Joefri
Registered
Location: Playa Flamingo, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Hotel: Playa Flamingo Beach Resort
Dive Shop: Pacific Coast Divers
Dates: Nov. 20 to Nov. 27 2008
Hotel is located right on the beach in Playa Flamingo. Nice hotel with only a few rooms, you can opt for an all inclusive meal and drinks package or you can stay with a la carte. Restaurant served fairly good food, nice pool and the rooms where decent definitely not a high star hotel as defined by western standards maybe a 3. It's a nice beach, they consider it a blue flag beach so it's part of thier ecological effort to maintain it. I also managed to sea a small yellow bellied sea snake that had washed up on the beach, these are useless on land so with a couple of sticks (they are venomous with no known antivenin) I moved the little critter back past the surf, hopefully it made it.
An added bonus is that Pacific Coast Diving is located on site at the resort. Pros and cons to this, pro would be that you don't have to go very far to catch the shuttle to the beach and they are on hand if you want to book or ask any questions as well being closer to the catalina islands, con to this is that they get a lot of resort course people as they offer it right there, but that might be a pro for some if your travel mates aren't certified. The day I went was excellent as all 8 of us were certified. The Divemasters and crew are a great bunch and really have a great working relationship. Tracy Henderson a PADI Instructor for the dive center also takes along her video camera with underwater housing and for a fee will get some great footage of you and your dive. Great for those of us who can't afford a thousand dollar housing for our video cameras.
We dove the North Catalina Islands and it was fantastic, in less than 10 mins into the first dive we saw 2 large bull sharks, schools of jacks, morays, spotted rays, green sea turtle, stingrays and many white tip sharks. Unfortunately the one thing I really wanted to see but didn't were the manta rays they had apparently been in the area the last few days but to no avail that day. One thing I always get a kick out of, I'm from Vancouver BC so the water temperature here is never warm, the water temp in Costa Rica was around 21C or 70F and the dive crew was pulling on full length wetsuits and doubling them up with vests. God I wish vancouver water was that warm.
All in all it was a fantastic trip, Costa Rica offers not just a lot of opportunities to dive some great sites but many other things to do on land, the pallo verde river boat ride taken with the tour company out of the resort was fantastic, crocodiles, just about every species of egret and heron, white faced monkeys that come right down and jump on the boat, howler monkeys, iguanas, turkey vultures, storks and the list goes on. Best time to go is when the tide is out, that way you can see more of the crocs on the banks.
I definitely plan to go back.
Hotel: Playa Flamingo Beach Resort
Dive Shop: Pacific Coast Divers
Dates: Nov. 20 to Nov. 27 2008
Hotel is located right on the beach in Playa Flamingo. Nice hotel with only a few rooms, you can opt for an all inclusive meal and drinks package or you can stay with a la carte. Restaurant served fairly good food, nice pool and the rooms where decent definitely not a high star hotel as defined by western standards maybe a 3. It's a nice beach, they consider it a blue flag beach so it's part of thier ecological effort to maintain it. I also managed to sea a small yellow bellied sea snake that had washed up on the beach, these are useless on land so with a couple of sticks (they are venomous with no known antivenin) I moved the little critter back past the surf, hopefully it made it.
An added bonus is that Pacific Coast Diving is located on site at the resort. Pros and cons to this, pro would be that you don't have to go very far to catch the shuttle to the beach and they are on hand if you want to book or ask any questions as well being closer to the catalina islands, con to this is that they get a lot of resort course people as they offer it right there, but that might be a pro for some if your travel mates aren't certified. The day I went was excellent as all 8 of us were certified. The Divemasters and crew are a great bunch and really have a great working relationship. Tracy Henderson a PADI Instructor for the dive center also takes along her video camera with underwater housing and for a fee will get some great footage of you and your dive. Great for those of us who can't afford a thousand dollar housing for our video cameras.
We dove the North Catalina Islands and it was fantastic, in less than 10 mins into the first dive we saw 2 large bull sharks, schools of jacks, morays, spotted rays, green sea turtle, stingrays and many white tip sharks. Unfortunately the one thing I really wanted to see but didn't were the manta rays they had apparently been in the area the last few days but to no avail that day. One thing I always get a kick out of, I'm from Vancouver BC so the water temperature here is never warm, the water temp in Costa Rica was around 21C or 70F and the dive crew was pulling on full length wetsuits and doubling them up with vests. God I wish vancouver water was that warm.
All in all it was a fantastic trip, Costa Rica offers not just a lot of opportunities to dive some great sites but many other things to do on land, the pallo verde river boat ride taken with the tour company out of the resort was fantastic, crocodiles, just about every species of egret and heron, white faced monkeys that come right down and jump on the boat, howler monkeys, iguanas, turkey vultures, storks and the list goes on. Best time to go is when the tide is out, that way you can see more of the crocs on the banks.
I definitely plan to go back.
