A good first day here. (Some pix below.) As always, going to a new place and dive operation means learning how they do things. Several firsts for us.

We brought our gear over to the area with the restaurant, dive shop, pool. This area is not on the water. The guides put our gear on the boat, set things up (partially). When all loaded up, a tractor pulled the boat to the beach, and we (6 divers and a guide) walked 5 minutes to get there ourselves. We got on the boat, check over our gear–glad we did, as their setup was not complete. Then we’re off to the first site, La Esperanza.

The dives here in the Marine Park are limited to 45 minutes, so these were not to be long dives, at all. La Esperanza was a blah dive, with not much to see in terms of reef or wildlife. The terrain was interesting, though, a rock bottom with channels between huge slabs. We’ve not seen anything quite like that before.

The dive guide was basically absent, just zooming ahead the group a bit behind. Never seemed to check in on us. Pattie and I like to dive slow and look around, and as was the case for another couple, Kate and Dom. So we all just hung back, keeping the distant reflection of our guide’s cylinder in sight (albeit distant. These are essentially drift dives, though the current was not at all strong.

Getting back on the boat was interesting; we passed up our BCD/Cylinder, and stayed in the water while they changed over our tanks. When they’d done their job, we passed up our fins and climbed onboard. Off to the next site, which was Los Morros, a very sealife-rich site. We saw lots of grouper, porkfish, needlefish, an octopus…it was a great site, for sure.

And Pattie got some very nice pix…

We’ll get in two dives on Friday, 10/4, and hopefully I’ll post a few more pix then.