Pura Vida!
BAH does Costa Rica (Page 1 of 3)

From the capital city of San Jose to the Pacific Coast (and beneath Mother, Mother Ocean's waves), to the rainforests, cloud forests, and beyond, these are my adventures in Costa Rica.  All photos shot by me, Betty, various obliging Costa Ricans, or our fellow adventurers from Blue Water Divers OKC.  The shot above is me on the stern of our dive boat, doing the "I'm the king of the world!" bit (from Titanic).

Our primary reason for venturing to Costa Rica was diving in the Golfo de Papagayo, but we also explored the rain forests around the Arenal Volcano, rafted the Sarapiqui River, and drove through the cloud forests and over the Continental Divide.  While at the Golfo de Papagayo, we stayed at the Occidental Costa Smeralda, a beautiful hotel terraced into the hills overlooking Culebra Bay.  Our only complaint about the hotel was the intermittent shuttle service, which often made for a lot of very strenuous walking up and down steep hills to get from our room to the restaurant, lobby, etc.  My calves will never be the same.  Above is a shot of Betty and me on the dive boat heading out our first morning -- me with hair and beard cut short for my underwater adventures.  Though Costa Rica doesn't have the beautiful corals of some place like Cozumel, it draws its share of divers who are attracted to the large schools of fish that congregate in the Pacific and the many large species that can be found: sharks like the hammerhead, bulls, and white tips, as well as whale sharks; rays like the manta, devil, and spotted eagle; etc.  We dove eight different locations in four days, in good and bad visibility, against gentle surges and horrendous, cling-to-the-rocks-for-dear-life currents designed for far more experienced divers than Betty and me, in water that was never cooler than 80 degrees F (with the exception of a couple thermoclines we found below 70-80 feet).  It was an awesome experience.

Dive services were provided by Diving Safaris of Costa Rica, located at Playa Hermosa.  I highly recommend them.  Tell Earl (the owner) that I sent you and be sure to request Debbie and Kiki as dive guides.  On the walk from the dive shop to the beach, be sure and say "Hola!" to the big iguana that hangs out there.  A beer in the little store across the street from the dive shop will cost you $6.50, so be sure and bring your own (to be consumed after your dive, of course).  Pictured above are some of the divers with us: (l to r) Zach, Diving Safaris dive master Debbie (a Canadian who fell in love with Costa Rica and decided to stay and work there), Shane, Steve, and Robert.

Our first dive was at Cabezo de Mono (Monkey Head) Island -- you can see why it is named that by looking at the shape of the island -- just outside Culebra Bay in the Papagayo Gulf.  My computer logged a max depth of 51 ft and 81 degree F water temp.  Visibility was a decent 50 feet or so.  This was a beautiful spot.  As we circled the island, we were rocked to and fro by a gentle surge.  After my initial "Oh my God, look at all these thousands and thousands of fish!" I started poking around.  Snuggled up tight under one spot in the reef I found a sleeping nurse shark, 4 or 5 feet long, the color of a cinnamon-skinned Latina girl.  I could have reached up under the rocks and grabbed the shark's pectoral fin; that's how close it was.

Crevices in the reef held green, zebra, and spotted moray eels.  They watched me carefully, mouthing dire, silent warnings, then slithering into their lairs when I extended a tentative hand.  You can see one squirming away through the rocks in the picture above.  (All underwater shots were made with a cheap, disposable camera, so please excuse the relatively poor quality.  A good underwater camera is on my list of equipment to purchase before my next underwater adventure.  Also, regardless of their placement in this journal, all the underwater shots were actually taken on our last dive, at the Meadows, the only dive that was shallow enough for the camera.  Rated for 17 ft, the camera functioned without leaking down to 41.)

I saw needlefish and trumpetfish, though it was a couple more dives before I learned to tell the difference.  (That's a needlefish in the photo above, approximately 3 ft long.)  A school of spotted eagle rays, a dozen or more, passed just at the edge of my visible range, their wings flapping in eerie silence, ghosts in the haunting blue gloom.

I soon learned to spot the expertly camouflaged scorpionfish that other, more experienced divers initially pointed out to me, flashing the hand symbol for this poison-spined ambush predator.  Can you spot the one in the photo above?  You really had to watch where you put your hands because there were so many scorpionfish.  There were starfish (our guide pulled one from the reef and placed it in Betty's hands, making her day -- her eyes were the size of silver dollars behind her mask), jacks, red snappers, groupers, guineafowl puffers, and oodles and oodles of spotted porcupinefish.

I especially liked the porcupinefish's big melancholy eyes.  When they stared at me, they looked like they had one hell of a sad story to tell, if only I could understand their language.  I would tweak their tails as they turned to swim away, trying to add a little excitement to their day.

We spent most of our time, above and below the water, with Steve and Dana, both of whom work for the OKC Fire Department.  They were great company.  Steve could make a tank of air last a lifetime, but Dana sucked hers down at about the same rate as Betty and me, so the four of us generally surfaced together.  It was great to know that Steve, who had been one of our original dive instructors, was always there looking out for us.

Our second dive was at a spot called Virador, also just outside Culebra Bay.  47 ft, 80 degrees F.  These first two dives were essentially checkout dives, the guides' way of making sure us Okies weren't a bunch of screwups.  We were warned that if we missed a safety stop, we'd have to sit out the very next dive, and if we did it twice, we would no longer be able to dive from their boats.

My main memory of the Virador dive is hanging out with this huge school of grunts, all silver and striped in blue and yellow.  I drifted in among them, just one of the guys.  The school was so thick, that once inside, all I could see was fish -- a million little eyes watching me, wondering what I was up to, why I wasn't striped same as them, what I was doing blowing all those bubbles.  It was so totally cool to be there.  We also saw two white tip reef sharks, at least 8 feet long.  One lay on the bottom in a sandy canyon between the rocks and the other circled menacingly.  Betty and I were right behind our guide when he gave the hand single for shark and began creeping slowly over the rocks so as not to scare them away.  I eased up beside him, and with Betty hiding behind me, we watched the sharks from a distance of no more than six feet.  It's an interesting mix of fear and fascination being that close to a large shark.  Even as the adrenaline starts flooding your veins, you wish the shark would come closer -- and you're worried he'll decide you're not cool enough to hang out with and swim away.

This is Ed, another Bluewater OKC diver, also delightful company for the trip.  His wife Judy, who doesn't dive, was with us for all the shore activities.

Second day, first dive, the Catalina Islands at the southern end of the Gulf, an hour and a half boat ride.  Dolphins chased the boat, leaping in our wake and sometimes surfing the bow wave, and from the foredeck, you'd occasionally see schools of rays and jacks pass under the boat.

Betty catches some Z's on the way out there...

...while I wait impatiently to get back in the water.  My adventure hat for this trip was provided by Kristy Dark.  It's from the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, Ojai, CA.  Want to provide the hat for my next adventure?  Drop me an email about it.  We changed boats this day, to one that didn't have a nice transom to step off of.  This was our boat for the remainder of the week, basically a fishing boat.  To get in the water, we had to do the famous Jacques Cousteau back roll off the side and into the water, something Betty and I had never done before (same for some of the other divers in our group).  It was a bit unnerving at first, but after that first roll we were pros.

Me and one of the other OKC divers, Chris, between dives.

Pictured above is Betty tooling through the deep blue.  Catalina Island was a great dive, 70 feet, 83 degree F water, good vis.  We had a strong current for this dive, but it was totally cool because we were flying with the current, swooping down through absolutely gorgeous canyons.  In one we surprised a beautiful spotted eagle ray, 5 or 6 feet across, which stirred from the sandy bottom and flapped away and down a wall into the indigo of deeper water.  There were more white tips here, each bigger than the sofa in my living room, resting on the sandy bottoms of the canyons.  By the time we'd spot them, the current would have already swept us over or past them.  Each time the current swept me toward one, I wanted to hold up a sign that read, "Excuse me, Mr Shark.  I am honestly not rushing up on you like this on purpose.  Please don't take offense and bite me."  Here in the deeper water, we encountered some chilly thermoclines.  Where the current brought colder water up from the depths to merge with the warm water, everything would go freaky for a moment or two.  It was like we were suddenly swimming through a clear cooking oil.  It made you wonder if there was something wrong with your vision.

This photo journal continues with Page Two, Page Three, and a page of additional photos shot by other Blue Water divers, which are here.