Posts tagged Sea Turtles
Panama is Central America’s New Scuba Diving Treasure and Santa Catalina is the Crown Jewel
Nov 10th
The Scuba diving community’s obsession with Belize has created crowded dive sites, driven up cost, and put a lot of pressure on the precious natural resources. A new gem has emerged in Central America for scuba divers. Panama has become the destination for scuba divers looking for relatively unexplored dive sites, warm tropical waters, and low travel costs.
Panama offers scuba diving opportunities in both the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. It is even possible to book a trip through scuba shops in Panama City to dive both oceans the same day as well as an eerie low visibility dive in the Panama Canal the next day. In one of the indigenous languages, the name Panama itself means “abundance of fish.” The waters around Panama definitely live up to the name.
The clear Caribbean waters offer beautiful corals and ample tropical fish, but the best scuba diving in Panama may very well be the unexplored Pacific waters off the coast of Santa Catalina. Offering excellent local dives just a 15 minute boat ride from Santa Catalina Beach, the variety of fish and the shear numbers and size of the fish is amazing. It is not unusual on a single dive to see dozens of eels, sea turtles, large schools of jacks, barracuda, snapper and reef and nurse sharks.
What you will not see is other dive parties or dive related damage to the reefs. There is currently only one land based dive operator out of Santa Catalina. It is Scuba Coiba, owned by Austrian Herbie Sunk. The Scuba Coiba operation is very safety conscious. They keep their rental gear in good shape and are very diligent in protecting their natural resources.
Further out in the Gulf of Chiriqui, is Isla Coiba. A little over an hour boat ride out of Santa Catalina, Isla Coiba offers incredible variety including a large number of pelagics. Isla Coiba has been favorably compared to Galapagos and Cocos islands for its diversity of sea life as well as ecological diversity on land.
Isla Coiba and the waters and islands around it create the Isla Coiba National Park. Scuba diving and accessing the islands require a permit from the rangers. This is highly enforced and should help protect the waters and the natural resources they harbor in pristine condition.
Scuba Coiba offers day trips from Santa Catalina to Isla Coiba, but a worthwhile experience is their 2 to 3 day trips which combine diving with ecotours of the islands. To protect the island, overnight accommodations are only available at the ranger station.
The Pacific waters around Santa Catalina are warm year round, although currents around the deeper waters of Isla Coiba can create cooler thermal layers. Don’t expect the 100+
feet of visibility of the Caribbean, but 50+ is common and ample to see the awesome sites.
Santa Catalina is definitely off the beaten path, even for Panama. But its remoteness is what has kept it protected from the throngs of casual weekend warriors. Santa Catalina is located on the Pacific coast, a 5 to 6 hour drive from either Panama City or David. The road was recently paved all the way into town making driving there an easier proposition. Airport transfers can be arranged with some of the local hotels. For the truly budget minded, the public bus system is also an option.
Divers that want to be amongst the first to explore unspoiled sites and an abundant fishery, should have Santa Catalina, Panama on their short list of scuba diving vacations. It takes a little extra effort to get to Santa Catalina, but great and unique experiences usually do.
Costa Rica Travel News – Costa Rica, Greenest & Happiest Country on Earth
Nov 5th
The country’s astounding richness in its wildlife and biodiversity makes a Costa Rica vacation an experience to remember and the nation’s commitment to its natural riches have made the country a world leader in environmental protection and conservation.
But now it seems that Costa Rica’s record has made it more than a natural sanctuary for threatened wildlife, but a world leader in global happiness too.
A study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which links countries’ environmental protection to the happiness of their citizens has named Costa Rica as the greenest and happiest country in the world.
The study, called the Happy Planet Index, compares the natural resources that each country consumes with their happiness and quality of life. The report combined ecological impact with other factors including life expectancy and life satisfaction to calculate which country is the most “happy” overall.
According to the Happy Planet Index, Costa Ricans have the highest life satisfaction in the world, thanks to their long life expectancy which is slightly longer than the USA average, combined with their tiny environmental impact, which is 75% smaller than the United States’ per person equivalent.
Costa Rica has become well known throughout the world for its excellent level of environmental protection. Almost one third of the country has been protected by a system of national parks, conservation areas and natural reserves.
Some of the most popular protected areas include the World Heritage Site of Corcovado National Park which is famous for its mangrove swamps, tapirs and macaws, the beautiful beach-side Manuel Antonio National park, and Tortuguero National Park, a favorite nesting ground for endangered sea turtles.
In a separate recent survey the country was voted the number one Latin America travel destination thanks to its astonishing range of national parks protected the world’s biggest concentration of exotic, and often endangered, animal species ranging from poison arrow frogs, green leatherback turtles, the resplendent quetzal and the jaguar.
