Hi
Below a description of our experience with a Costa Rican dive operator. I shall mention, that this text has been emailed to the company up front to give them a chance to react prior to this posting, which they did not. I will for their sake email them a direct link to this forum, so they can reply/defend themselves in here.
Regards Flemming
Diving with Oceans Unlimited Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
- Or how we lost $400,-
On a trip to Costa Rica, the mrs. and I wanted to do some diving. We started up in the north at Playa de Coco and did some local dives there and a day trip to Catalina Islands. All in all, the visibility on these trips was pretty disappointing. But we had done our home work and scanned the internet and thus found out, that the best diving in the country should be the Caño Island off the southern coast.
So we drove down there and went to the Oceans Unlimited in Manuel Antonio run by a American named Captain Bob, as we had found them on the internet and seen, they did trips out there.
We talked to Bob, explaining our disappointment, with the previous diving in the country, and asked him, whether the Caño Island would be any better this time of year. He assured us, that visibility out there would be in the 80+ feet range, and that lots of rays and sharks would be seen. All this sounded fine and he made us an offer for a 2 tank trip out there for $200,- per person. This was the most expensive daily diving, we had ever tried, but the description of the diving made us book the trip.
Facts:
Instead of the $200,- our credit card was charged with 103.000 Colons, which was a (for them) fabourable exchange rate.
When we got to the first dive site, after a 2 hour 40 minute boat ride instead of the promised 2 hours, this turned out to be a group of rocks rising to about 6 meters under the surface, there was strong current there, which could clearly be seen from the surface – my estimate was at least 3 knots. Bob was the captain of the boat and besides him was a local divemaster who should accompany the group of 5 divers on the dive.
To my surprise, Bob started briefing the divemaster before we entered water, indicating that this had not this dive before!. The strong current was mentioned several times by Bob but nevertheless the dive was initiated by sailing us a bit upstream and dropping us off. We immediately descended and just managed to catch the rocks before being blown off. However, as my wife and I were the only ones equipped with (our own) reef hooks, the dive had to be aborted after a very short time. We were then boated to an alternative site and dropped again WITHOUT surface interval and told to continue the dive. My wife (being the only responsible) said she would not dive without surface interval. The alternative dive site was of very poor quality with only a few rocks on sand bottom and very poor visibility.
After these “dives”, we had lunch on the beach and headed for the second dive which was at a buoy near the shore. Again Bob had to brief the divemaster prior to the dive!. We descended 17 meters to a sand bottom and swam over sand bottom in the briefed direction following the divemaster for a period of 15 minutes without finding the dive site announced. We were then told by the divemaster to ascend and on the surface, we were towed back to the buoy and given a different briefing and told to descend again WITHOUT surface interval. Again my wife refused diving under these circumstances. The rest of the group did a dive very similar to the “second” first dive. I was trying to get a few pics, but whenever I stopped for only 30 seconds, the rest of the group had gone, and I had to swim like mad to keep up.
During this time, my wife was complaining to Bob, but was told off with: He was not responsible for the change of conditions, and when asked if there were no other dive sites on the island, we could use, he said no. A 2 minute search on the internet showed, this is not true.
So for $400, my wife got 15 minutes confusion in high current and 15 minutes of high speed swimming on sand bottom. I got the same + 2 times 30 minutes of low quality diving.
CONCLUSION:
Whatever you do in Costa Rica – Don’t dive with Oceans (Un)limited, as they are obviously selling dives of which they have no or very little knowledge. They dive unsafely without proper surface intervals, and considerations of the current conditions.
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