Drake Bay, Osa Peninsula: land of scarlet macaws, Central American jungle critters like monkeys, tapirs, sloths, and more; this part of Costa Rica was rumored to be less touristy, less resort-y, a little wilder, a little quieter.

It started sort of precariously, if I’m honest. With a sideways state of affairs and sense of foreboding back home, a pent-up excess of fernweh in my bones, and a dashed-together escape plan to see a part of Central America I’d not been to before… add to that a fairly ominous start to la aventura.

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Friday: a 3:00 alarm to make a 6am flight in order to connect in Miami in time to catch the last local flight from San José down to the Osa Peninsula… and even the best-laid plans sometimes have other things in store than what’s expected. So 40 minutes out from San José, the flight had to do a 180 and head back to Miami. Apparently, air traffic control was down across Central America, flights couldn’t land, and we didn’t have enough fuel to wait it out in the sky.

7 or so hours later, we’re on the ground, but of course too late to catch the little planes that spiderweb visitors to various points across the country. I heard buzzing amongst the passengers about hiring helicopters or cars or boats to get them to their end points sooner. Having neither means nor energy for that kind of rejiggering, I booked a new flight to Drake Bay for the following morning and a night in a simple hotel in San José. A clean bed and hot shower were all I really needed, but I had forgotten that here, “shower” does not necessarily imply “hot”.

I woke up the next morning clean but groggy, willing the massive headache to stay at bay until I got to my little hotel that would be my base for the next week. While the final leg to the simple but nice Corcovado and Drake Inn was painless, the migraine was not. I spent much of Day 1 sleeping off the entry.

Mermaid returns home but finds things amiss.

I looked for a PADI 5-star shop to dive with (you can’t be too careful), so the boxes checked with Costa Rica Adventure Divers. And Caño Island sounded like a nice spot to dive, boasting reefs, schooling fish, pinnacles, sharks and more… My mermaid tendencies needed attention and I signed up to dive for 5 days. 🐟🧜‍♀️

I’ve been diving for close to 30 years, and my heart aches every time I get in the water of late. While I was hoping for vibrant reefs teeming with schools of fish, I knew that the reality would be something different. That said, I wasn’t wholly prepared for the conditions.

These reefs were thriving a mere 5 or 6 years ago. But climate change, pineapple farms and other industries leaching chemicals into the rivers (which flow into the ocean), storms and mudslides, construction, and development (despite Costa Rica’s largely pro-environment stance), have cumulatively caused the corals to bleach and mostly die off here. And while there are some soft corals surviving and thriving, most seemed sad. The schools of fish were there, but from what I was told by the divemaster, it is a very small fraction of what it had been. We were 25km from the mainland, so the reefs closer to shore must be even worse.

I love being underwater, so I tried to keep myself thinking positive: “all dives are good dives” and the like. There were lots of little white tip reef sharks, some amazing and massive green sea turtles, big schools of barracuda and jacks and snappers. But after 2 days of diving, it seemed like they were swimming on a gray canvas, and I felt sad for the sea.

A normal 2-tank dive consists of a first dive (“tank”), followed by a surface interval where you rest before the next dive, followed by the 2^nd tank. On the 1^st tank on this 3rd day of diving, we descended to about 20 metres in a grayish “garden”. After 10 minutes or so of fish-finding, an eerie, milky sediment cloud appeared out of nowhere. This decreased the visibility to about 1 metre, meaning you couldn’t see your buddy, the reef, or the divemaster. It was relatively shallow water, and we were in a fairly open area, so the dangers were limited, but it was stressful enough to find my buddy, stay with the group, and proceed to a level where the vis was better. Several minutes later, looking down from 5 or so metres was like observing a layer cake of blue and milky gray.

I spent that surface interval dodging a stress headache and questioning my vacation choices, then opted out of the 2^nd dive. I chose to spend the time swimming in the big blue sea and contemplating my insignificance.

As I bobbed on the surface, looking out towards the horizon, I could see only shades of blue. If there is one thing diving has taught me is that we humans are mere crumbs in the universe.

That jolt and my self-imposed time out felt like a reset on a week that didn’t start out so great. So when, while we were making our way back to Drake Bay from Caño Island, we saw a mama and baby humpback whale not 10 metres from the boat, and then papa whale breached the surface with a punctuational tail slap, I got the feeling that things were going to be okay.

The whales saved the day.

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Big shoutout to Costa Rica Adventure Divers for a team of professional and fun divemasters/instructors. If you’re in Drake Bay, I highly recommend them.