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Costa Rica is an eco-tourism paradise with rain forests, exotic wildlife, volcanoes and much much more. This tiny Central American country is also an fascinating spot to scuba dive. The majority of the diving in Costa Rica is carried out on the west coast on the Pacific Ocean side with an region up in the Guanacaste region located in the northwestern part of the country and another south of the capital city of San Jose near the middle of its west coast with professional scuba diving gear. If traveling by air into San Jose, one would have to do some internal touring to get to both of these two areas.

The Guanacaste region is a bit less hard to get to specifically if one could arrange a airline flight right to the city of Liberia in northern Costa Rica. There are a select few seasonal charter flights from North America straight into Liberia. The city of Playas del Coco which is utilized as the principal base for divers is a brief cab ride from the Liberia airport. There are eating places and tiny hotels in Playa del Coco including a few American owned scuba dive travel operators. These dive operators normally have unique package deals obtainable which involve both diving and accommodations with one of the nearby accommodations. Anything in town is inside of effortless walking distance.

I made a trip for scuba diving here is Costa Rica throughout the later end of the fall time of year. The operator I employed was Rich Coast Diving. The neighborhood Costa Rican divemasters from Rich Coast took all of the scuba gear including the tanks down to the beach each morning by truck.

The dives ranged from around sixty ft to 85 ft with mild to moderate currents. One thing that all divers will notice here is that the diving in Costa Rica is extremely distinct from the typical Caribbean reef diving. The visibility is a lot poorer and there are a few noticeably colder thermoclines. The poor visibility is thanks to higher quantities of plankton in the local waters in contrast to the Caribbean Sea. In some dive sites, we had to swim through sections of water which turned into an pretty much brown color soup. This cut the sunlight from the top drastically. Nonetheless, there is a substantial plus side to this poorer visibility. The plankton draws in larger marine creatures and if divers came here to see the huge ones, they will not be disappointed.

Even a few of the reef fish here are larger. For example, the trumpet fish we saw down here in Costs Rica are substantially greater than the ones located in Caribbean waters. Also, there are much more porcupine puffer fish here. Previously in Caribbean waters, I’ve seen only a handful of porcupine fish and they are normally alone. Here in Costa Rica, I have viewed large schools of them. We encountered huge schools of other fish forms on a regular basis as well.

The native divemasters here certainly work in a unique way compared to their counterparts elsewhere. In several Caribbean places, the divemasters would promote a ‘look only, no touch’ rule. Here, the divemasters actively turned over each rock to find fascinating creatures for us. They would capture them in their fingers and pass them over to the other divers. Over 3 awesome days of diving, I got to hold 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 fascinating practical experience holding these creatures in my hands. The divemasters were undoubtedly hard working for sure although as they were keen to ensure that the guests had excellent dive journeys.

Huge creatures such as giant sea turtles, stingrays and white tip sharks were also spotted. On one occasion which I will never forget for the rest of my life is when a quite huge school of cow-nose rays headed straight for our group of divers. They seemed like a massive squadron of alien spaceships. They proceeded to go right through and past us while we observed in wonder. Then they disappeared. This unforgettable encounter was considerably too small lived.

So for a really diverse form of scuba diving in contrast to the Caribbean devoid of traveling too much further, Costa Rica is an fascinating destination for divers to contemplate. There won’t be crystal clear visibility but the marine life will be diverse with many more huge animals to see. The diving by itself is also extremely affordable in cost being considerably lower than in premium priced places such as the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. In addition, there are a lot of other things to see and activities to do on land aside from the scuba diving which makes Costa Rica a really full trip. Be sure to use professional scuba diving equipment when diving in Costa Rica.