I was in Playa Del Coco area in July 2008, stayed and dived with Ocotal Beach Resort. Friends of mine stayed in Sanctuary for the first part of the week and joined me at Ocotal for the remainder of the week. It was their first and last time using their time share at Sanctuary because of the drive, over an hour over unpaved rough roads, to get to any dive operators and sites.
I did my AOW at Ocotal while my friends stayed in the Sanctuary. We wanted to dive Bats Island and Catalina Island which requires AOW. They had their AOW and I did not. All the local operator will require you to do at least one local dive with them to access your skills before they allow you to dive Bats and Catalina. We saw a dozen or so white-tip sharks at Catalina and seven bull sharks at Bats. My most memorable safety stop to date was at Catalina when a huge manta ray swam beneath us. I stretched my arms out as it was under me to get a sense of how long its wing span but it was much longer than my outstretched arms.
We saw many stingrays, moray eels, barracudas, sea turtles. This is not Carribean drift diving, it's currents and surges. Water temps were in the mid to high 70's, I wore a 3mm full wetsuit and was warm. Viz was 30 - 40 ft, lotsa plankton in the water. Night dive was fun, my AOW instructor Felippe found a sea hare and handled it so it would squirt maroon colored ink at us. At the end of the dive when we were at the anchor line, Felippe turned off all our lights, ran his hand back and forth in front of him and we watched the plankton glow and dance around his open palm, so I did the same and it looked like a mini firework display on the palm of my hand.
The Ocotol dive shop handles your gear the entire time you're there, they bring your gear onto the boat, setup your rig (BC and reg up to the tanks) so each morning when you board the boat you go to the tank with your BC on it and check to make sure that your wetsuit, mask, fins, booties are on the boat. I'm accustomed to handling my own gear so it was odd to have it all done for me but I still checked the gauges and my equipment before each dive. After the dive, they took the gear, rinsed and hung it for the night. The dive instructor, dive master, crew and Captain were all very professional, knowledgeable and went out of their way to make us comfortable. Marianna is the manager and runs a tight operation. She knows what is happening on the boats even if she's not on them. She heard about an unusually rude diver on the morning dive before I could relay the story to her.
We ate breakfast and lunch at the resort and had no issues with the food or the price. For dinner, we drove into town ate at a different restaurant each night. If you enjoy meat, you must have a steak when you're there, the cows are grass-fed. I do not recall having a bad meal while I was there nor being over charged for a meal. I also do not recall having an issue with my room which was spacious and clean.
If you can, fly into Liberia as opposed to San Jose as it's closer to the Playa Del Coco area. If you rent a car beware of a scam where one of the tires on the rental blows or has a slow leak so when you pull over someone offers to help and they either rob you or charge you a lot to fix the tire. I bring this up because our rental had a flat about 20 miles away from the rental counter. My friend heard about the scam online when she researched the trip so was prepared with two Fix-a-Flat cans. Bless her heart for being so prepared. Cars stopped and offered help but we refused all assistance, fixed the flat and arrived at Ocotal. My friend called the rental agency, threatened to report them, mentioned she'd heard about the scams online so they sent a truck with a new tire for our rental without charging us. We had no other car issues for the remainder of the week.
Edit: Was in Costa Rica in 2004 but was not a certified diver at the time so did all the land based activities. Arenal Volcano, Hot springs at Tacacon, kayaking through the mangroves, suspension bridge tour at Monteverde Cloud Forest, Manuel Antonio National Park and Quepos. Saw many varieties of monkeys (howler, spider, cappaccino), sloths, frogs, birds, pythons, porcipines and many more that I can't recall now. On this trip we flew into San Jose and rented a car without any flat tire issues.
