Scuba Diving Equipment Costa Rica

Costa Rica Hot Spots For Scuba Diving

scuba+diving

Costa Rica is an eco-tourism paradise with rain forests, unique wildlife, volcanoes and much much more. This small Central American country is also an exciting location to Scuba Dive and for that you need the best scuba diving gear. Most of the diving in Costa Rica is done on the west coast on the Pacific Ocean side with an region up in the Guanacaste region positioned in the northwestern part of the country and another south of the capital city of San Jose near the middle of its west coast. If flying into San Jose, one would have to do some internal traveling to get to either of these two locations.

The Guanacaste area is a bit easier to get to in particular if one could prepare a airline flight right to the city of Liberia in northern Costa Rica. There are a few seasonal charter flights from North America directly into Liberia. The city of Playas del Coco which is used as the main base for divers is a quick cab ride from the Liberia airport. There are restaurants and little motels in Playa del Coco including a couple of American owned scuba dive operators. These dive operators usually have special bundle deals available which include both diving and lodging with one of the nearby hotels. Almost everything in town is inside of effortless walking distance.

I made a trip for scuba diving here is Costa Rica through the late fall season. The operator I employed was Rich Coast Diving. The native Costa Rican divemasters from Rich Coast got all of the scuba gear together with the tanks down to the beach every morning by truck.

The dives varied from about 60 feet to eighty-five ft with mild to moderate currents. One issue that all divers will discover here is that the diving in Costa Rica is extremely distinct from the common Caribbean reef diving. The visibility is much poorer and there are a few noticeably colder thermoclines. The poor visibility is thanks to larger quantities of plankton in the native waters in contrast to the Caribbean Sea. In some dive sites, we had to go swimming through areas of water which turned into an nearly brown colour soup. This cut the sunlight from the top drastically. Nevertheless, there is a large plus side to this poorer visibility. The plankton attracts bigger marine animals and if divers came here to see the large ones, they will not be disappointed.

Even a few of the reef fish here are bigger. For instance, the trumpet fish we saw down here in Costs Rica are significantly greater than the ones located in Caribbean waters. Also, there are many more porcupine puffer fish here. Beforehand in Caribbean waters, I've seen only a few porcupine fish and they are typically by themselves. Here in Costa Rica, I have noticed huge schools of them. We encountered significant schools of other fish varieties on a regular basis as well.

The native divemasters here undoubtedly work in a unique way in contrast to their counterparts elsewhere. In many Caribbean places, the divemasters would encourage a 'look only, no touch' rule. Here, the divemasters actively turned over every single rock to find exciting creatures for us. They would catch them in their fingers and pass them over to the other divers. Over 3 awesome days of diving, I held a seahorse, an octopus, a spotted eel, an orange colour frogfish and a puffed porcupine fish. Of course this practice of handling marine wildlife is debatable in terms of ethics but it was absolutely an intriguing experience holding these creatures in my hands. The divemasters were certainly hard working for sure although as they were eager to ensure that the guests had great dive trips.

Significant creatures such as giant sea turtles, stingrays and white tip sharks were also seen. On one occasion which I will in no way forget for the rest of my life is when a very massive school of cow-nose rays came straight for our team of divers. They seemed like a enormous squadron of alien spaceships. They went right through and past us while we watched in marvel. Then they vanished. This memorable encounter was considerably too short lived.

So for a really unique type of scuba diving in contrast to the Caribbean without traveling too much further, Costa Rica is an exciting vacation spot for divers to take into account because of the fact they all the scuba diving equipment you need there. There won't be crystal clear visibility but the marine life will be unique with more big animals to see. The diving itself is also quite affordable in cost being significantly lower than in premium priced locations such as the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. In addition, there are quite a few other things to see and activities to do on land aside from the scuba diving which makes Costa Rica a incredibly full vacation.