Monkey Head Island

This morning I headed out on a boat with Rich Coast Divers to a dive site called “Monkey Head Island”. I quickly figured out that diving in the Pacific is a completely different ball game than diving in the Caribbean. Before today the only dives I had done were the four to get my open water certification in the Gulf of Thailand and the twelve dives I did in Belize and Roatan earlier in this trip. In all of those places the water is crystal clear and perfectly warm, there's a huge reef that divers swim along to see the wildlife, and if there are any underwater currents, I didn't feel them. The Pacific is known for having lots of large underwater wildlife, but the trade off is that the water isn't nearly as warm, there aren't as many reefs, and the underwater currents toss divers all over the place. Despite the additional challenges, the dive at Monkey Head was amazing. The first thing I noticed after dropping down into the green Pacific waters was that there were puffer fish and porcupine fish all over the place. When I saw the first one I was really excited because I hadn't seen one before, but then I saw that they were everywhere. The fish only puff up when they're intimidated and we didn't see any of them in that condition, but they're still pretty funny looking even when they aren't puffed up. I watched hundreds of those things drift back and forth with the currents, twisting their lumpy heads to look around and paddling along with their stumpy tails. Most of the puffer fish and porcupine fish were only six or seven inches long, but I saw one massive one while I was down there that must have been two or three feet. I can only imagine what that guy looks like when he's puffed up. Our guide from Rich Coast pointed out a few other interesting things to the other diver and I while we were down there. We spotted an octopus that was so scared when we swam towards him that he wrapped his entire body around a rock and clung to it until after we left. We also saw a green moray eel like the one I saw at the shipwreck in Roatan and a round sting ray resting on the ocean floor whose coloring blended perfectly with the sand underneath it.
Only a couple of minutes into our second dive we saw a bright orange seahorse resting on the sand. Most of the rest of the dive was filled with a lot of the same sightings - a sting ray, a small octopus, and tons of puffer fish. I actually enjoyed the more challenging conditions in the Pacific because it was so different than everything I've done before. I tried to find a rhythm with the currents, kicking my fins to keep my position when the current pushed against me, and then using the current to surge forward when it turned the other way again. Occasionally a current would bring a patch of cold water and in a split second the pleasantly warm water surrounding me would be replaced with an ice-cold wake-up call. After a few of those temperature changes I noticed that I could see the cold water coming. The warm water was relatively clear, but in the distance a cold patch looked like a mirage in the desert.

Towards the end of the dive I followed our guide around the corner of a massive rock and saw a large white-tipped shark resting under it only a few feet away. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that this thing was the biggest shark I've seen since the last time I watched “Jaws”. He must have been eight or ten feet long and had the perfect shark shape that everyone seems to recognize. Fortunately he was more afraid of us than we were of him and he quickly swam off to find more isolated waters. After returning to the boat my guide said that during some dives he'll spot three or four sharks and sometimes even more. Playas del Coco is great for large marine wildlife, but nearby there's a place that's absolutely legendary for diving. About a thirty-six hour boat ride into the Pacific is an island called Isla del Coco. One of the guys from Rich Coast said that at Isla del Coco it's common to see entire schools of hammerheads and other types of sharks, not to mention the other incredible marine life. Of course I'd love to go diving at Isla del Coco, but there's one catch - a trip out there and back costs $4500. Someday I really will dive there, but it probably won't be one of my next few trips.

This afternoon I caught a public bus to Playa del Tamarindo to finish up my trip with a couple days of surfing. I was absolutely exhausted after diving this morning, but I rented a board anyway and tried my luck at surfing for an hour or two this afternoon. Surfing isn't easy to get the hang of. I knew that already because I've tried it before, but I figure that as long as I'm down here I might as well give it another shot. I paddled my longboard out to where most of the local surfers were and tried not to be embarrassed that I was the only one not catching any of the waves when they came in. Despite the fact that my surfing skills are lacking, it was still tons of fun to be out there. I enjoyed floating on my board out in the ocean and basking in the warm sun as I waited for each set. The anticipation of the next wave and the challenge of catching it kept me entertained the whole time I was out there.

Finally a more experienced surfer pointed out to me that I had the wrong kind of board for catching waves so far out in the ocean. I thought that I knew what I was doing by paddling past all the beginners catching waves that had already broken towards the shore, but it turns out that they were trying to catch those waves because they all had longboards like I did. Someday I'll finally figure out how to surf and I'll trade my longboard for a shorter one that I can paddle further out into the ocean. Until then though I'll spend my time catching the smaller waves on a board that could pass as a small boat. With any luck I'll be able to figure out how to actually stand up on the thing when I head out there again tomorrow.