Costa Rica

Kind of a late decision here, but my wife and I just made Frequent Flier
reservations to go down to San Jose, Costa Rica the week before Xmas.
Now we're trying to figure out what to do when we get there. We've
got this vague notion that the best diving is supposed to be off the
west coast. Can anyone recommend a location where we'd be close to both
good diving, and interesting treks into the rainforests? My wife and I
are moderately experienced divers (about 24 hours bottom time to date),
and we tend to prefer stuff not deeper than about 25 m. (We're more
into fish than interesting geography.)


We'd also take recommendations for specific hotels/resorts to stay at,
and/or dive outfits/travel agents that might be worth talking to for
that location.

Thanks in advance,

Mike Nowak

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 20:46:54 -0400, the cup of Mike Nowak
<mnowak@space.mit.edu> overfloweth with the following:

>
> Kind of a late decision here, but my wife and I just made Frequent Flier
> reservations to go down to San Jose, Costa Rica the week before Xmas.
> Now we're trying to figure out what to do when we get there. We've
> got this vague notion that the best diving is supposed to be off the
> west coast. Can anyone recommend a location where we'd be close to both
> good diving, and interesting treks into the rainforests? My wife and I
> are moderately experienced divers (about 24 hours bottom time to date),
> and we tend to prefer stuff not deeper than about 25 m. (We're more
> into fish than interesting geography.)
>
>
> We'd also take recommendations for specific hotels/resorts to stay at,
> and/or dive outfits/travel agents that might be worth talking to for
> that location.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Mike Nowak
>

Everyone says fantastic things about Cocos Island, but it sounds like you
may want a bit more experience before tackling that one. Isla Catalina on
the north-western coast is a good place to dive, and you can get to it
easily from either Playa del Coco or Playa Flamingo, and even Playa
Tamarindo (I think). The diving there is relatively easy and might get to
see some of their nicer visitors such as mantas or eagle rays. However, a
word of warning...DON'T dive with "Costa Rica Diving" in Playa Flamingo. I
dived with the owner who seemed not to care about my desire to not go into
deco, and therefore decided to ignore me completely when I wanted to ascend
to a reasonable depth for my desired profile. Not the best buddy behaviour
I've encountered, especially when I'm a paying customer.

So, provided you steer clear of that dive operator you may well have a
lovely time.

Stan