La Quebrada Sunset and Cliff Diver

La Quebrada

On Wednesday night while we were in Acapulco, we decided to go see the cliff divers at La Quebrada. These cliff divers were once very famous and would be featured on U.S. TV sports shows. These cliff divers (or clavadistas) dive off a very tall cliff, and my understanding is that their dives have to be timed perfectly for them to survive. If they hit the water when the waves are out, the water is too shallow, and they will hit the rocks in shallow water, so the must hit the water as the waves come in. Over the years, I've seen this many times, so the event is not quite as exciting as it once was. However, some of the people in my group had never been before, so we decided to go. My favorite part of the event was the sunset, which I found quite striking. 

Clavadista

But since I went through the effort of describing the clavadistas, I suppose I should show a picture of one during a dive. I wish I had my 180mm macro lens; I only had my 400mm lens, so the photos I took are extremely close up. And since the first show begins as the sun is beginning to set, I had to shoot in low light. This photo was taken at ISO 4000 with a shutter speed of 1/1250sec at f/5.6. You can buy photos of these clavadistas diving with the sunset behind them, but as best I can tell, they do not permit regular people like me to stand where you can get that shot. I could only stand where the cliff was in the background.