Costa Rica’s best year-round scuba diving can be found in the NW Pacific. Here you will find multi-level dive sites fitting for both beginner and advanced divers. Guanacaste dive resorts are less than 30 minutes from Liberia Airport (LIR) and just a short boat ride to the dive sites.
What is more fun than becoming one with the fish while swimming through an enormous school of grunts? Look closely, and you can find sea horses, frog fish, gobies, blennies, harlequin clown shrimp, nudibranchs, octopus, moray eels and lobster. Every inch is filled with life.
Looking for the “Big Stuff?” Gulf of Papagayo is the right place to see Humpback whales, large schools, white tip sharks, eagle rays and turtles. Long range dives to Catalina Islands (Manta Rays from Dec-Apr) and to Bat Islands (Bull Sharks from May-Nov) are available.
Costa Rica is a wonderful dive destination for single divers, couples, families and dive groups Bill Beard’s will offer you the best option based on your skill level. And, if you don’t know how to dive, we would love to teach you!
Scuba diving in Costa Rica is excellent year around. We have two seasons, the rainy season and the dry season. Costa Rica has a tremendous amount of marine life during both seasons.
The rainy season is from November until May. It is a tropical rain and is generally in the afternoon and stops by dinner time. It doesn’t rain every day and this is a wonderful time for scuba diving as the seas are flat cam and the water is warm, sometimes as much as 86 degrees F. The rain also settles the nutrients that we have in the water improving the visibility.
The dry season that Costa Rica calls “Summer” is December through April and the air temperature is the hottest of the year since there are no clouds. However, the water is colder due to polar currents and the seas are a little rougher due to Papagayo winds from the Northeast. This is the season for the schooling giant Pacific manta rays and one of our two humpback whale migrations. Sunsets on the Pacific Ocean are absolutely gorgeous.