Playa Del Coco
- Anna
- Mar 6
- 3 min read
Okay, I was being dumb; of course, I would want to write a blog post about my days here! After two long bus rides and a night spent back in San Jose, I finally made it out to Coco midday Saturday, March 1st. Let me start by saying this place is HOT! It's way less green and humid than it was in Puerto Viejo, and much more like a classic beach town with a lot of sand and sun! I started with my confined water training session on Sunday. My teacher was a young man from France—a great teacher! I spent about three hours in the pool on Sunday, going over the basics and skills that I will need to know for the open water. On Monday, I finally got to get into the ocean to dive! We dove in the Gulf of Papagayo and visited two dive sites off the Pelonas Islands (Argentina & Tortuga). We went over some skills before, during, and after each dive, but most of my time spent in the water was being shown around the reefs with my teacher pointing out all the wonderful sea life around us! While doing the confined water practice in the pool, I did have one moment of feeling claustrophobic, but it was quick to get over. In the ocean, it was not an issue at all. There is so much space and so much to see that I didn't have a moment to overanalyze each breath and how it felt in my chest like I did in the pool.
On Tuesday, I did my final two dives of this trip, back at the same dive sites. My first dive was the last one that had skills for me and my teacher to review/go over, and the final dive was purely for fun! Each dive went deeper, and I was able to stay down longer. We wrapped it all up at the dive shop, signing some paperwork, and I am now officially PADI Open Water certified! Woot woot! Not only was it so cool to be in the water like that, but the fellow divers I met were amazing as well! I got to talk to them about destinations they have visited and recommend and just hear about their journey with diving! Truly an unforgettable experience that I will be able to take with me for the rest of my life. Now I just need to plan my next dive! Potentially, while I am in Europe this spring, I could hop over to Malta for a weekend? Do some diving in the iron ore pit mines in Northern Minnesota? Say screw it and move to Australia? Now, maybe I am getting ahead of myself with that last one.
My teacher did get some footage of the sights from our dives; I have attached a few below! Now, I am going to try to list all the cool sea life that I got to see. Obviously, I won't be able to name of everything we saw, but I will try my best: Round Stingray, Manta Ray, Spotted Eagle Ray, Longtail Stingray, White-tip Reef Shark, Green Sea Turtle, Panamic Green Moray, Cortez Garden Eel, Jeweled Moray, Tiger Snake Eel, Starry Moray Eel, Octopus (species unknown), Lobster, Harlequin Shrimp, Pacific Seahorse, and hundreds of types of fish!
I'm writing this section on Tuesday after returning from my morning dives, hard to believe I will be back in Minnesota in 56 hours! I still have a whole day left here and I figured what better to wrap up my time than with a 5 hour catamaran tour and sunset dinner! So I still have that to look forward to for tomorrow!
I apologize for the selfies, they just ended up being the only evidence/time stamps of my days!
Today (Wednesday) was the catamaran tour! They took us about an hour north, and then we anchored at a beach to swim/snorkel! It was a great last day, lots of time in the sun, got to swim in the water and see some fish, ate some good food! The highlight was watching my final Costa Rican sunset; it was gorgeous!
I am so excited to see Pumba tomorrow!
Oh! Also, book recap for my time in Costa Rica: I only read 14 books (not nearly as much as I had hoped for myself), and my favorite read was Flowers for Algernon. I am hopeful that while on my housesits in England, I will have plenty of time to do some more reading! Last year, I read 100+ books, and I am way behind in surpassing that goal :(
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