Scuba Diving In Costa Rica – General Travel Information
Costa Rica is known as a premiere ecotourism or biotourism destination with volcanoes, rain forests and lots of interesting exotic creatures like birds, turtles, lizards, monkeys and more. There’s also some really decent scuba diving there as well.
Cocos Island located in the Pacific Ocean about 36 hours boat journey from the mainland is of course one of the top liveaboard scuba diving destinations and is part of Costa Rica. But for the purpose of this article, we will focus only on the land based scuba diving areas along the coastline of Costa Rica.
Although there is scuba diving on both coasts (Pacific and Caribbean sides) of Costa Rica, there are two main dive areas, both on the Pacific Ocean side. The first one and the area I have experience diving at is the northwest part of the country called Guanacaste. To get to Guanacaste, you fly into Liberia either from neighbouring countries or even some direct flights from North America. You can also fly into the capital of San Jose and then transfer to a commuter plane to Liberia. From Liberia, it’s a shuttle to Playa del Coco or Playa del Hermosa. Playa del Coco is where most of the dive shops and resorts will be located in.
The best dive sites will be around the Catalina Islands, Bat and Cat Islands but there is great diving all over the Guanacaste area as well.
The other main scuba diving location is down in the southwest part of Costa Rica near the Osa Penninsula especially Cano Island. To get to this area, you take a commuter plane from San Jose to Drake Bay where the dive shops and resorts will be located.
One can drive or take a bus from San Jose to both Guanacaste and Drake Bay but it will take many hours ranging from 6 to 9 hours depending on road conditions especially during the rainy muddy season. In the case of Drake Bay, you may have to take an hour long boat ride as well. So the commuter planes are definitely the easier and shorter option.
The Scuba Diving In Costa Rica Coastlines
The water temperatures here along the coastline of Costa Rica ranges from 78 to 84 degrees F or 26 to 29 degrees C but in the winter months, the temperatures can dip down to 68 degrees F or 19 degrees C. The visibility in the Pacific Ocean will also generally be lower than in the Caribbean with more currents. But the plus side to this is increased plankton levels which in turn bring in more bigger animals such as sharks, rays and even whales. At times it was like diving through sections of soup but still much better visibility than typical Ontario dives.
Here’s a video showing you what Costa Rica diving is like.
I remember during one dive I had there when our group was in about 50 feet of water. Then our divemaster suddenly got our attention and pointed in a direction where we saw an entire school of cow nose rays coming towards us. They looked like a squadron of alien spacecraft and they were coming too fast for us to get out of the way. So they simply went around us. For a brief moment, we were in the middle of this large school of rays and this is one encounter that I will never ever forget!
In general, expect to see less coral reefs but more bigger marine life. Of course being in Costa Rica, one can easily combine scuba diving with amazing land based activities such as touring in the rain forests and volcanoes as part of an overall ecotourism trip.
To get in the best dive sites including Cano Island which can be considered as a lower cost alternative to Cocos Island due to its rich marine life including sharks and rays, one can take a liveaboard.
