Costa Rica is an ecotourism paradise with tropical jungles, exotic wildlife, volcanoes and much more. This small Central American country is also an interesting place to dive. Most of the diving in Costa Rica takes place on the west coast side of the Pacific Ocean with an area in the Guanacaste region located in the northwestern part of the country and another south of the capital city of San José near downtown. of its west coast. If you were flying into San Jose, you would have to do some internal travel to get to either of these two places.

It is a bit easier to get to the Guanacaste area, especially if you can arrange a direct flight to the city of Liberia in northern Costa Rica. There are some seasonal charter flights from North America directly to Liberia. The town of Playas del Coco, which is used as a main base for divers, is a short taxi ride from the Liberia airport. There are restaurants and small hotels in Playa del Coco, including some US-owned dive operators. These dive operators often have special package deals available that include diving and accommodation at one of the local hotels. Everything in the city is within walking distance.

I took a trip to dive here during the last fall season. The operator I used was Rich Coast Diving. Local Costa Rican divemasters from the Rich Coast brought all the dive gear, including tanks, to the beach every morning in a van.

Dives ranged from 60 to 85 feet with light to moderate currents. One thing that all divers will notice here is that diving in Costa Rica is very different from the usual reef diving in the Caribbean. Visibility is much poorer and there are some noticeably cooler thermoclines. The low visibility is due to a higher amount of plankton in the local waters compared to the Caribbean Sea. At some dive sites, we had to swim through sections of water that turned to almost brown soup. This cut off the sunlight from the top drastically. However, there is a huge silver lining to this poorer visibility. The plankton attract the larger marine animals and if divers came here to see the big ones, they won’t be disappointed.

Even some of the reef fish here are larger. For example, the trumpet fish we saw here are significantly larger than those found in Caribbean waters. Also, there are a lot more porcupine puffers here. Previously in Caribbean waters I have only seen a few porcupine fish and they are usually alone. Here in Costa Rica, I saw large schools of them. We also regularly find large schools of other types of fish.

The local divemasters here definitely work in a different way compared to their counterparts elsewhere. In many places in the Caribbean, divemasters would promote a ‘look only, no touch’ rule. Here, the divemasters actively removed every rock to find creatures of interest to us. They would catch them in their hands and pass them to the other divers. During three days of diving, I held a seahorse, an octopus, a spotted eel, an orange frogfish, and a bloated porcupine fish. Of course, this practice of handling marine wildlife is debatable in terms of ethics, but it was certainly an interesting experience to have these creatures in my hands. The dive masters were certainly hard at work as they were eager to make sure the guests had good dive trips.

Large animals such as giant sea turtles, rays and white tip sharks were also observed. One time that I will never forget for the rest of my life was when a very large school of Cownose Rays headed straight for our group of divers. They looked like a huge squadron of alien ships. They passed through and passed us as we watched in amazement. Then they disappeared. This memorable experience was too short-lived.

So for a very different type of diving compared to the Caribbean without traveling too far, Costa Rica is an interesting destination for divers to consider. There won’t be crystal clear visibility, but the marine life will be different with larger animals to see. Diving itself is also very reasonably priced, being significantly lower than in premium priced places like the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. In addition, there are many other things to see and activities to do on land besides diving which makes Costa Rica a very complete vacation.