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Brian Bolton

Costa Rica: Our 2003 Travel Adventure With “Costa Rica Dive” and Ocotal Dive Resort

by mega11gator
Date: 2003-08-14
Location: Costa Rica

Rodales Scuba Magazine

The beauty of the Northwest Pacific coast of Costa Rica prompted our family to return there this July for our annual vacation. The following is my second review, one year later, of this wonderful place, rich in marine life. This report will include a discussion of the services provided by Rolando Arburola’s “Costa Rica Dive” and Ocotal Dive Resort in comparison to the services provided by Bill Beard’s Adventure Travel, Diving Safaris and Playa Hermosa (Trip report posted August, 2002) with whom we booked last year. This report will also provide some practical travel tips that we have learned from both experiences in this very popular diving area.

Overview

My wife and I are both advanced divers and I have been an underwater photographer since 1974. Our fifteen-year-old son is an experienced diver, now Nitrox certified, and has an interest in underwater photography (See photos by Kevin Bolton), while our twelve-year-old daughter is not a diver. We returned to this area because of the variety of activities available and the opportunity to visit dive sites teeming with a variety of marine life. Photo subjects were everywhere, both under water and on land.

We also chose to return to this area because it is a short boat ride from one of our preferred dive sites, the Catalina Islands.
Inland, we had a lot of fun visiting a cloud forest, hiking around a volcano and horseback riding. However, while the focus of this report is on the diving and accommodations, I cannot help but to digress and talk about the land activities, which are really integral to fully enjoying such a trip, especially if you have non-diving travelers with you.

Geographic Facts

We began our vacation at Ocotal Dive Resort located very near Playa Coco. The town of Coco is about a 45-minute ride from the airport near the city of Liberia and about four-hour ride from the capital of San Jose, depending on who is driving. Our guide, driver, and the owner of Costa Rica Dive, Rolando Arburola, had a four wheel drive vehicle ready for us upon arrival in San Jose and took us on a scenic trip to Ocotal discussing, in English, many sites along the way. The drive time seemed to pass very quickly.

When looking at a map of the region, you may note that the distances do not appear to match the travel times. Plan for slower travel; you will not be traveling on highways like the interstates in the United States or in other places. Further, the Costa Rican “highway patrol” has radar speed enforcement areas set up, and the fines can be quite high if you are not careful. If you are driving, look for oncoming cars blinking their lights and watch the driver inside of the vehicle as they pass.

Often, the driver will hold up one or two fingers indicating how many officers are stationed ahead. As suggested in last year's report, we planned our inland trips toward the end of our stay instead of trying to add land trips in between dive days. Again, this worked out very well for us and we avoided wasting time travelling to and from our dive resort for inland excursions. The topography is such that what may seem like a short inland trip will end up being an all day excursion that will leave you travel weary.

Rolando’s choice to obtain a four wheel drive vehicle paid off numerous times as we ascended rough mountainous roads and drove over obstacles that stopped or greatly slowed many tour buses and automobiles. Further, we saved at least six to eight hours of travel time using back roads and shortcuts unpassable by many vehicles.