Costa Rica Diving Safaris

Eagle ray (Photograph via Costa Rica Diving Safaris)

Spent the morning SCUBA diving with Costa Rica Diving Safaris (out of Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste). A pair of good dives with excellent guides. Visibility not great, but we saw white tipped shark, speckled eagle rays, jewelled moray eels, a frog fish and tons more! I highly recommend this outfit.

Ben, our dive guide, is a UK expat who's wandered from Thailand to Mexico to Costa Rica as a diving instructor and guide. Next, he's off to Egypt if things go as planned! A good life, he's quick to admit, even though he expect to follow up on the business law profession he studied at University by the time he turns 29. Unless he starts his own dive center, that is. He's currently working on a business plan!

Our outing was a nice sized group. Six guest divers, Ben and another guide/instructor from La Jolla, California who was finishing up a certificate when he lead our second dive, though I don't recall what he was achieving. There was also a boat captain and a first mate. Comfortable if well worn vessel and fresh pineapple, cookies and water to keep the energy levels high. Perfect weather. Sunny skies, light breeze, just a light chop. Great visibility topside, but often a bit more occluded under the surface. Though some periods of better visibility. Saw a good sized white tipped reef sharf up close and personal, a personal first. He was hovering near the bottom and wandered off when we crowded him. And watching the graceful eagle rays flapping slowly along, tails stretching for several feet behind them is an image that will stick with me for a while. What a morning!