Richcoast's Weblog

Sidemount diving

Rich Coast Diving — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:39:21 +0000

Rich Coast Diving is going TEC!

Jeff Loflin, a tec specialist came to Costa Rica to introduce the sidemount diving to Rich Coast Diving. At the DEMA in Orlando there was a tec day and we had done a small trial on the sidemount and absolutely loved it. After a 3 day training with Jeff during the Thanksgiving break, we can now say that we are the only dive center in Costa Rica where you can get certified as a sidemount diver.

What is sidemount Diving? It originated from the cave divers. You click 2 tanks on the side of your harness and you can decide if you want them on your sides or if you want to click the bottom part loose so you can point them in front of you for easy access into caves or wrecks. The big advantage is that you do not have to put the tank on your bcd untill you are in the water! Tanks will be attached to lines so just imagine, no more bumpy walks on the boat, trying to stabilize yourself! Want something different during your vacation? Give it a try. We offer full certification in 2 days and Instructor certification for just one more day.

Want to know more? send us an email

Rich Coast Diving

Shop Facelift.

Rich Coast Diving — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 02:32:56 +0000

Shark coming to town

For a while we have been working on getting a new front to enter our dive center, something that makes us stand out. We found a theme and approached Carlos Hiller to help us out. Carlos did a great job (he is not finished yet, but we are getting closer) I will post more pictures once it is all done. We choose for the bull sharks, one of the main reason people come to dive with us to visit the Bat islands. Bat islands is for advanced divers because it is a deep dive (30m) with an adrenaline rush once we encounter the bulls! But as I mentioned before, all divers love the experience hence our scene of Bats. The sign has been done for a while, we are just waiting for the “moment supreme” Mr. Bull………

Great day of Diving

brendavangestel — Sun, 01 May 2011 18:09:01 +0000

Today I went mapping with 2 dmt’s. On the first dive site (Argentina) it was Emily’s turn to guide, so me and Tom followed her along the reef. We saw many different Eels and here and there an octopus. Then on the sand patch we encountered about 4 white tip reef sharks, which was a great surprise because it seemed they had left this dive site, but luckily they have returned! Teh visibility was good, temperature about 30 Celsius with the occasional Thermocline………….which made paradise for the giant stingrays because they seemed to be every where; we almost witnessed a collision of a white tip with a stingray. the small harlequin clownshrimp was also spotted and loads of scorpion fish. All in all a great dive. Tom was very ecstatic because he saw two moray eels in a mating dance.

The second dive we did at Tortuga. Now it was time to map the dive site. Of course we had time to look around as well and this too, was a great dive, we saw more sharks, some swimming around and some just taking life as us; the pura vida style, lounging about in their cave We enjoyed all the rays; stingrays, spotted eagle rays, round rays and on our safety stop a school of

One of the eels we saw on our dive

rays. I choose a perfect day to go diving.

Brenda

Great start of 2011

Rich Coast Diving — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:56:29 +0000

Wow! That is what most divers said when they returned from the Catalina islands yesterday. In the morning they spotted orcas, which got everyone excited of course. To make the whole scenery more exciting, the orcas started chasing the rays who were jumping all around us. The rays formed big groups to fool the orcas, they even tried to hide under the boat, but these big guys have experience and jumped right at them.

After a few attacks they were satisfied and swam off. The surviving rays could relax again and started jumping around the boat once again. It was like nothing had ever happened, and now we still had to get ready for our first dive of the day. Wow, what a start!

All of this month we have been spotting rays around, devil rays, cow nose rays and even loads of giant manta rays at the local dive sites.

Dive Master Training

Rich Coast Diving — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:38:01 +0000

Here at Rich Coast Diving we offer a 3 month internship to become a dive master. You get professional training with loads of fun. The student learns how to fill tanks, and how a compressor works, deal with customers, sign up divers, sell equipment, assist in all courses and dive, dive and dive. During the course there are also several workshops and seeing the dmt’s conduct their first dsd workshop is always a lot of fun. There is role play as a teacher and as a student. Last week we did the dsd with one of our students and had the dmt’s assist and role play. Another fun workshop is the rescue skill number 7. this skill is comes back in the IDC. Besides all the in water stuff there is theory as well of course. The classes are given upstairs in our classroom and the exams can be done in a more relaxed atmosphere, close to the pool. All in all becoming a dive master is FUN! check out our face book page for more pictures.

New instructors at Rich Coast

Rich Coast Diving — Sat, 15 May 2010 17:02:26 +0000

We just finished our 3rd IDC of 2010 and all three were very successful. Rich Coast Diving has the pleasure of introducing 3 new instructors that have joined our team. Cindy and Arjan are Dutch and became instructors in March and Omar is from Costa Rica and he just passed the IE last week. Congratulations guys and welcome to our team.

Manta Rescue

Rich Coast Diving — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:46:52 +0000

It is the time of year again when the Giant Manta rays come to the Catalina islands to enjoy the cleaning stations. Daily trips are organized and divers are excited to see these magnificent creatures. Like 2 days ago, our guides were Felipe ,Phil and Adrian came along as Rich Coast Photographer. On the second dive Felipe spotted a manta ray who was dragging along a very long fishing line, once he reached the line he realized he forgot his knife so waited for Adrian to pass his, but the manta was inpatient and swam off, However, as if he felt what was going on, he slowly circled around Felipe again and let him cut the line. There was so much line around him that Felipe did not have enough time to get everything off; the manta flew away once again. Call it an instinct, but it came back only this time to hang above Phil who managed to get the rest of the line off. It took the guys awhile and their air went low. They stayed as long as they could because the manta was so thankful and gave all the divers a great show and Adrian a great opportunity to capture some great shots. The divers felt good once they got back on the boat and on the way back home they were treated by a group of Dolphins showing off, according to Felipe they came to say “thank you”

A day of diving

brendavangestel — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:14:27 +0000

Everyone knows that ones you start running a dive center you do not get as much diving time in as you would like. well same counts for me, Last week 2 of my friends came over from Holland and I took the time to take them on 2 dives. The day did not start they way I hoped because I hit my head on the car back door (don’t ask) and I was bleeding pretty bad, but this could not ruin the fun. The good times started when we spotted a big group of pilot whales swimming along the boat. Our first dive was at pt. Argentina, not the best viz and many thermo clines, but a great dive. In the first minute I spotted 5 spotted eagle rays, but unfortunately my friends missed them. However, the many giant stingrays made up for it. We saw loads of them especially once we went down through the thermo clines. At the end of the dive one of my friends spotted another spotted eagle ray and when we got everyone’s attention, it never seemed to stop, we must have counted at least 30 of them! The second stop was at Tortuga, shark city. There was a group of 6 white tip reef sharks all crowded together. This finalized the day for my friends; they had an excellent day of diving and so did I.

Rincon de la Vieja

Rich Coast Diving — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Last Sunday we went to Rincon de la Vieja with almost all the Rich Coast crew. The reason for this adventurous day trip was Brenda’s birthday. Well, it was actually her pre-birthday party since her birthday is not untill the 21st of October. However we had a blast!

We rented a little bus, and left at 7 am from Rich Coast. Our first stop was the McDonalds in Liberia. We had to pick up one of our instructors but were a little bit faster than expected so we had some time to drink a cup of coffee. After the coffee we continued driving and arrived around 8:30am at the national park. Upon arrival we could start with our first tour immediatly. We started off with the Canopy tour. After a short introduction about what to do, and especially about what not to do we started with our first zip line. For some of us it was their first experience in the jungle, but for none them it was a problem. Everybody was really excited, and on some zip lines you could go upside down, resulting in some great and funny pictures! After the Canopy tour we came back, drank some starfruit juice, and had to go for our next tour, Tubing. The bus brought us, and a couple other clients to the place where we started the tubing. After another short introduction we walked down to the river. After some scary stories about wild water, falling over, and hard times to get back into your tube again, we were ready to go. It was hard to stay all together since there were so many more other customers, but still we had fun. Unfortunetly the water wasn’t that wild since it hasn’t been raining that much, but for some of us just wild enough. Once the tubing ended we had lunch. We were all really hungry and the food was great! A big buffet with everything you wanted; soup, rice, beans, spagetti, pork, chicken, beef, salad, desserts. We filled our stomachs and went off for the horseback riding. Again for some of us their first experience on this animal, but fortunatly nobody felt off. The guide brought us to this amazing waterfall where we could swim and jump off the rocks in the water . We stayed there for about half an hour, got back on our horses again, and got to our last activity of the day; the Hot springs and Mud baths. First we went into the sauna to get our pores open, then we covered ourselfs in mud, went into the hotsprings, then into a cold bath. After this our skin felt amazing, so soft!

We definitely had a great time and hope we can do something like this again in the near future!

Kiki

Tourism and the Ocean

Rich Coast Diving — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:17:51 +0000

This weekend the organization “Promar” hosted a course for all divers. Many dive centers were present including of course the Rich Coast Crew. Unfortunately not all could go seeing that the course took 3 days and yes, the shops still need to run. 6 of us took the course including me. One prerequisite was that you had to speak Spanish, seeing that was the spoken language of the teachers. The first day started at 3pm. I was pretty tired because I had been sitting at the immigration office the whole morning waiting for a piece of paper. so the first 10 minutes they talked about the mangroves and I thought by myself it was going to be a hard afternoon. But it was nothing like that. It got very interesting and we learned alot about the different kind of fish and their behaviors. The best part was that they covered many myths that people spread around about sharks, dolphins and pre-historic creatures. After the classroom time of 2 days we went on the baot and visited the Mangroves and we were able to identify the different types. We learned how to recognize the difference between a male and a female crab, and studies some slugs. After that we went for a snorkel trip, on the way we were very lucky: a family of dolphins were feeding and we stayed around for about 20 minutes and listen to our guide go on about this great mammals. All of us being divers it was funny to get a snorkel guide. Telling us not to put our mask on top of our head ect. the best part was all the information that was giving with every different specie we saw. The viz was great and we saw white tip reef shark, spotted eagle ray and big schools of fish, we even spotted an octopus. After our adventure we went back to the classroom to receive our certificates along with a sandwich. A very great course and Rich Coast Diving would like to thank the guys from Promar for their input.

Brenda