Spectre 5.
Yelp
Do not dive with Fun Baja if you are not Japanese
1. Fun Baja is quick to collect money, and slow to provide service. They collect 100% payment upon arrival at the shop first day, and there is no refund. After they collect our payment and we were ready to get on the boat. We were told that even that we paid for 2 tank diving that day, we are stuck with the group and will not return until the group is done with the 3rd dive, our options are do the 3rd dive with the group, or be stranded on an island and wait for the group to finish 3rd dive.
None of this was communicated when we booked with them or before we made the payment. If they would have told us prior to our trip in the emails, we would have booked with somebody else. And we had 3 days of diving with them booked and paid in full with no refund...
2. Inexperienced captain and poor judgement of conditions. Even though we did not have a good experience with the office staff. We were still quite happy to head out and make the most out of it. Please note La Paz diving is long 1-2 hour boat ride on a small boat for most of the popular sites. We head to La Reina when the condition was apparently rough, only to head back after we arrived at the site since the current was too strong and too dangerous to dive. Round trip back took us 4 hours in rough conditions, soaking wet, and the captain even had us wearing life vest during the ride back. We learned that other shops made the call the night before to stay at the sheltered and closer sites. The next day was actually good condition when the shop originally scheduled to take us to El Bajo, we were told that morning it was too windy and rough to get out, when I later on learned other boats made it to El Bajo that day.
Misreading the conditions prevented us from going to the premier sites in La Paz, and considered how little time we had in the La Paz, it made a big difference in terms of our diving experience. We ended up diving Los isolates for 2 days and miss one morning of diving due the long haul to El Reina and back and not being able to dive there.
3. The office staff speak very little or no English, which made it very difficult to communicate with them. When we came back from a rough day of boat ride, everyone was telling the office staff we will not endure the same thing tomorrow, so we asked where are we diving tomorrow. Charlie one of the instructor at the shop yelled at us saying " you do not get to decide where to dive!" That was really uncalled for. Of all the places I have been, all the shops have been quite accommodating in terms of the sites where the divers want to go. As a long time diver and we have some boaters in our group, we all know how to read sea conditions, and it's available the night before if not earlier. We all agreed that was poor judgement that day taking us all the way out in such conditions. The shop didn't want to recognize their mistake, instead turning hostile towards ppl who complained. They quickly shut us down and got us out of the shop.
4. Strong favoritism over Japanese divers. If you are not Japanese diver, do not book with Fun Baja. They take care of the Japanese divers first, and don't care much about the English speaking divers. We have done decent amount of dive travel and do notice there are Japanese divers only dive shops and such, and do not have a problem with that at all. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't have mind if Fun Baja is Japanese divers only, and I would have looked elsewhere. On the first day, they moved the English speaking divers to the front of the boat telling us they need to "balance the boat" , leaving the shaded seating areas to Japanese divers. On the 3rd day of diving when the shop originally scheduled to El Bajo was changed to Los isolates without discussing with the English speaking divers. If you spoke to the Japanese divers, you would know sea lions are the main reason they came to La Paz, the shop caters towards the Japanese divers and what they want to see, hence deciding going to the site where the sea lions are.
5. Small boat cramped with people and dive gear. One of the reason we booked with Fun Baja is because they have bigger boats, but the bigger boats are only used for big groups with 20-30 divers. If you go during off season like us did, it's the same small boat like the pangas other shops used just slightly nicer. The boat is cramped with people (9 passengers on a 6 seats boat), dive gear got tossed around because there is simply no space for it. There are no under the seat storage, no place to sit and gear up, no box or mesh bag to keep your gear in one place. It really did bother me seeing my reg getting tossed around on the deck and accidentally stepped on, I decided to take it back to hotel every day after diving. If you are a photographer, you are definitely out of luck, no camera rinse tank, no place to safely store your camera.
