I thought I would do a review of scuba diving in the Tamarindo / Flamingo Beach Area. The Tamarindo Dive shop was sold out and so they book us with a dive shop in Flamingo; AquaCenter Diving, who also have a small office in Tamarindo.
We walked the 100 meters from our hotel, The Hotel Chocolate, which is a pretty nice and cool abode or base of ops BTW, and met the shuttle bus at 0645 one morning.
It was driven by a long hair with an earning that seemed to cool to chat with us. We told him who we were and he silently motioned us into the van and we were off. About 45 minutes later, we arrived in Flamingo at a large golf resort and picked up the other divers, 3 Brazilians and a bunch of Gringos. The resort was all inclusive (one of the gringos was bitching that his friend tried to bring back a lady and she was denied admission). I mean, if you want to travel like this, why not just go to Disney World in Orlando and save the hassle?
Anyway, off we went to the dive boat. We were ferried out to it and it was pretty nice, a 48 foot diesel with a cabin, big back deck, fly bridge and sun deck. The crew, mostly Ticos and one Aussie or Brit female, took care of all the set up for us as we rented everything. We were to dive in the Catalina Islands, a series of rocks a few miles outside of Flamingo.
Our dive master gave a pretty good briefing, it was a drift dive, so no hassle. Once in the water, near a large rock formation (the name escapes me), we drifted with the current at 50 to 60 feet. They told us the water was 60 degrees, but I think it was warmer as we all wore shorties and no one complained of being cold, so I think they were a bit off in converting from C to F.
After entering the water, we immediately saw two spotted eagle rays and a sting ray sans tail. After this, we saw a couple of turtles. The second dive was at a rock island called El Sombero because it looked like a …..
Once in the water at 40 feet we saw a lot of fish life and went to a shark cleaning station where sharks go in to have their gills and mouth cleaned by little fish in a symbiotic enterprise. It was pretty cool as we saw about 3 or 4 good size black tipped reef sharks and I saw a big moray out of its hiding spot, which is pretty usual. Anyway, they feed us juice and snacks between dives. They put out the tip box and we both tipped about 10 bucks as the crew was pretty cool throughout. A good half day of healthy fun that mom would be proud of. We went back to drinking beer and chasing tail directly after this.
Contact Information for diving in the Flamingo Beach Area:
AquacenterDiving : http://centralamerica.com/cr/scuba/aqua.htm
Aquacenter@CentralAmerica.com
