non Galapagos Ecuador diving?

[LeChateauWinery]

I used to post on here with a different username but it has been so long that I forgot my password and my email address has changed so I just decided to start fresh. I am now the winemaker at Le Chateau Winery in Walla Walla, WA but have made wines here for other wineries since 1992. Anyway it is good to be back on the boards. Sorry I have been such a stranger.

My father and step mother plan to retire to Ecuador this year, moving from WA state USA. They will reside primarily in Cuenca which is at 8000 feet elevation in the Andes but will also have a secondary residence in Ballenita which is on the coast west of Guayaquil. Ballenita is up the coast from Salinas and south of Puerto Lopez and Isla La Plata. My wife and I are certified open water divers but only have about 20 dives logged so far and have not been diving since 2005. We plan to visit my folks in Ecuador and would love to do some diving while there. We know that we do not have the time or money or the Ballenita area. What are the conditions like, what operators have you used and would recommend? Thanks kindly for any tips or thoughts on diving in coastal Ecuador, Brian.

 

[laurenceh]

diving isla de la plata is very good (spent a month there sept. 2010). i dove with exploramar based out of puerto lopez and can highly recommend them. just be prepared for the carnage you'll witness on the beach at puerto lopez and many other fishing towns along that stretch of coast. each morning dozens/hundreds of thresher and hammerhead sharks are unloaded from the fishing boats, their fins heading off to asia.

 

[pholife]

diving isla de la plata is very good (spent a month there sept. 2010). i dove with exploramar based out of puerto lopez and can highly recommend them. just be prepared for the carnage you'll witness on the beach at puerto lopez and many other fishing towns along that stretch of coast. each morning dozens/hundreds of thresher and hammerhead sharks are unloaded from the fishing boats, their fins heading off to asia.

thanks for the posting, tough to find much information regarding diving outside of the Galapagos, could you tell me more about the dive sites that you visited. I'm an instructor thinking about heading down to work there and it's really hard to get a real picture of what the underwater world is looking like...

Thanks for taking the time to write!

/G

 

[laurenceh]

i was there again and the diving was just as good.
there are only 4-5 dive sites that are doable on isla de la plata and they're all on one side of the island within 500 meters of each other, the currents are way too strong on the other side of the island, it makes darwins arch look like a duck pond. use exploramar diving out of puerto lopez, great dive masters who have dived isla de la plata literally a thousand times.
we saw another dive op dropping a guy into a hellacious current with no anchor line to go down and no dive master. he almost drowned and was completely freaked out. isla de la plata has some extreme currents, don't go there with the other dive ops, its too treacherous to trust to a cowboy operation.
underwater wise, july-sept is the primo time, humpbacks everywhere and the largest aggregation of giant manta rays in the world (we id'd 500+ in three weeks last year).
other times are good too but july-sept is truly in the worlds top 20 dive sites.