered pools, foaming fissures perfect for shooting through at high velocity (or getting smushed and drowned), huge caves calm on one side and getting punched by swells on the other. It's nutso heaven. HOW TO GET THERE Shore Scene Getting There Dive Spots Just take Interstate 8 as far west as it goes. If there is water entering your vehicle, you have gone too far. At "Freeway End" turn left and follow signs to "Sunset Cliffs" Once your past buildings, out over the cliffs there are several pull-outs where you can park: most have some way of getting in the water. If you want go to the Pier, turn right on Newport and follow it west to the end, where you'll see the parking lot for the beach and pier. By public transportation, get to the Old Town Transit Center by bus, Coaster train, or Trolley. Cross under the tracks and catch the 29 Ocean Beach. Get off at Newport and walk west towards the pier (and it's a way cool stroll, by the way) or tell the driver you want off nearest the cliffs.
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GO BLACKS: YOU'LL NEVER GO BACK
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Blacks Beach might be San Diego's least accessible beach, but it's also its most legendary. The "Clothes Optional" banner has been flown (and fought for) here for decades and it's one of the most famous names in American nude swimming. But beyond skinning-dipping (and skinny-diving) Blacks has a raffish, bohemian/hippie/doper/freelove atmosphere that is a great antidote for anybody who thinks SoCal beaches are too bland. If stumbling down the cliff goat trail from the Scripps parking lot isn't harrowing enough for you, come on down at each full moon for a night of non-stop drumming, dancing, and music. And bring your mask and snorkle. The diving isn't all that great, but it's a unique spot for lying around and drying off afterwards.

LA JOLLA KNEE-SLAPPERS
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How many La Jollans does it take to change a lightbulb? One to notice the burnt bulb, and a translator to show it to the illegal Guatemalan maid. How do you identify a La Jolla widow? She's the one in the black tennis dress. What do La Jolla people say to each other at Christmas? Aloha.

DUMPSTER DIVING
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Hey, just kidding. I mean even WE draw the line at diving in bins of garbage. If we wanted that, we'd go swimming in Manhattan. Hang out with Sid and Nancy. On the other hand, you can't say it's not adventurous.