Hey everyone,
I wanted to give a short account about my trip to Croatia last weekend in Kostrena. We stayed there for a long weekend (4 days) and were very satisfied with both the dive environment as well as the services provided.
The dive center in Kostrena (www.dckostrena.hr) is directly waterfront on the beautiful shore and is operated by two young motivated guys, and usually very full on the weekend. They have good air and Nitrox and are very flexible with any extra wishes - lamentably they have no dive shop there in case you need any extra gear. One nice thing are the hot showers you can take after a dive when you're freezing - that makes loads of extra points!
The house reef just 15 meters off the shore provides a stunning drop-off from 11 to about 40 meters and is habitated by a number of colorful fish, anemones, crabs, lobsters, cuttlefish and Conger eels. I was quite impressed by the intense marine life as usually in the mediterranean the fish population is quite low already.
On a night dive - which I highly recommend to do - we saw numerous red crabs and shrimp running around on the reef, as well as one HUGE lobster - the biggest one I've ever seen in my entire life (see my pictures on Puertoricanrum.com)!
The place offers on-site rooms which are simple but very clean, as well as a restaurant. I recommend to go to the adjacent italian restaurant "Amic" which offers really excellent italian cuisine and wood-oven pizza at absolutely cheap prices. Portions are enormous and the terrace is directly in front of the sea.
We also did three wreck dives, two of them out of Rijeka. The dive center organized a boat trip that led us to two adjacent wrecks near the port of Rijeka. One of it, the Elhawi Star, is a huge freight vessel located at 42 meters and low visibility, the other one, called Sigrid, is smaller but at only about 30 meters, and is easy to penetrate.
We did a third wreck dive - the Peltastis - out of Silo, on the island of Krk. The dive center there was called Neptune and it was very complicated to even organize the trip - obviously they didn't want any customers, and didnt bother to be extra friendly. In the end they did the trip, but they seem to not have been happy serving us. Nice wreck but get a different dive center to go there.
Minor drawbacks at this site: the location - but only at first glance. The dive center is located between the industrial port and shipyards of Rijeka on the one side and the INA refinery on the other side. BUT: Surprisingly you don't notice either of them. Water quality is excellent, and so is visibility. The refinery is completely out of sight (and smell), and the shipyard is far enough to not bother anyone. There is no noise at all from either.
On the other hand the place is crowded on weekends especially sundays - i counted over 30 divers in the water at the same time as well as 5 dive flags
so try going there on weekdays.
I wanted to give a short account about my trip to Croatia last weekend in Kostrena. We stayed there for a long weekend (4 days) and were very satisfied with both the dive environment as well as the services provided.
The dive center in Kostrena (www.dckostrena.hr) is directly waterfront on the beautiful shore and is operated by two young motivated guys, and usually very full on the weekend. They have good air and Nitrox and are very flexible with any extra wishes - lamentably they have no dive shop there in case you need any extra gear. One nice thing are the hot showers you can take after a dive when you're freezing - that makes loads of extra points!
The house reef just 15 meters off the shore provides a stunning drop-off from 11 to about 40 meters and is habitated by a number of colorful fish, anemones, crabs, lobsters, cuttlefish and Conger eels. I was quite impressed by the intense marine life as usually in the mediterranean the fish population is quite low already.
On a night dive - which I highly recommend to do - we saw numerous red crabs and shrimp running around on the reef, as well as one HUGE lobster - the biggest one I've ever seen in my entire life (see my pictures on Puertoricanrum.com)!
The place offers on-site rooms which are simple but very clean, as well as a restaurant. I recommend to go to the adjacent italian restaurant "Amic" which offers really excellent italian cuisine and wood-oven pizza at absolutely cheap prices. Portions are enormous and the terrace is directly in front of the sea.
We also did three wreck dives, two of them out of Rijeka. The dive center organized a boat trip that led us to two adjacent wrecks near the port of Rijeka. One of it, the Elhawi Star, is a huge freight vessel located at 42 meters and low visibility, the other one, called Sigrid, is smaller but at only about 30 meters, and is easy to penetrate.
We did a third wreck dive - the Peltastis - out of Silo, on the island of Krk. The dive center there was called Neptune and it was very complicated to even organize the trip - obviously they didn't want any customers, and didnt bother to be extra friendly. In the end they did the trip, but they seem to not have been happy serving us. Nice wreck but get a different dive center to go there.
Minor drawbacks at this site: the location - but only at first glance. The dive center is located between the industrial port and shipyards of Rijeka on the one side and the INA refinery on the other side. BUT: Surprisingly you don't notice either of them. Water quality is excellent, and so is visibility. The refinery is completely out of sight (and smell), and the shipyard is far enough to not bother anyone. There is no noise at all from either.
On the other hand the place is crowded on weekends especially sundays - i counted over 30 divers in the water at the same time as well as 5 dive flags
so try going there on weekdays.
