Costa Rica and Belize

[ahar]

Haven't found any trip reports from Costa Rica or Belize so I'll try and add as much detail as I can to help anyone who fancies going over the to dive!

First, Costa Rica. This was a bit of a surprise day's diving as we hadn't planned anything and just happened upon a dive shop. We were staying just next to Manuel Antonio National park, about 2/3 of the way down Costa Rica's Pacific coast. The largest local town is a place called Quepos, about 5 miles away from Manuel Antonio and 4 hours local bus ride from the capital San Jose.

The diving outfit is called Manual Antonio divers, run by a lovely couple from Florida who've just set up the shop in Quepos. They've only been open 2 weeks when we went (July 05) so we expected a few teething troubles but it all ran rather smoothly. As there haven't been any diving outfits in the area before I was looking forward to some unexplored areas.

The weather was hot and sunny, but the Costa Ricans call May, June, July and August Winter (even though they are in the Northern Hemisphere, between 9 and 11 degrees) as it can get a little rainy, cloudy and windy but it's still at least 30C! There wasn't too much wind when we went out but there had been a storm out at sea and so the swell was about 1m or so. This wasn't really a problem for the boat going out (compared to some UK weather) but it did limit the diving that we did.

The two dives were to be around some pinnacles about 15 mins out from the harbour. We dropped in (lovely 26C water) and went down. Due to the swell the vis was between 5 and 8 metres and it was pretty hard going about 10 metres. The dive guide took us down to between 12 and 17 metres for the dive where the swell didn't affect us much. The topography and the dive pretty much reminded me of a UK Cold water reef off the coast of Bournemouth - something like the Petrified Forest. There were fish around, sea fans and some soft corals but nowhere near the kind of life that you would see around a coral reef. As we got shallower there we loads more life and fish but it was difficult due to the swell. I had a good two dives but nothing very special. If you went there looking for a spectacular reef dive you'd bee disappointed, but if like us you went there for a dive as a secondary ting to searching for Howler Monkeys and Sloths in the National Park you'll be pleased but not delighted. If you go there in their summer (October, November, December, January, February) the swell is much less and there is better vis.

Next, Belize. We didn’t book anything in advance and just went along to see what was around. We took a flight from Nicaragua (via El Salvador) to Belize City which is a bit of dump, so if you can, don’t spend more time there than you need to. We took a cab from the airport straight to the Belize City Marine terminal to go out to Caye Caulker. The main Caye that people stay on is Caye Ambergris, with the largest town being San Pedro. I don’t really like large tourist towns so avoid them if I can, and in the words of one of our dive guides, San Pedro is a bit of a ‘City of Sin’! We headed over to Caye Caulker – much smaller, quieter and cheaper. We found a hotel that had a room with private shower, Cable TV and Air Conditioning at one end of the island for $35 (about £20) a night, unpacked our stuff and headed out to book some diving. In the six full days that we had on the Caye we had 3 full days of diving, a full day and two half days of snorkelling. All the diving that we did was day boat out of Caye Caulker – you couldn’t book any live aboard boats from Caye Caulker (we did look). We went with Big Fish Divers, run by the magnificently chilled Oscar – a man so laid back that we didn’t pay him any money for the diving until the morning of our last day there (having finished all our diving trips the day before). The total cost of diving, including one day trip to the Blue Hole, one day trip to the Turneffe Islands, two dives on a local reef and a night dive for two people was approx £350 including all kit hire and lunches. The only thing extra was the park fee for the Blue Hole ($80Bze or £22 pp), payable in cash on the day to the Ranger there.

Turneffe Islands – A large reef system about an hours steam from Caye Caulker. The coral reef there is very well preserved and has a fantastic array of hard and soft corals, reef fish and other beasties. The water temp was a constant 29C, the vis was usually around 20-25m and the water was a lovel light blue colour. The diving in Turneffe are large walls of coral, stretching from about 10m down to around 40m although the dive guide kept us between 12 and 20m most of the time. There aren’t too many large animals around that we saw – the odd nurse and reef shark, some Northern Rays and the odd spotted Eagle ray, but none of the huge Pelagic species that can see elsewhere in the Caribbean like Sailfish or Whale Sharks. There are turtles around though we missed them every time as Laura (being a newly qualified diver) was a little heavy on her air so we were usually the first to the surface and the turtles always seemed to come along at the end of the dives. It was a great day trip – 3 dives on some fantastic reef and a good work up for the Blue Hole the next day.

Blue Hole – The Blue Hole and the national park that surrounds it is around 2 hours steaming from Caye Caulker even in a 50ft boat with 3 200hp outboard motors. The hole itself is 140m deep and 300 m wide, so you can’t see the picture postcard views of it from the surface of the sea – it just seems to be a large area of deeper blue. The dive was following the guide over the lip of the hole at 12 metres down in to the hole to about 40m. There are some large swim throughs that you are lead around, made up of stalactites and stalactites over 2m wide in some places. As you’re deep it doesn’t take long before you have to ascend but if you’re lucky (we weren’t but others in our group were) you’ll be followed up by groups of Nurse and reef sharks. Back up to 10 m and back to the boat (which has a few drop tanks hanging off the back just in case )to do a safety stop and up. Total dive time was around 29 minutes (including stop @ 5) though it seems much shorter. The Blue Hole is very impressive but I was left thinking I could do with a lot more dives (especially with my twin 12s and 7ltr stage) to really appreciate it. The other two dives of the day were on pretty much pristine coral reef (Lighthouse Reef and Half Moon Caye) with some of the largest barrel sponges I’ve ever seen. A great day out.

Local Reef – After a day to off gas after the blue hole, se decided to take a couple of dives on one of the local reefs. After talking to Oscar in the shop we decided on Caye Chapel Channels, about 10 minutes from Caye Caulker. This is a series of reefs running parallel with each other forming a number of channels – as you swim over them you get the impression of a number of canyons between reefs. Most of the dive is between 12 and 20 metres and we go up and over the reefs and down in the channels between them. The reefs are in great condition – surprising given they are not a national park and how close they are to Caye Chapel and Caye Caulker (some of the other local reefs used for snorkelling are up to 70% destroyed). They have the usual array of sponges, corals, fish, moray eels and Sharks and it was here we saw a turtle. It was a 1m wide Green Turtle, lazily swimming into view like they do. It sway around in a zig zag pattern for a few minutes for us, coming within about 5 metres before heading back off into the distance.

Later on that day we were back for a night dive, although we headed to the shallower part of the reef, between 3 and 7 metres. I’ve never been on a night dive so was very impressed by the array of different life I saw. All of the Conches were active, running around and fighting with each other. Most of the fish were asleep with the Parrot fish in their very strange membranes ready to detect predators getting too close. There were several octopi, a small but energetic squid and lots of very annoy micro fish that insisted on clustering around my torch and nibbling on my fingers!

All in all, Belize is an excellent place to go diving. My only other experience of Coral Reefs was the Barrier reef in Australia and while it didn’t have the diversity of life that the barrier reef did, I may be biased as I saw my second favourite sea animal (the crown of thorns star fish) there. I really enjoyed Caye Caulker although if you do go, take some insect repellent as their mosquitoes have a habit of sneaking up and biting you without you noticing!

Before I finish, I know this is a dive report but I must mention the trip we did to see the Manatees in Swallow Caye. We went with a guy called Chocolate who campaigned for 20 years to have the area that they live in made into a national park. They are incredible animals and came right up to the boat for a long while though you have to be very patient as it took us over 2 hours of searching to find them and get close. If there is a man who can though, it’s Chocolate who has never failed to find them one each trip for 20 years! The man himself has an incredible story – now 76 he still runs tours and jumps about the boat with ease. Born to a very poor family, he never learned to read or write at school, yet managed to teach himself in the process of the campaign. He’s worked with Jaques Cousteau, National Geographic, Discovery channel and others and is fascinating. If you get a chance, it’s well worth a day off from diving.

Sorry it’s a bit long, but I hope that it’s worth reading – drop me a PM if you have any questions

[Andy the Coastie]

Must have been boring ,,, with nothing to say

[SCUBA Chick]

Originally Posted by Andy the Commie

Must have been boring ,,, with nothing to say

Belize???? I doubt it

[recurve]

My daughter did some 'SRD' swimming while on a trip to Belize and caught her leg on something underwater that took FOREVER to heal. She's never forgiven the place

[ahar]

Originally Posted by recurve

My daughter did some 'SRD' swimming while on a trip to Belize and caught her leg on something underwater that took FOREVER to heal. She's never forgiven the place

Probably Fire Coral, nasty stuff and there's quite a bit about

[wreckferret]

Hi
I spent 3 months diving and teaching in Costa Rica with Raleigh International from Jan - end of April 05.
This was the during the dry season till the beginning of the wet season.

We dived at Curu which is trying to get marine reserve status.
Over the last number of years, Raleigh had built : Tyre reefs ( using lorry tyres) and plastic drums approx 4` high.
The area had been devasted by dynamite fishing and we were there to monitor the return of fish stocks.
There was also a wreck that had been sunk in August 04 that was starting to become an artifical reef.

In jan - march the viz was an okay 5m -10m and the water temp was approx 30c. In April as the weather changed it started to cool down to 20c and 2m - 5m viz.

We spent the whole time living on the beach, amazing experience for someone in their early 40`s.
We taught young people from 17yrs - 23yrs old, we had three groups during the period that I was there.

Our site started work at 6:00am and didn`t finish until 7:00pm.

I carried out approx 70 dives and 400 hours boat driving.
My main tasks were to ;
Teach people how to drive the boats,
Use of marine radios,
compressor maintenance and fill bottles,
maintain all generators,
repair all the dive gear,
teach and lead dives,
make sure all health and safety was carried out
+ HAVE FUN.

We lived with hermit crabs on the beach and the monkeys in the forest.
The same monkeys that threw mangos at you or if given the chance would piss on you, if you spent too long around the compressor.

When it rained the site was covered in crabs that got into everything including your wet suit boots ( hell of a shock ), sleeping bags etc.

I would definitly go back.
Photo 1: ant infested radio room
Photo 2: the pinnacles dive, 3m - 12m
photo 3: the view at night
Photo 4: my house for 3+ months is on the left.







Apoligies if I have got a bit long winded here.

[CotoChris]

Nice report, thanks for posting it. I went through Central America in 1996 all the way from California to Panama. I learnt how to dive off Honduras so I didn't get to dive from Central Rica, Panama or Belize. We thought of going to Belize but had a reputation for being very dangerous, in the end we found Costa Rica to be the most dangerous place in Central - especially San José. Still my cousin who lives in the USA vows that Belize has the best diving in the carribean.

Whilst in Hinduras I git some bites on my feet that took over three months to heal, it wasn't much fun but at least it was at the end of my trip.

Hope Chocolate is succesful in turning the site into a National Park, great story.

[Chrystianne]

Thanks for the report - it's changed my mind on where to book, so thanks for that.

Quick question - I want to stay in Belize City near the harbour if it has one, for a few days, to please my non-diving husband. Is the City really that awful ?

Chrystianne

[ahar]

Originally Posted by Chrystianne

Quick question - I want to stay in Belize City near the harbour if it has one, for a few days, to please my non-diving husband. Is the City really that awful ?

Yes, it is that bad. It has a very small harbour - all that's there are very tacky and overpriced gift shops and bars for the tourists (mainly very loud, fat, annoying Americans) that arrive from the cruise ships for the day. There is no beach.

We're masters of exploring cities and finding things interesting that no-one else would. For example, we spent several days in a city called Curitiba in Brazil that boasted nothing more for tourists than a small park but we still wandered around looking round the city for 2 days, happy as larry. We've even spent several days wandering around Lima (capital of Peru) and La Paz (Capital of Bolivia) - both bloody dangerous cities (See the advice on the FCO website) and they were still better than Belize City.

The problem with the city is that its been hit so many times by hurricanes that anything interesting has been blown down long ago. If you want to please the non diving husband, plan to take a trip to one of the Mayan sites in Belize, or better yet spend a few days with the ruins in Tikal in Guatemala. You can get direct buses from Belize city to Flores in Guatamala, the nearest city to the Tikal ruins.

If you want more details on Tikal, give me a shout as we have a Central America guidebook that I can send you some details from.